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  #1  
Old 05-27-2022, 10:33 PM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Default Student Build - OM cutaway - Cedar/Tassie Blackwood/Queensland Maple/IRW/Dyed Burl

Hi all - I'm a frequent lurker but now have a great reason to post - NGD !!

I was well aware that building my own guitar would be lot more expensive than just buying a pre-made one, and no guarantee that it would be any better, but absolutely wanted the satisfaction of going through this process knowing that i picked everything on the guitar and could customise EVERYTHING to an extent. My GAS was for a medium fingerpicker with cutaway - so chose to build a 12-fret OM.

In particular I will discuss in this thread one of two student-building options used in the Australian Guitar Making School hosted in Sydney by Steve Toscano. Steve not only does the weekly class model (I'm building a classical in one of those) but also runs two intensive workshops a year, with 5-6 students at the same time. Because this is for multiple students with variable skills (and all of us fighting for the same 1 piece of equipment at the same time), it's run over 3 weeks to allow for waiting time and the few stuff-ups that occur (broken sides in 1 case, bridge drilled incorrectly in my case).

Steve's workshop generally only has one of each piece of equipment. In our weekly classes we are all at different build stages so not a major issue but quite a bit trickier in a 3-week course. The machine that probably slowed us down the most was the thinknesser. Making guitars requires nearly all of the timber pieces to go through the thicknesser - so those of us that had a rough idea of what we were doing had to try and get as many pieces as possibly through the machine early.

In the January course this year we ended up with 5 students (sixth didn't want to risk covid) and all of us doing different guitars - myself doing an 12-fret OM cutaway, and the other four were a 14-fret OM cutaway, 14-fret OM, classical, flamenco. Most of the guitars were done in different timbers and bindings so bending was unique for each guitar. My guitar was also unique in using a cedar top, which i picked for a fingerstyle focus. Given that we had 5 very different guitars that certainly meant a tricky headspace for our instructor Steve Toscano - keeping track of 5 builds simultaneously with different thicknesses and risks for each guitar. This is slower than one-on-one but certainly a more fun environment, and possibly better to learn in as we could see 5 different builds at the same time, each with unique issues to solve.

I had a headstart in December to make the bones of the rosette - just in case I was slow - but turned out to be fairly quick.



I also had picked my Tassie Blackwood in December when the shipment came in. Originally my plan was to go walnut but the Blackwood allured me The only shortcut in this course was Steve gluing the tops in advance as that would have stuffed around our first day waiting for tops to dry. All other work was done by us - all cutting / machining / bending / etc.

Day 1
I had already selected my main timbers so was able to start work straight away. 3 of the other students spent some time going through the timber stash to pick what they wanted. My cedar was quite a light-coloured piece which ended up a light honey colour under finish.




So given that the top was already glued, the first task was to route the top for the rosette. In my case the rosette was made up of random triangles cut out of a dyed burl i found online (normally used for pen blanks). I had tested the burl with alcohol to get a feel for final colouring and was delighted with how it looked. The burl was then finished with black fibre on the outside and inside of the circle. The extra routing was a rescuable mistake by me (measure twice, cut once)



The neck pieces were then cut from a Queensland Maple board and headstock piece glued on. The individual blocks for the heel were also glued together.



For this guitar I chose to use the falcate bracing method - which was used on all 3 of the steel strings. I cut the main bracing pieces and bent/laminated them to set overnight.



Finally I selected a rosewood fretboard and did an initial thicknessing - and selected a blank for my bridge.



That ended my first day of standing for over 8 hours which was certainly tiring. Overall I was impressed with how much we were able to cover and excited to get back the next day.
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  #2  
Old 05-27-2022, 11:28 PM
Dogma Dogma is offline
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Beautiful wood combination! They look great together.
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Old 05-28-2022, 02:28 AM
Tricky Fish Tricky Fish is offline
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I had the pleasure of building a guitar with great luthier and found the experience wonderful.

Your guitar looks great; nice rosette.

Following this thread.
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Old 05-28-2022, 08:29 PM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Thanks for the comments guys So onto...

