Making the ASB Road Trip guitar "An Féa Caol"
Oct 12, 2017 17:38:00 GMT
Martin, jonnymosco, and 9 more like this
Post by davewhite on Oct 12, 2017 17:38:00 GMT
To encourage people pondering joining this Forum Road Trip and to whet the appetite of those who have already signed up, as I’ve decided on the woods for this “An Féa Caol” it’s time to start the “making” thread. The guitar is a Terz model – tuned three semitones higher than a standard guitar – and is a slothead with a 610mm (24”) scale length and twelve frets clear of the body. There are a number of linkages to the Forum and its members with this guitar so I’ll go through these first.
In 2012 I made a Terz/Parlour harp guitar which I named “Fimbrethil” - the Entwife from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”. The origin of the name is a little complex - my baritone guitar is named "Treebeard" for its deep rumbling voice and when I made a baritone harp guitar I named it "Fangorn" (an older name for Treebeard) so “Fimbrethil” was an obvious name choice for the smaller model. Keith (ocarolan) had “Fimbrethil” on loan for a while and suggested I made a Terz guitar without the harp arm which I did a year later. Its name needed to be connected to “Fimbrethil” in the same way that “Treebeard” and “Fangorn” are and "An Féa Caol" means "The Slender Beech" in Gaelic which is how Tolkien refers to the Entwife Fimbrethil.
The second linkage is themes that have been discussed on the Forum and at the Halifax meetings – using re-cycled timber and domestic timbers. For the top, bracing and linings I’m going to use wood from “The Magical Musical Tree” that grew in the front garden of my house that I had cut down in 2013 as it was too close to the house and had shed a number of limbs over the years.
Talking to the tree surgeon I discovered it was “Lawson’s Cypress” know to guitar makers as “Port Orford Cedar” and regarded as a prime tonewood. These trees grow in British Colombia along with Sitka Spruce, Lutz Spruce and Western Red Cedar and were introduced to Britain by Victorian plant hunters as an ornamental garden tree. I had the tree surgeons cut the main trunk into sections that could be cut into instruments sets:
In 2014 Colin Symonds (colins) kindly helped me process “The Tree”:
This wood is some of the most “musical” I have worked with and a number of Forum members have instruments with tops from this tree. For the back and sides I am using Cuban Mahogany that came from an Edwardian Bureau. My next door neighbour Jeremy – now sadly deceased – was a furniture restorer in his spare time and gave me this carcass that he had salvaged the hardware from:
The bureau yielded three sets of guitar back and sides, one from each of the sides and one from the top shelf. The top shelf set was used for a standard sized harp guitar “Samhain Fada Lahm”, and one of the sets from the bureau sides was used on “Fimbrethil” so it seems appropriate to use this last set on the Road Trip guitar.
Due to the position of shelves on the bureau with associated slots in the sides, one of the sides has broken at a shelf slot and so this will be a cutaway model - you learn to go with what the wood tells you to do
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The final linkage is contributions from Forum members. I’ve decided to use a Madagascan Rosewood fingerboard that I got from Colin (colins) and the tuners are some very nice Gotoh slotheads with wooden buttons that I got from jonnymosco as my “fee” for helping him make his flamenco guitar. The guitar will have Madagascan Rosewood headstock veneers, bridge and end graft, Ovangkol bindings and end graft, b/w/b purflings and gold EVO fretwire. The The neck will be old Cuban Mahogany imported from Jamaica early in the 20th century.
In 2012 I made a Terz/Parlour harp guitar which I named “Fimbrethil” - the Entwife from Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”. The origin of the name is a little complex - my baritone guitar is named "Treebeard" for its deep rumbling voice and when I made a baritone harp guitar I named it "Fangorn" (an older name for Treebeard) so “Fimbrethil” was an obvious name choice for the smaller model. Keith (ocarolan) had “Fimbrethil” on loan for a while and suggested I made a Terz guitar without the harp arm which I did a year later. Its name needed to be connected to “Fimbrethil” in the same way that “Treebeard” and “Fangorn” are and "An Féa Caol" means "The Slender Beech" in Gaelic which is how Tolkien refers to the Entwife Fimbrethil.
The second linkage is themes that have been discussed on the Forum and at the Halifax meetings – using re-cycled timber and domestic timbers. For the top, bracing and linings I’m going to use wood from “The Magical Musical Tree” that grew in the front garden of my house that I had cut down in 2013 as it was too close to the house and had shed a number of limbs over the years.
Talking to the tree surgeon I discovered it was “Lawson’s Cypress” know to guitar makers as “Port Orford Cedar” and regarded as a prime tonewood. These trees grow in British Colombia along with Sitka Spruce, Lutz Spruce and Western Red Cedar and were introduced to Britain by Victorian plant hunters as an ornamental garden tree. I had the tree surgeons cut the main trunk into sections that could be cut into instruments sets:
In 2014 Colin Symonds (colins) kindly helped me process “The Tree”:
This wood is some of the most “musical” I have worked with and a number of Forum members have instruments with tops from this tree. For the back and sides I am using Cuban Mahogany that came from an Edwardian Bureau. My next door neighbour Jeremy – now sadly deceased – was a furniture restorer in his spare time and gave me this carcass that he had salvaged the hardware from:
The bureau yielded three sets of guitar back and sides, one from each of the sides and one from the top shelf. The top shelf set was used for a standard sized harp guitar “Samhain Fada Lahm”, and one of the sets from the bureau sides was used on “Fimbrethil” so it seems appropriate to use this last set on the Road Trip guitar.
Due to the position of shelves on the bureau with associated slots in the sides, one of the sides has broken at a shelf slot and so this will be a cutaway model - you learn to go with what the wood tells you to do
.The final linkage is contributions from Forum members. I’ve decided to use a Madagascan Rosewood fingerboard that I got from Colin (colins) and the tuners are some very nice Gotoh slotheads with wooden buttons that I got from jonnymosco as my “fee” for helping him make his flamenco guitar. The guitar will have Madagascan Rosewood headstock veneers, bridge and end graft, Ovangkol bindings and end graft, b/w/b purflings and gold EVO fretwire. The The neck will be old Cuban Mahogany imported from Jamaica early in the 20th century.
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