First amateur scratch guitar build, continued: cedar/mahogany medium jumbo

[Mary]

It's fun to watch what you and John are doing. I will enjoy seeing the finished pieces.

[Neil K Walk]

I cut the upper 3/8" off the top of the center walnut piece today so that I wouldn't have to rout for the truss rod and noted that one of the mahogany sides pieces was slightly warped. The RH here is hovering around 30% so I may hold off gluing this blank together until spring. Oh well, I've been wanting to do another of these MJ's anyway...

[Neil K Walk]

Last night I went over to Kitchen Guitars to work on my stuff for a little bit. I didn't have a plan and I have to figure out how much purfling I'm going to need so I decided to play it safe and just bend the rosewood binding strips. Things appeared to go smoothly and I didn't hear any cracking but after I unplugged the heating blanket I opted to just leave everything sit until I return on Wednesday. My friend John had never bent EIR before and noted that it smell funky or something like that. I kinda liked it: not so funky as patchouli or sandlewood but still what I'd call exotic. It's subtly peppery to the palette but not overly pungent.



After that I collected my glued-up neck blank and the 6 F-clamps that I was missing in order to glue up neck blank #2. I admired the job I did and marveled at the tap tone of the neck as well. There's a lot of cutting yet to do though, so I broke out the blueprints and the tools and got to work marking up the lay of the land tonight.



Firstly, I marked where the 15 degree break angle for the headstock is to go. Ironically, the plans also call for 15" from the end of the tenon to that point :





Then I moved on to marking up the tenon. A lot of the mahogany in that area is going to be cut/chiseled away. Here, I marked where the "cheeks" will be chiseled out. Everything between there and the end of the neck blank will be cut away with my band saw:











Meanwhile, once I have the headstock planed flat I'll move on to gluing on the headstock wings:



Next up though, gluing up neck blank #2. It will be tricky lining up the pieces since I pre-cut for the truss rod but then again things didn't line up exactly the first time either.

[gaijintendo]

I signed up to say how good it is to see your steps. I seriously wish I had the time and tools to give that a go.

[Neil K Walk]

I thought Tim and Todd might find this picture amusing. Yup, that's my neck blank. Check out the kid's form though!

[Neil K Walk]

I got a chance to put a little daylight hours in and paid my friend Mr. Kitchen and my guitar a visit. I started out by truing up the important surfaces of the neck blank:





Purty good so far. It looks clean, but let's measure:

First, the break angle: 15 degrees per the plans.



Now let's look at the plans to note the length from the end to the nut:



Zero at the nut:



15" at the end of the blank where the tenon is:



Did I mention that 15 is my little guy's favorite number? Don't ask me why. It must be a coincidence...

Moving on to what lies ahead: profiling. I'm going to try to emulate the neck profile of my Larrivee OM-03R. I've been enamored with the neck profile ever since I first picked up a Larrivee many years ago. Tomorrow I'm going to go pick up a contour gauge and work on making templates with some spare plexiglass.



Just for curiosity's sake, I wanted to see how the scale lengths compared:







Looks to be exactly the same: 25.4". Of course, I will not be copying the headstock shape. Speaking of which, I need to glue on the headstock wings and get them leveled.

[Kitchen Guitars]

Plexyglass will be a PIA. Use a hunk of the rosewood I gave you. It will be easier to file/sand contours IMO

[Mary]

Great pictures! You and John are doing a great job of keeping us in the know about this build.

I smiled when I saw the little guy golfing with the guitar neck, swingin' a little dog leg to the left, into the bowling balls. Tim saw the picture and his eyes popped, the mustache curled and his jaw dropped. I loved his reaction just as much as your little guy.

Aw, the wonderful life with an energetic kid with a great imagination. Yep. I liked the pictures!

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by Mary

Great pictures! You and John are doing a great job of keeping us in the know about this build.

I smiled when I saw the little guy golfing with the guitar neck, swingin' a little dog leg to the left, into the bowling balls. Tim saw the picture and his eyes popped, the mustache curled and his jaw dropped. I loved his reaction just as much as your little guy.

Aw, the wonderful life with an energetic kid with a great imagination. Yep. I liked the pictures!

LOL! Yup, what better way to stress-test a laminated neck? Methinks I may be on to something: custom made golf woods. Too bad I don't golf!