Day 2

One of the key limitations in Steve's workshop for this type of class as that he only has 1 mould for each guitar type - so cannot do a mould-based build. Instead the build method is Solera based, building from the top down. The advantage of the Solera is that it is only needed for a few hours while gluing bits together - but even then we still had to to some juggling. The other issue is that Steve only has 2 go-bar decks which forced us to do some bits in a different order.

A decent chunk of this day was focussed on getting the soundboard sorted, planing down to 3.5mm (3 at the edges). The cedar needed to be thicker than the normal spruce tops.



I then focused on trimming the falcate laminations in half to make up the full set. At this stage the height is just random as they get planed down to the right height when shaped. I also cut out a bridge plate from spruce



At this point I had started work on my bridge (out of EIR) and had the markings all perfect.



As it turned, due to a lack of care on my part, my hole drilling wasn't quite so perfect and the holes weren't spaced correctly. This bridge ultimately got scrapped and replaced. Luckily second time I knew what I was doing and built a finished bridge quite quickly.

The thicknesser was now available so I jumped in to reduce my side thicknesses down to 2.2mm (with some extra shaving done for the tight bend areas.



... and then hand bent on the iron for the cutaway shape. I then parked them in the moulds while they were still drying...



Even though Tasmanian Blackwood bends fairly well, the darker areas did tend to break out a little on the tightest bends so I had to superglue a couple of small areas.

The final items today were then cutting out the last of the top braces and gluing in the bridge plate on the sound board while the go-bar deck was available.



One of the key differences in Steve's method varied from Trevor Gore's process as that it only uses Carbon Fibre on the top of the braces, so I didn't need to route a channel underneath each brace
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Old 05-29-2022, 08:40 PM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Day 3

First for today was to clean up the top braces so that they fit around the bridge plate, then I superglued up the damaged bits in my sides - the bits that broke out were all on the inside other than 1 and ended up being invisible once fixed.



The neck/body build method Steve uses is a hybrid of Trevor Gore's method and traditional. Whilst the end result is a glued neck to body, at the early stages it's a bolt-on neck with a mortice/tenon for the join. This allows us students to treat the box and neck as separate objects for most of the build, which simplifies shaping and sanding. The final join is two bolts into a brass bar, and glue under the fretboard. At this stage I had cut out and veneered my inner block and the basic tenon on the neck. Two BIG learnings for me here were to make sure that everything in this area is ABSOLUTELY square and also to measure with a micrometer rather than a ruler. I was slightly out of square for the fit between block and neck and also had an undersized tenon. I ultimately needed to veneer my tenon and add a veneer piece on one side to re-square the fit.



I then rebaked my sides to get the final shape right for kerfing. This was lots of fun for everyone as our high wattage blanket had died. Trying to get the right temperature out of the low wattage unit was hard.



While that was baking I started the serious work on my fretboard - going for 46mm (1.13/16) at the nut and 56mm at 12th fret. I'm glad I picked this spacing as it's turned out to be awesome for fingerpicking. I then cut slots using the trusty Stewmac device. (I also did my classical one at the same time - so we actually had 6 fretboards getting cut which really chewed through our fret saws)



I then glued in my top braces...



...and my reverse kerfing in mahogony. I did add more clamps as soon as i could grab them.



Final item for the day was shooting and gluing my back. Backstrip was a double height EIR strip from my classical guitar sides, surrounded by B/W veneer.



So... I was travelling well, even with standing 8 hours a day. Steve was keeping track in the background of how we were all going so that he could let anyone know if they were falling behind - but all of were roughly at the same stage. I was ahead on some items but had a few extra custom bits and later stuff-ups to slow me down.
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Old 05-30-2022, 12:44 AM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Day 4 - just putting this in a day early as I'm out tomorrow

Mix of lots of smallish tasks today - luthiery has lots of that !

Cut out and shaped my side braces - 6*6mm used in this school - probably a bit thicker than really needed. Just worth getting this task out of the way so they are ready.

I trimmed the back so that I can use the excess wood for my headstock. The back turned out well although I had the veneers slip around a little when I clamped them together and had to do some tiny repairs at then of the board (most of which got cut off when I did the final trim).



I then sanded down the top braces to their appropriate heights and shaped. Mostly following a formula for these braces. It would be interesting to see whether there's value in tap testing. I then cut slots into my upper transverse brace for the top braces - lot's of different angles to cut - then glued in place after I did the Carbon Fibre



I then did a little extra shaping for the neck joint to straighten it up and cut out the square hole for the brass bar using the fancy square hole cutter!



The brass bar (which gets threaded) is used instead of threaded inserts that some other builders use. I think in the end there's probably not much difference.

I then tackled the tricky task of putting CF and epoxy on my top braces (lots of sticky gloves from straightening the fibres) - i did miss the bottom brace but not an issue in the end - I still had plenty of stiffness.



I thought my CF was neat enough given you won't see it but the other two guys doing SS guitars did a much neater job
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Old 05-31-2022, 05:50 PM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Day 5

Today was mostly about shaping the heel of the neck. In Steve's workshop this is done largely with chisels and rasps. The initial shaping was done largely by eye without any real consideration for how it mounted to the body. If I do this again I would draw up the body shape and neck to get a better feel in advance of the shape needed - cut once rather than doing more later. I also ended up with a bit more bulk around the heel than needed so would spend time looking more at other guitars for guidance.



After getting this out of the way I glued my headstock veneer pieces together. Not obvious from any photos but I glued two halves of the Blackwood with a 2cm strip of the burl plus B/W veneer to frame the burl. I had to do 2 lengths of the burl with a join - maybe not thought through perfectly but worked in the end.



I finished this day with cutting out my back braces and gluing into place.



As it was a Friday we also took the time to have pizzas for lunch together so a little less guitar building today.

Day 6

First part of the day was to shape my back braces to a curved pyramid and concave cuts at the ends - so now my back was out of the way.



I then thinned my headstock veneer and cleaned up as it was too thick. Got it down to 1mm as I was adding B/W veneer underneath as well - I then glued this to my headstock. If I had known about some of the toothpick or pin tricks from other luthiers I would have used them as the veneers do move around a lot under clamps.



Day 7

Finalised the detail work on my first bridge (I still hadn't realised that it wasn't usable - you can see that the holes don't work properly) - rounded it and cleaned up and slotted. Ended up at 26.3gm which was a little heavy but OK. I could have taken a little extra wood out but compromised the strength and look.



I then had to find other work for a while as Steve's time was taken up with other students - which happens on a multi-student class. Finished slotting my classical fretboard and drilling out the headstock tuner holes on the classical

Then I tackled gluing on the sides - which is what particularly needs many hands. A few students were doing sides so limited access to the right vise and also the soleras. This process of course included a lot of test fitting, particularly for the cutaway area, and trimming the sides to length. I didn't need a perfect match at the bottom as I was doing an end graft - so that simplifies the process a lot.



Day 8

In this build model the sides are straight during the build then trimmed to a taper once the sides are glued in. Steve has a plastic pattern to draw along the sides for trimming. So next stage was drawing the taper shape and trimming the sides down to that shape, along with adjusting the top of the heel and tail block areas.



Once down to size, kerfing was added all around and allowed to dry. This was then sanded level with an outwards taper given the curve of the back. I also glued in my side braces.


I then lacquered the back of the sound board to limit humidity effects.

I had some spare time at this stage and the bending iron was already hot so I bent my bindings to shape IRW/W/B.

I then picked a piece of IRW timber for my arm rest - ended up using a fretboard to get the thickness needed. This will end up getting routed underneath to end up with a join that only connects to the guitar where the sides and kerfing are - so doesn't affect the sound. It will also get curved on top.

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Old 06-02-2022, 02:35 AM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Day 9

I did a little more shaping of the arm rest while waiting to get started. Having just done an arm rest for my classical faster, I could have just waited until the arm rest was glued onto my guitar for much of the shaping work as it's quite fast.

I then moved to the large curved sanding dish which is used to give the sides the right levels to join the back. Most of my heights were OK other than the neck block and parts of my sides.



Final prep work then involved cutting slots into the sides for my back braces, trimming the marriage strip to the right length and then gluing the back on.



