NCAL meets today (Sunday May 7, 2017) from 2 through 5 in Ervin's shop in Oakland, and all interested persons are welcome. http://ncal.club for more info.

I was fascinated by your birds-mouth bridle joint, Bruce.

I see that you departed somewhat from the traditional Martin model by making the sides of the top channel parallel, rather than having the same taper as the diamond underneath.

Was this just to facilitate the fitting (which it undoubtedly would ) or was there some other reason ?

Bird's Beak
 

The bridal joint on the Single 0 is more Martinesque than on the other examples. I don't know why Martin chose to do it as they did since it seems much more difficult to me . . . not to mention more fragile. I did my first attempts w/o finding out how Martin approached it, then did a little research for the Single 0, and have subsequently returned to my own thinking.

Dream Series final
 

I hope to ship the Dream guitar off this week, and took advantage of the morning sun to take a few photos first. The guitar is very successful, and will soon be available at Dream Guitars in North Carolina.

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/donefront2.jpg http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/donerear.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/donegraft.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/donecut1.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/doneheadfront.jpg http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/doneheadback.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/donetop.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/doneback.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Dream/donebackstrip.jpg

Love that back, rest of the guitar is pretty nice also. Is that Dream Guitars in Asheville North Carolina? Asheville is not that far from Knoxville might have to make a drive through the mountains to see this one.

Yes, THAT Dream guitars!

Last week I had a fellow bring in a half back sized piece of BRW about 3/8" thick which was too cupped to be resawn easily by a casually skilled bandsaw operator, and so I rose to the challenge. I was rewarded by being given a nicely matched BRW back which has a serious drying check in just one half of it, nearly the full length. The customer knows I have had good luck ripping such pieces and rejoining them into four piece backs which are virtually undetectable, and that I always disclose it to the financial advantage of the buyer.

Having just demonstrated my re-saw prowess to myself, I decided to take a different path, and attempted to re-saw the good half of the back into one flawless pair. The good half was just a tiny hair under 1/4" thick, and very rough on the outside surfaces requiring some serious cleanup, so the risk of losing the whole thing was high. Needless to say this was successful or I would not be sharing this here. . . or would I?

Here are some pics of the cracked half and the now joined re-sawn half. It cleaned up at .068", which works for me.

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/BRWresawnot1.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/BRWresawnot2.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/BRWresawback.jpg

Well dog gone, that was worth the trouble wasn't it, beautiful piece!!!!

I guess the two pieces will be together until death do them part.

It is HHG, so divorce is an option, but it would be pretty sticky.

Side note, a big thanks to Bruce and Ervin for putting the meeting together, it was lots of fun. Bruce's guitar sounds great btw, super cool bass

Vancouver Show Masterclass
 

I will be giving a MasterClass in late June at the Vancouver International Guitar festival on one of my favorite subjects: How the modern guitar is different from the traditional guitar (and why it matters).

Apparently this will require advance sign-up and I have an web-address for you to do that here.

The NCAL meeting in Ervin's shop went well enough considering the snafu that occurred in getting the word out. I relied upon the out going president's secretarial staff to do the emailing and they neither did it not told me they weren't going to. So I had to get something else happening at the last moment. My thanks to Brad hall (around here somewhere) for stepping up to the plate and getting it done. Brad is now officially the "archivist" for our disorganization.

There will soon be minutes from the meeting and also some video clips once I process Tadol's raw footage. There were several great shares at the meeting, including Jessupe's latest and Erivin's lecture on the acoustic guitar's iconic role in our culture.

Meanwhile, the all-tree Uke is coming along:

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/TreeUke/readyforback.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/TreeUke/backbraced.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/TreeUke/closed1.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/TreeUke/closed2.jpg

Because I won't get it done before I spend most of June out of the shop unless I get it started NOW, I have today joined the plates on Mike Wilhoyte's 2nd Sexauer Dread. The first is 18ish, and this one will be 28ish; BRW and Adi.

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Wilhoyte/joinback.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Wilhoyte/jointop.jpg

On hand I have abalone purfling in a variety of widths, .030, .047, .063, and .080. None looked right to me on this Uke, so I made my own from some Ablam scraps I also had on hand. This is .035" wide and seems right to me:

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/TreeUke/toppurfling1.jpg

Looks beautiful. Really going to pop under finish.