[Neil K Walk]

Moving right along, the next thing I did was to measure the dimensions of the binding/purfling channels on the body and also finally pull my bent rosewood binding strips out of the Fox bender where they sat for nearly 3 weeks. I don't have pics of this but suffice it to say that the binding strips fit perfectly in the depth of the channels. The purfling will be the tricky part though. I have a variety of different widths and can't keep all the purfling strips I have laying around straight. I also need some more so I have a bunch in the shopping cart at lmii.com and just wanted to check before buying them.

Finally, I moved on to selecting a veneer to use for the headstock. Since my rosette and binding are rosewood I'm also going with rosewood for the headplate and the fingerboard. No fingerboard yet but here are the leading contenders for the headstock:



These all come from a box of scrap pieces which are comprised of some split backs and orphaned sides. As you can see, one of the choices is from the same board that I got my rosette. This one is my favorite, though. On the back is written "41" which I have no idea the significance of.



As you can see, it's quite dark but the lighting doesn't do it justice. In this one it almost looks like ebony but believe me, it's a dark piece of rosewood with nice contrast and an almost purplish color. I may take more pictures under natural light, but FWIW I matched it up with the binding and my end wedge and they all match pretty well.

[Neil K Walk]

I haven't been able to put much time in on this lately but I enlisted a little help with my 5yo for a few minutes here and there with the neck. I'm starting to think about how I'm going to do the MT joint and start shaping the neck. First things first, I checked to see if my laminates accommodate the proper size trench for the truss rod:







I also traced the profile of the neck of my Larrivee with a contour gauge and transferred it to a piece of scrap rosewood where I cut it out with my little bandsaw:



Then I started thinking about what kind of headstock I want. I asked the question over at the OLF and I think I've got a better idea. I asked my 5 year-old son Joey what he thought:



He suggested something like this:



Well...I don't know about that. I'm thinking something mildly Gibson-ish - minus the mustache and potential lawsuit! It's a very common headstock style.

So anyway, last night I got to pay the guitar body a visit. I forgot the purfling I'd ordered so I didn't get to install it like I'd hoped so instead my friend and I jammed for a bit. (John's really getting good at Hotel California, BTW!) Then I remembered that I wanted to cut the sides away from the pre-mortised neck block so I went and did that too.



(Yeah, I know. It still needs a LOT of sanding down and I'd like to give it a layer of shellac around the binding channels so that I can use CA glue to set them.)




I also took a lot of measurements so that now I can work on the tenon at home. I'll make the tenon a bit oversized and whittle it down once I have the neck and the body together. After that, I'm debating on what to do with the neck carving. I'm leaning toward installing the truss rod and (pre-slotted) fingerboard first. What do you guys think I should do?

[Mary]

Hotel California is a pretty tune. Maybe you and John can play a duet next year for us!

Joey is a good asset to your guitar build. A 5 year old has instincts like no other.

[HeimBrent]

Originally Posted by kwakatak

I also took a lot of measurements so that now I can work on the tenon at home. I'll make the tenon a bit oversized and whittle it down once I have the neck and the body together. After that, I'm debating on what to do with the neck carving. I'm leaning toward installing the truss rod and (pre-slotted) fingerboard first. What do you guys think I should do?

I don't really have any real experience when it comes to building guitars, and the closest thing for me would be the cigar box-thing I'm making right now, but just from a practical point... I'd do whatever has the biggest shot at getting messed up first. My guess would be that it would be the carving, but what do I know. It would be a shame having the neck almost ready to go and then mess up the carving.

[Neil K Walk]

Yeah, the others who build - even the n00bs - make it look sooo easy. Truth is that there are steps within steps and so on. Gluing the laminations together was just the beginning. After that I worried about the break angle and how to get everything perfectly flat. After that I decided that I need to get that truss rod trench routed out while I still have straight edges to refer to. Then I'll worry about the tenon.

[Neil K Walk]

There hasn't been much to report on but I've had the pieces here at my home while I work on the binding and figure out the neck joint. The following pics are all dry-fits of the binding and purfling. Once I get everything all figured out I'll be using Titebond to glue it all on, not CA glue:







I had a helluva time trying to get BWB purfling to bend along its thicker sideand the first attempt twisted so I had to do it over by gluing the purfling to the already-bent rosewood binding:




Tonight I located all the purfling strips I have handy and I taped everything up to see if I had enough:


Measuring for the purfling didn't go so well and I routed more than I needed to so I had to figure out a new workaround. Two strips of bold BWB sandwiching a single .02" strip of maple seem to do the trick. Under normal lighting the maple contrasts more with the white: