A Redwood/Leopardwood OM build thread.
Welcome all to another build thread. I haven't had a chance to build anything new yet this year. Luckily that has now changed.
I started building an OM, a new shape for me, last week. Its an OM shape i have come up with myself, and hopefully it looks nice at the end, I quite like the shape in my mould anyway, thats a good start!! After the recent thread from Mark Hatcher talking about Redwood for tops, seeing as using Redwood was something I had been thinking about, it convinced me to go that direction this time and I managed to acquire a Redwood top from a supplier he knows. Its one of the Oregon "tunnel redwood" tops, cut from the support beam of a tunnel build in I think 1880, meaning the wood was cut about 150 years ago!! Its a beautiful piece of wood and has a very bell like ring to it, i'm very impressed with it and as long I don't make a hash of the build i'm optimistic its going to be a good one. The Leopardwood came from a local classical builder who has had it for a long time but has never had a customer interested in it and hasn't had a chance to work with it, I thought it looked pretty awesome so I decided to take it off his hands. It has turned out to be very very tricky to bend but more on that shortly. The neck will be a 5 piece flame maple/mahogany/maple/mahogany/flame maple block from which I will hopefully get 2 necks from. I much prefer one piece necks (ie no stacked heel, its too hard to hide the join) so this is the direction i'm going in to allow myself to do that. So to the building of the guitar itself, after first deciding I wanted a different shape, I decided that I would go in an OM direction. Several hours in CAD later a shape I liked emerged on my screen. I then had it plotted full size onto A1 paper and having recently met someone with a CNC contact, i utilised him to make my new mould. I now think my mould might be a little narrow/low at 60mm, but not a lot i can do about that at the moment. I guess i'll just see how it goes. Another new thing this guitar will be incorporating will be a bolt on neck. I'm 95% sure how I will be doing that, its the extension bit that incorporates the vertical bolts i'm not sure how to rout accurately yet, thats not to be done for a while though, I still have time to work that out. In March I was in California and met up with Kevin Ryan, he mentioned his process of deflection testing every top and now can see on a spreadsheet graph years later which values worked best and what to aim for. Kevin along with several other builders I have met and talked to recently, several of whom were at the Holy Grail Guitar show such as Peggy White, encouraged me to do the same. I built a deflection testing jig and tested my top. For that I thicknessed the top to 3mm and tested with the weight directly in the centre of the board. Because the workshop I go to only has very large bandsaws and its difficult to get an accurate cutout a constant amount outside the template outline, i decided to test the board only after being joined and thicknessed to a what will be 'standard' for testing purposes 3mm. Obviously the results that came out mean nothing for this guitar, nor for anybody else, but hopefully several down the line i'll have a my own chart and will know what i'm doing right and/or wrong. I have now cut out the top and back to approximate guitar shapes and that process makes it all seem more like i'm building an actual guitar now! I followed that up by bending the sides. The Leopardwood is a mission to bend. Its very hard, very dense and very resinous. It took nearly 3 hours maybe more per side to bend, it was weird, at no point did I feel the wood 'submit' and allow itself to be bent easily, I got there in the end, but that wasn't fun. I don't think they were too thick, they were the same 2mm i've used in the past. Now the obligatory pictures. Enjoy. My new OM mould shape https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1785/...49375ff7_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr The Redwood top in the deflection testing jig. Temporarily using my mahogany neck block as a zero block for the micrometer and without the actual weight applied to the jig yet. https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1807/...1847d69d_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr My tasty Redwood top https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1803/...8329b150_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr The Leopardwood back https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1784/...f018e623_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Leopardwood sides being bent https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1826/...769e59a7_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr One of the bent Leopardwood sides, will probably need quite a bit of sanding to get rid of the resin that has come out from the heat. https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1827/...1d67bdf9_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr |
Looks like it's coming along well.
On the last guitar I built, it had lacewood neck and bindings. (Lacewood and Lepoardwood are often sold interchangeably.) I found it very unpleasant to work with due to the large differential in density between the figure and the background. The differential resulted in a washboard texture where the softer, less dense wood abraded faster than the harder, denser wood. I found sanding beyond 120, maybe 180, produced the washboard texture. I'd never use it again for neck or bindings. Although I have a set of back and sides, I haven't tried it for anything other than neck and bindings. At least it finished easily. |
Thanks Charles
Thanks for the heads up, that's good to know. I haven't had a chance to sand it past 100 yet, I'll mess around with some scraps and see what happens. The leopardwood is also quite crack prone but nevertheless the build seems to be progressing fairly well so far. |
I love lacewood and think it makes a fine guitar. It certainly does look incredible too. THta's gonna look great with that redwood top too. Very nice selection of wood there. Deflection testing has definitely improved my guitar building. IT's a fantastic tool for maintaining consistency.
