Churchland Guitars Build Journal 2021

[Joel Teel]

Fun thread so far…keep it up!!! I hate that you had to deal with the water damage. During hurricane Sally last year, the roof of our home was penetrated by five 10+ diameter branches from the overhanging Sweetgum tree. I spent the remainder of the night up in the attic catching water in plastic bins so that it wouldn’t destroy our home underneath.

Life is full of unexpected complications…..but then there’s building guitars…..and that makes it all worth it.

[D. Churchland]

Originally Posted by TomB'sox

Looking good, glad the new shop is up and working for you, of course you apparently could build a guitar in a small walk-in closet lol!!!

Thanks Tom! While a closet shop sounds really romantic the reality of the small space is not that fun haha!

Originally Posted by Joel Teel

Fun thread so far…keep it up!!! I hate that you had to deal with the water damage. During hurricane Sally last year, the roof of our home was penetrated by five 10+ diameter branches from the overhanging Sweetgum tree. I spent the remainder of the night up in the attic catching water in plastic bins so that it wouldn’t destroy our home underneath.

Life is full of unexpected complications…..but then there’s building guitars…..and that makes it all worth it.

Man that is brutal compared to what happened to my house. I'm glad you came through it in one piece though. I bet the cleanup from that was intense as well. But yes building something as rewarding as an instrument and hearing it make music for the first time is definitely worth all the effort and hassle.

[D. Churchland]

Alright pretty exciting update on #211. The rosette has been completed.

For this build I decided to go much thinner with the top than I had previously been going on my larger jumbos. And as a tribute to the lighter build I also decided to change up the rosette style with some thinner and cleaner lines.

The results are as follows. The top is now thinned and floofy and the braces will be next. And the rosette is inlaid and looking sharp.





The inlay material is sold as purfling but it works well for this application. Braces are next and that's my favorite part of the build. Besides being completely finished.

[D. Churchland]

Bracing is going in. I would really prefer to be able to glue everything up at one time like with a go bar deck but sadly I have no such device yet.

The bridge plate on this one is Jatoba (brazilian cherry). If you're not familiar with it it's a wonderful wood for hard bearing surfaces like a bridge plate or even a fretboard. I decided to make this plate quite a bit thinner than most other guitars I've run across. It's not quite as insanely thin as say a Kel Kroydon bridge plate (those are something like 40 thou thick) but it's definitely on the thin side at around 60 thou. I've been noticing that a thinner bridge plate seems to affect the tone in a positive way and noticeably changes the initial attack of an instrument. So with a thin plate and very thin (barely over 3/16" thick") I'm hoping for a really quick attack with less sustain from this guy. I always enjoy a little mystery when building a guitar, so how will it sound? I'll just have to finish it up and find out.

Still more braces to go but progress is progress.

[D. Churchland]

Top is braced and completed! Excited to be done with this critical step.

I decided to try something a little different with the bracing this time around and went with the thin and tall approach. As I had mentioned earlier the braces are very thin compared to my previous builds and the top is much thinner as well. However I decided to leave them a good bit taller than before and only do some light scalloping.

We'll see how she sounds, I like something that Bruce Sexauer had stated on here some time ago and that was to never build the same guitar twice. I definitely enjoy that approach as it keeps things interesting. This one will be different than my previous Grand Western build but it'll be similar enough in the right ways.

More to come!