BRUCE SEXAUER: FT-16-C (Adirondack Spruce/Australian Blackwood)

[Bruce Sexauer]

I think pictures come out bigger on the screen here than in UMGF. This shot hold up well when larger IMO:

[iim7V7IM7]

[gitarro]

The Australian blackwood looks great - it will look even better after the finish goes on.

Two questions to mr sexauer - it must be very difficult not to use molds and jigs to achieve consistency and you are one of the very few luthiers who would do this. Do you go freehand for the entire guitar without using a single jog or mold? What best practices do you do to ensure a good result?

[Bruce Sexauer]

Originally Posted by gitarro

The Australian blackwood looks great - it will look even better after the finish goes on.

Two questions to mr sexauer - it must be very difficult not to use molds and jigs to achieve consistency and you are one of the very few luthiers who would do this. Do you go freehand for the entire guitar without using a single jog or mold? What best practices do you do to ensure a good result?

The consistency I am after is the performance of the guitar, and I hope I am not alone in this priority.

Accurately bent sides are a boon to achieving this goal as they allow a more relaxed structure AND lend to symmetry, I am not above using a FoX bender to facilitate this end. Some builders may use a mold to force the sides to conform, which can leave destructive internal tensions when the mold is removed. While this is not necessarily the case, my system obviates the possibility. By the way, I did use molds for the first 3/5ths of my career, but my current system makes them seem like a waste of my time and frees me to subtly vary my designs in the interest of both aesthetics and increased efficiency as a music tool. Since I have no "product line", I have no requirement to reproduce any specific result. I also do not have templates for bracing as they are a moving target. I do have a jigging system for cutting my fret slots as my eyes are not entirely up to visualizing their exact correct locations.

I am not sure what "best practices" (?) means, but I can tell you good results are not nearly as interesting as great results.

[iim7V7IM7]

“The consistency I am after is the performance of the guitar, and I hope I am not alone in this priority.”

You are not...

[iim7V7IM7]

Cool shot...

[printer2]

Originally Posted by gitarro

What best practices do you do to ensure a good result?

Be one with the wood young man.


Well maybe not. If I would hazard a guess Bruce has built a lot of guitars and used many different woods and he sums up the experience they all has given him. When he decides on a piece of wood for a guitar he probably has a good idea what and how much he can get out of it and as he works the wood decides how much and where attention is needed. That and he is very particular about what wood he uses.

I hope I am not misrepresenting Bruce, this is just my impression from following his builds over the years and seeing the few minutes of video of him working. I bet it would be a treat to stand in the same room as him as he starts a project and takes it to completion. I bet it would be a real educational experience.

[gitarro]

In this day and age it is getting rarer to find luthiers who build purely qithout nolds and jigs so sexauer's way is probably the way luthiers in previois times hsed to do things.

I wonder if the prewar Martin factoru also built without using jigs? I expect they probably used molds?

Another luthier who goes to the extent of even building without power tools and doing everything with just hand tools and of coirse no jigs or molds is Boaz Elkayam.l and i hv only heard of him doing this way in the steel string guitar world.

Originally Posted by printer2

Be one with the wood young man.


Well maybe not. If I would hazard a guess Bruce has built a lot of guitars and used many different woods and he sums up the experience they all has given him. When he decides on a piece of wood for a guitar he probably has a good idea what and how much he can get out of it and as he works the wood decides how much and where attention is needed. That and he is very particular about what wood he uses.

I hope I am not misrepresenting Bruce, this is just my impression from following his builds over the years and seeing the few minutes of video of him working. I bet it would be a treat to stand in the same room as him as he starts a project and takes it to completion. I bet it would be a real educational experience.

[Bruce Sexauer]

Originally Posted by gitarro

In this day and age it is getting rarer to find luthiers who build purely qithout nolds and jigs so sexauer's way is probably the way luthiers in previois times hsed to do things.

I wonder if the prewar Martin factoru also built without using jigs? I expect they probably used molds?

Another luthier who goes to the extent of even building without power tools and doing everything with just hand tools and of coirse no jigs or molds is Boaz Elkayam.l and i hv only heard of him doing this way in the steel string guitar world.

My approach is in no way retro, as you seem to suggest, but is rather something I have evolved to over many years of building. For me, is is both more efficient AND more expeditious; it builds better guitars. I believe I have influenced a number of people to try a system something like mine, and I frankly hope to inspire a few more as I believe it has significant advantages for the small shop builder. It is probably very poorly suited to a production shop which relies on top down directed labor.

I remain quite interested in hearing what you mean by "best practices", it is quite beyond me to understand how it applies to what I do. Sounds like lawyer terminology for dealing with responsibility or liability, to me.

[Marcus Wong]

Hey Bob and Bruce, seems I've missed out on quite a bit of this build. It is looking so good! I'm a huge fan of Koa/Tasmanian BW and the overall aesthetic of this build is just right! Can't wait to see it pop under finish

[LouieAtienza]

Originally Posted by iim7V7IM7

The one-piece Honduran Mahogany neck has now been rough carved from the blank and placed into the dovetail joint to look at the guitar as a unit. The final shaping and fitting will occur tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes and hands. Bruce decide to slightly elongate his snake head headstock given the proportions of this guitar.

Fantastic! Bruce's style does look proportionately good with the larger guitar. I really like the miter there at the cutaway, nice and clean...

[Bruce Sexauer]

Originally Posted by printer2

Be one with the wood young man.


Well maybe not. If I would hazard a guess Bruce has built a lot of guitars and used many different woods and he sums up the experience they all has given him. When he decides on a piece of wood for a guitar he probably has a good idea what and how much he can get out of it and as he works the wood decides how much and where attention is needed. That and he is very particular about what wood he uses.

I hope I am not misrepresenting Bruce, this is just my impression from following his builds over the years and seeing the few minutes of video of him working. I bet it would be a treat to stand in the same room as him as he starts a project and takes it to completion. I bet it would be a real educational experience.

I wonder if you are aware of my "master class" program? You are describing it more or less. You'd certainly qualify for it. I require the "student" to have built a few guitars as I don't want to have to talk down.

How it works is the student commissions a guitar and then, for an additional fee, spends time in the shop with me one on one while I build it and talk pretty much non stop about what I am doing, why, and also say what I know about other ways it might have been done, etc, etc. I have seen this three week program raise a builder from semi competent amateur to professional virtually over night, well, over month. Costs most of $15k, depending on the guitar ordered, but you get to keep the guitar. And probably jumps you ahead a couple of years worth of work. Ought to pay for itself in a year if you have time to build 5 guitars.

[gitarro]

Thanks for your reply. My mistake then in assumjng that past luthiers had built without jigs and molds. Do you mean then that given the steel string guitar's origin as a factory built product, the use of jigs and molds must have been involved in the building of the first steel string guitars by CF Martin?

By " best practices" i meant are there any particular habits or methods that you follow to assist you in maintaining consistency to replace the help that mplds and jigs would have given you?

Originally Posted by Bruce Sexauer

My approach is in no way retro, as you seem to suggest, but is rather something I have evolved to over many years of building. For me, is is both more efficient AND more expeditious; it builds better guitars. I believe I have influenced a number of people to try a system something like mine, and I frankly hope to inspire a few more as I believe it has significant advantages for the small shop builder. It is probably very poorly suited to a production shop which relies on top down directed labor.

I remain quite interested in hearing what you mean by "best practices", it is quite beyond me to understand how it applies to what I do. Sounds like lawyer terminology for dealing with responsibility or liability, to me.

[CE Sobel]

Originally Posted by Bruce Sexauer

I wonder if you are aware of my "master class" program? You are describing it more or less. You'd certainly qualify for it. I require the "student" to have built a few guitars as I don't want to have to talk down.

How it works is the student commissions a guitar and then, for an additional fee, spends time in the shop with me one on one while I build it and talk pretty much non stop about what I am doing, why, and also say what I know about other ways it might have been done, etc, etc. I have seen this three week program raise a builder from semi competent amateur to professional virtually over night, well, over month. Costs most of $15k, depending on the guitar ordered, but you get to keep the guitar. And probably jumps you ahead a couple of years worth of work. Ought to pay for itself in a year if you have time to build 5 guitars.

What a great deal! There aren’t too many places where you pay for good training and get a nice guitar out of it.

[Bruce Sexauer]

Originally Posted by gitarro

Thanks for your reply. My mistake then in assumjng that past luthiers had built without jigs and molds. Do you mean then that given the steel string guitar's origin as a factory built product, the use of jigs and molds must have been involved in the building of the first steel string guitars by CF Martin?

By " best practices" i meant are there any particular habits or methods that you follow to assist you in maintaining consistency to replace the help that mplds and jigs would have given you?

I have little idea what Martin did or didn't do, now or ever. I had been building for 25 years when I first became interested in making Martinesque guitars (Schoenberg) and I used my own methods to that end as I continue to do.

Martin probably comes from from a mostly Northern European traditional background, whereas my earliest influences are Spanish through Michael Dunn, and then through Irving Sloan's Classical Guitar Construction book. In more recent times I have become somewhat acquainted with violin making methods as practiced by the Cremonese era Italians and described by the English. I had become pretty much set on my path by the time I began to be aware of what other builders such as those participating in this forum were up to. That's when I realized I was pretty much marching to a different drummer.

Thank you for defining your terms. I haven't thought of my work in terms of there being any issues raised by by my shift away from molds (jigs have never been my forte), but perhaps something will come to me. I believe the comments earlier in this thread are the first time the possibility of my work being inadequately symmetrical has come up in my hearing. Even if there is a measurable variance, which in this case I cannot actually see (so far), it is truly not a high priority to me. Not that I don't care, I'll improve it if I can see it, like everything else in my work, it just that it is not at the same level as tonal imbalance, for instance, with which I am utterly obsessed.