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Thanks Redir, yea Leopardwood/Lacewood really has something about its look, i'm looking forward to seeing that how that Redwood comes out under finish too.
I can't see how the way i'm using the deflection testing is going to do anything but help me out in the long run, unfortunately its one of those things that you don't see any gain from in the short term so building that jig felt like it was time I would rather have been putting into the guitar. But its done now so i'm happy. In the meantime i've made some further progress both yesterday and today. One thing i've learnt is that I now have a good idea of how long most of the individual processes run, what the order of the processes are and in particular how long gluing time takes. That means i can multitask significantly better and as such i'm definitely seeing this build progress much faster that the previous ones. Clamped the end and tail blocks into position https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1776/...7448cf42_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Glued some liners in, i don't care how good the 'proper' liner clamp devices are, they've all missed a trick by not making them multi coloured! https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1838/...502ef168_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr i'm using the Ryan guitars A5 liners here. After seeing some in person when I visited him recently I definitely thought they were worth a try. Love them so far! https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1790/...3ed52bb6_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Because this Leopardwood seems quite prone to splitting it was even more important to make sure I put some side splints/braces in this guitar. https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1791/...e2f3f336_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr The side splints/braces are in, but they still need to be cleaned up to make it a little tidier https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1782/...ae3ed5db_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Started shaping the back braces but ran out of time to finish them this evening. https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1840/...92c33848_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr |
Deflection is a data collection process for sure.
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That redwood is beautiful.
Be careful when working on or storing the redwood top. Even just setting it on top of a small chunk of sawdust can make a dent in it. |
Hi David,
I find the shape of your OM to be very pleasing. Is that a "Tunnel 14" Redwood soundboard, or the original "Tunnel 13" .......? Joel |
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We have both of them here at the shop...though the back-story on the Tunnel13 is much more interesting. We all know that the T13 work splendidly as a soundboard... but we haven't yet used a T14 on a guitar here at the shop, so we'll have to wait and see if it produces sonically at the level of its better-known brother...though I do agree with you that the potential is there. I'll be interested to see what your assessment is when your done.
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More updates,
I glued the back on, using my now favoured method of a tube that follows the outline of the back. Means constant pressure and only 2 main clamps instead of 35, and I added 2 more to keep it all level. I do need to find a better way of doing the pockets for the brace ends, i still haven't managed to find a way to do them cleanly. Then made and installed my rosette. I acquired some stabilised maple burl that was dyed blue and was convinced it would make a cool rosette in redwood. I think i was right. It took a while to put together as it was hard work to keep the small blocks level but was worth it in the end. Liners glued in and brace pockets cut https://farm1.staticflickr.com/924/4...4c6cafa7_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr gluing the back on https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1803/...6bbf834c_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr My 22.5 degree wedge that I follow with a japanese saw to give me 16 identical pieces for the rosette https://farm1.staticflickr.com/916/4...9010aea9_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Rosette pieces roughly in place before superglue https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1767/...727942de_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr rosette after being superglued and circle cut https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1787/...c6dcac58_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr rosette installed and levelled but before the soundhole was cut out https://farm1.staticflickr.com/844/2...5876379d_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr rosette installed, levelled and soundhole cut out https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1764/...df3fbfee_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr |
A quick update
Not as much done this week as I would have liked but I do now have 2 necks, this is one of the reasons I like to use the multi-laminate neck blocks, getting 2 necks out of 1 block is convenient. And keeps wood waste down. I don't think i'll add the second neck to this guitar though. A dual neck guitar can come sometime later down the years.... I also started the soundboard bracing process, i'm going for putting a 25' radius in the top this time. I don't have a go bar deck but there are several ways to skin a cat. dual necks off the bandsaw. Maple / mahogany / maple / mahogany / maple https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1827/...83cdfa3b_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr you can see a bit more of the intense figuring in this view of the necks https://farm1.staticflickr.com/833/2...96ecbd14_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr bracing process, X going on. who needs go bars. It worked successfully. https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1827/...8603b64a_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr also here is the back now attached to the sides but not cleaned up yet https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1785/...66bb6eb2_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr |
“I do now have 2 necks, this is one of the reasons I like to use the multi-laminate neck blocks, getting 2 necks out of 1 block is convenient. And keeps wood waste down”
Plus, they just look so darn nice! Really nice work; please keep the pictures coming. |
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Other reasons for my multi-laminate neck preference include, 1) i'm not a fan of the stacked heel look, i don't have the wood to allow grain matching between the neck and the heel block and if you don't do that the obvious joins annoy me a bit. 2) i'm definitely not from the "everything needs to be traditional" camp, especially aesthetically, which leads me to the next point 3) yes they do look great 4) stability - if the guitar eventually needs a neck reset, its very unlikely to be from the neck warping, still a possibility but a reduced one. 5) as previously mentioned, I find getting 2 necks from 1 block advantageous, this is much less likely to be an option when using 1 piece necks 6) i'm sure there are more reasons but none come to mind right at this moment. |
Here is another update, and milestone one.
We now have a closed box. I was really hoping to get the binding channels cut today but ran out of time and now I may have to wait until next thursday which is annoying. Enjoy The top after being glued on https://farm1.staticflickr.com/842/2...6b8b590f_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Front of the closed box after the excess was trimmed away https://farm1.staticflickr.com/913/2...7cae72c0_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr Back view after being excess trimmed away https://farm1.staticflickr.com/927/4...3d140d19_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr 3/4 view https://farm1.staticflickr.com/920/2...dc28e0cf_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr |
So here we go again with another quick update.
Despite not being able to get a lot of time in the workshop lately, i've managed to get the bindings on and as such it looks much better now. I added a stabilised maple inlay for the end graft and i'm definitely happy with how that looks. The obligatory pictures Routing the binding channels https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1782/...b4420daa_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr gluing and taping the rocklite bindings https://farm1.staticflickr.com/922/4...3be29a87_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr front side with the bindings on https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1824/...a1001292_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr back side with the bindings on https://farm1.staticflickr.com/839/4...98039ae9_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr stabilised maple end graft https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1786/...ecafef4a_c.jpgUntitled by David Emm, on Flickr |
It's coming along very nicely.
A word of caution regarding method. It is inadvisable to leave that much overhanging waste on the top and back. It invites splitting the top and/or back along the grain at the extremes of upper and lower bouts. (Don't ask me how I know this. :D) As you become more assured in your work, you'll find you don't need to leave that much excess - an 1/8" or so is more than enough once you have your processes sufficiently controlled and are comfortable with them. |
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actually leaving that much overhang was for a reason, a) on my previous build it seemed my mould actually stretched or moved significantly and it ended up such that i was lucky i had left so much overhang because if i hadn't the top would barely have fit. I was probably paranoid of that happening again so I once more left plenty of overhang, but this time round my new mould is much better, it definitely won't move or stretch and is much more accurate and so in the future you're right i can probably leave less overhang b) the bandsaw in the workshop i go to has a very deep blade, its at least 1 inch possibly 1.25 inches. Its pretty tricky to cut anything but the shallowest of curves with it and that makes it awkward to cut close to the outline of a guitar and also without ripping chunks out of the underside of the top when cutting across the grain, although that could just be the brittleness of the redwood i was using here. I don't remember so much of that happening with the spruce. |
Wow! This is really turning out to be a beautiful guitar. Who gets it?
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One option would be to change the blade, typically a 5 minute operation. Another would be to use a disk sander to remove the excess waste after cutting with the 1 or 1 1/4" blade, but before attaching bracing. |
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I'm sure i'll find a solution for next time. |
Looks great, keep those pics coming.
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As soon as i do anything on it, i'll update the thread and the pictures are the most interesting bit so there will definitely be plenty of those coming Quote:
Well, its kinda semi-commissioned, I know someone who is interested in it and if i get a really good price I might take an offer for it, but otherwise it will end up with my dad. |
Hi David,
Have you thought about just using a coping saw for your curves,,simple and cheap,, Enjoying the build hope it continues well for you, Best |
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I’d have a hard time letting that one go. |
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Would this damage the grain structure |
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Perhaps that would be an option but I don't have one and a coping saw is one of those tools i had bad experiences with in the past so its not one of my go to tools. Planes are in the same category, i've been getting back into them with my finger planes, but i think every time in my entire life that i've used a larger plane, i've ended up causing damage and it makes me very nervous about using them. one day if i can afford it i'll buy a good quality plane and then hopefully i will damage less work and might start using them more. There is actually a smaller band saw in the workshop that has a smaller blade on it that would cut curves better but it got damaged and its been out of commission for months now. Quote:
Before installing it I laid out the wedge on its own as per a 'typical' end graft and it looked ok but kinda like the blue was thrown in as an afterthought, so i tried it this way and I think it looks a lot more deliberate and purposefully incorporated. Quote:
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If it wasn't for the white in the maple, I would have suggesting adding the white purfling as a border right around the wedge. But what you have done is excellent! |
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