I have been keeping the Healdsburg 2013 thread going as what has turned into a sort of building blog, but as we are now at the end of the first quarter of 2014, I thought I start a new thread -- a more contemporary extension of the same concept.
This year has found me with a profound shift of priorities, I semi-jokingly refer to it as "retirement". The joke goes that I have retired from my day job of 45 years in order to pursue my passion, building guitars. The non-joke is that I have held my work to the standard that it must be able to pay all my bills or it wasn't up to snuff. Since I basically AM my work, this means that my personal validity was based on the success of my business. So, retirement means I am allowing myself a little more slack, but I am continuing to work six days a week, 50 to 60 hours, just as I have previously. I am playing more music and spending more time with my hobby, which is racing my Lotus 7 one or 2 week ends a month when the weather permits.
Also, I have decided to build fewer guitars a year. My average over the last 15 years has been 10.9 per year (14 in 2012, 7 in 2013) and I plan to keep it at 6 or so for the time being. I started my first guitar of the year just this week, the last week of March, 2014! Of course I DID make a violin and 4 Concert/Tenor sized Ukuleles, as well as finishing up the guitar I started towards the end of December, 2013.
The new start is what I call an FT-15. That is my nomenclature for Flat Top, 15" wide lower bout, and 14 frets to the body. Had it been 12 frets to the body it would be called an FT-000. Had it been 13 frets it would be a Kerala. This guitar will be a WRX. That is my "Factory Works" model, stripped down for action, it is missing a few bells and whistles in the interest of economy, but made with the same high quality materials and personal attention which created my reputation.
This guitar has Dalbergia tucarensis (came from Belize, and was called Honduras Rosewood when I acquired it 35 years ago, today it is commonly called "Panama") back and sides, and they are flitch matched, which means the four pieces for the back and sides were consecutive cuts off the same billet, all long enough for sides and wide enough for backs. I cut them myself.
The top is Carpathian spruce. It is the wide grained material that came into the market and created confusion by looking to some like the wide grained second growth Adirondack that first showed up about the same time. In my opinion the Carpathian could hardly be more different from the Adi it superficially resembles. The Carpathian is far lighter in weight, typically, and yet incredibly stiff both with and across the grain. The "summer growth" is much softer than the "winter growth", and care must be taken not to damage it during construction. Sawing it on the bandsaw is a little like sawing thin pieces of foam glued together with hard glue; ssssssCHINGssssssChingssssssChingsssss etc. What these woods have in common is that they both can make A1 guitars, the biggest difference is that Adi is easily overbuilt with, and with Carpathian I don't think I've ever seen it done.
My intention with this thread is to lightly document my work this year. More than a "Hey, check this out", and less than a series of build threads. I hope you'll enjoy the process, and hopefully find something educational in it as well.
Being a WRX this guitar has neither a fancy rosette, nor my relatively challenging standard tapered and purfled back strip. The customer did ask for a little color, however, so I have put in a bit of marquetry in the back, and added some red lines to the single ring I include on the WRX:
