The Luthier Community

Well, it all started with the bocote dred that I sold to a guy last Fall. He brought it over this spring for a bit of setup tweaking. When he came to pick it up, he brought a friend who had a 1951 Martin OO-18 that needed a bit of work. So when the guy came today to pick up his Martin, HE brought a friend who wanted to look at my guitars. After trying out three, he asked "could you build me one like this?"

So he came back this afternoon and we picked out the wood (big log coco B&S). Gonna have an abalone rosette ring, evo gold fretwire and gold tuners w/ebony buttons wamara bindings. A few of the other details are going to be finalized as we proceed.

Should be starting this one after the Stringfest

So it has been a good day.

G

Congratulations Grant!
Nice when word of mouth works.

Joe

Yup, that's the way it works...
Good show Grant!

I bent the sides for this one today. Photos are in the "Beng jumbo" thread.

Guess I had better take photos of the rest of this. The top and back are about ready to join and I have cut the curved gold pearl strips for the soundhole rosette.

Moving along.

G

A bit of progress on this one. I joined the top , thicknessed it, and cut out the rough shape of the top. Nothing earth-shattering to photo there.

So, now time to do the soundhole rosette. The customer wanted a shell innlay ring around the soundhole. Since the tuners are going to be gold plated and I will be using the gold colored "evo" fretwire, I decided to use gold pearl for the rosette. Since it is not available cut in curved strips, I just bought the slabs and cut the curved pieces myself. There will be a black/ivoroid/black on each side of the pearl, so I routed the channel to fit.

I laid in the b/i/b and pinned it into place. Then I startged slipping in the pearl strips


Nothing complicated, just dry fitting everything into place. Filed the ends of the pearl square and pushed them into place, nice tight fit.

Here is the pearl ring and an outer b/holly/b ring done

And soaked with CA glue

And after a couple of cleanup passes through the thickness sander


Now on to cutting out the soundhole and bracing.

My bracing pattern starts with a crossgrain patch around the soundhole. I glue this in before I cut the soundhole and cut it all at once.

The next parts are the bridge plate and my "curved braces". here they are being glued in


The curved braces will be carved and sanded to a low triangular cross section before the other braces are glued in.

More later, probably next week because I gotta go to the Twin Cities Friday and Saturday for more pottery demos at a Community College and an archaeology meeting.

G

Cool! That Gold pearl with the ivoroid is quite inspired
Interesting bracing pattern too. I'm looking forwards to watching this one develop.
Mat

Well, I wasn't going to do any work in the shop today, but got inspired and changed my mind.

Started out by carving down the curved braces



Then I sanded them

I use a shield cut from aluminum flashing to protect the top next to the brace

Here they are all sanded


For those who have not seen it, here is the bracing pattern that I use

I designed this in 2003 and fairly quickly made two revisions. The version shaded in pink is what I have been using for the past 7 years. Only change since 2004 is that now I build up most of the braces from laminations rather than using solid wood braces.....

....Like this...

The first layer is the same thickness as the bridge plate, simply because it makes it easier where the braces lap over. Subsequent layers are a bit thicker to build up faster.

A few more strips being added

I run alternate layers through where braces cross to lock things together. I will end up with 5 layers before I carve them down.

Here is the back I will be using

This is a straight grained, tight grained, perfectly quartersawn back from the huge logs that I bought about 7 years ago. I probably have over 100 of these sets - old wood that was cut over 25 years ago.

I am trying the laminated linings similar to what Colin uses. Here is a form I made up for gluing the non-cutaway linings.


The next installment WILL be next week because I am heading south first thing in the morning.

G

OK, finished up the top bracing.

Here are the rest of the laminations glued in on the braces



The A-frame upper braces and the upper cross brace are not laminated, but are solid wood

Here are the A-frame braces being glued


Before I glue the upper cross brace, I need to rough profile the laminated braces. I do this with a shop modified router bit that tapers the sides of the braces

Look closely to see the slightly tapered cutter

Here is the result

The brace intersections will get cleaned up later by hand

After shaping the A-frame braces, I glue in the upper cross brace

Notice that there are cutouts to let the A-frame braces pass under the upper cross brace

Next I do more brace shaping, sloping the brace heights and cleaning up the intersections



Then it is on to rough sanding and fine tuning until they look like this


Just some fine sanding and a bit of cleanup to go.

I mentioned earlier that I plan to use the laminated linings similar to what Colin does. Here is my version


After doing this, I do not intend to go back to the kerfed linings. This is waaaay better and looks better, too.

Thanks for looking in.

G