Firstly thank you everyone for your comments and for following along. It’s been a busy couple of weeks at the bench but now I can report some progress…
Once the specs were decided, first thing was the prep. Here is the spec list for Martin’s Tirga Mhor:
• African Blackwood 100% FSC 2-piece Back and Sides
• Artist Grade+ Adirondack Spruce Top
• Taran Guitars Compression Braces
• Fully kerfed sides in Western Red Cedar
• Neck in Wenge
• Fretboard in African Blackwood with gold fret-markers
• Fanfret - scale 660mm - 645mm | 6th Fret perpendicular fret
• Fret wire in Evo Gold with semi-hemispherical fret-ends
• Bound Sound Port
• Bevel, Headstock and Rosette in Hot Sand Faded Scottish Burr Elm
• Gotoh 510 tuners 21:1 ratio in gold with black buttons
• Nut 46.5mm
• String spacing at saddle 61mm
• String weight 12-56
Here are some pictures of the initial stages, prepping the plates and thicknessing them.
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Once all the prep was done on the Back, Sides and Front, we were able to kerf the sides and get the back graft on ready for the compression braces to start.
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As some of you may know, I do all my side-bending on an iron. ABW is always amazing to bend, you have to be really careful that you don’t over-heat it, the problem is it requires a lot of heat to bend! Once the heat is in the side, you really need to keep the heat in the side like a hot edge moving along the side constantly. This ensures really even bends. You don’t need water to bend ABW because it is so full of resins but I have used it here to speed-up the heat transfer so I do not need to hold it on the bending iron for longer than I need to get it up to temperature.
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Once the sides were bent once, I returned to them to do any small adjustments. They are then cleaned-up and laminated to the kerfed Cedar side for the first part of the lamination. We use zpoxy which is a 30-minute cure. I’ve tried lots of different epoxy’s but really like how hard this goes after the full curing time.
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I asked Martin what his favourite colour was, he stopped for a minute and then puzzlingly replied ‘Kingfisher Blue?’…