Once the glue had dried, I trimmed the bottom of the guitar for my burl end graft. I decided I wanted a rectangular insert rather than the simpler triangle, and laboriously sawed the required rectangle out of my guitar. Having just done a second one of these I'm still having trouble getting a super clean cut (even with tape)

My day was finished by gluing in my burl surrounded by black veneer. The method I went with to get a good fit was to cut the burl a little too large and then sand it down to size. The end result was good as long as you don't look too closely - and under finish was fine.



Day 10

I started the day by sanding my end graft down to body level. Steve then routed the sides for our binding. This is the only function he runs himself as he's better at picking the right bearing size for the router and getting the angle right for the body.

I lacquered the edges of the top to help protect the timber from the tape, and went crazy gluing in binding/purfling. This was a little trickier as I was using black and white veneer for my purfling to get the right thickness rather than preglued purfling - so gluing 3 strips in at the same time.




So the key learnings here were to get the bends smoother when bending the sides, and pulling in the binding tighter for the tight bends - as I had a few gaps, and ultimately needed extra clamping for a while to hold in place.

Day 11

I started the day by confirming the neck fitting, which I had a little off square. I had to add in a veneer to re-square, and found that my bolts were no longer a perfect fit - so had to adjust the holes and get a longer bolt for one of the bolts.



This mostly a day of finessing the guitar. At this stage I spent a lot of time on scraping/sanding and trying to patch a few gaps. I had forgotten that putty dries to a lighter colour so needed to do a bit of fiddling to get that right.

I then adjusted the truss rod routing so that it fit properly, and shaped the end of my fretboard to roughly match the top of the headstock.

Final items for the day were to put in the truss rod and glue on the fretboard.

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Old 06-04-2022, 02:28 AM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Day 12

This day was substantially about shaping the neck - done mostly with spokeshaves and sandpaper. I personally prefer the spokeshave to rasps due to a cleaner cut so less sanding.



I then got to hammer in my first 12 frets prior to a final neck fit and glue/screwing the neck into its final position




Day 13

Bit of a quiet day today sanding and cleaning up.

I had a piece of wood ready to go for my heel cap but someone had cleaned it up from my bench as rubbish I decided to pick another piece of my burl for the job and actually worked out well.

Today was when I realised the old bridge wasn't right so quickly made another one. Shame though that the spindle sander chose today to die so had to use the drill-attached hand spindle.



Day 14

I glued the new bridge on today - lot's of fiddling with adding soft bits to the bottoms of the clamps.



I then shaped up the nut and the slot for the nut which was a little unsquare.

While waiting for the bridge to dry I got on with hammering in the last frets. Only a couple of my frets ended up needing fish glue. One thing I've noted is that I need to cut the slots a little deeper at the beginning of the process as the rounding of the fretboard takes away a lot of depth.

All 5 of us then had a workshop together on dressing frets which took around half the day. I think in the end I could've rounded the fret ends a little further, but at least didn't drag the 45 degree file across the top of the frets which seems to be a common issue.



Final item for the day was gluing on my armrest after a few extra adjustments.



Day 15 - last day

Not a lot to do today as this allows the slower builders to catch up.

I did the final shaping of my arm rest first, particularly to get a smooth side finish.



I then reamed out the bridge pin holes, fitted the tuners and strung up.

I noticed that I'd left too much meat on the sides of my neck so did some more shaving/sanding to get the feel right.

I had also chipped one of my fretboard markers so quickly cut a new one out and glued in.

When then got to admire each other's guitars !! Those doing French Polish had already started their first coats. A couple guys were going with a rattle can finish which they would do later. I chose to have a finisher do a gloss finish for me, so just a sanded finish at this stage.



I did need to do a little extra sanding before giving to my finisher as he spotted some faults then needed extra cleaning for a gloss finish.

In my city - Sydney - we've had extraordinary rainfall this year and regular humidity above 90%, so impossible to spray finishes unless in a climate controlled booth - which my finisher doesn't have. So, I had to wait since the end of January for my finish :-(

Here was the guitar side/back after finishing but prior to polishing...



And then last week my guitar came home (minus my purchased case - Hiscox are still busily making them this week)





No sound clips yet but loving the very sweet sound of this instrument. It's definitely better suited to fingerstyle than my Maton dreadnaught and quite a bit louder with fingers.

So would I build another one? Apart from the classical that I'm building weekly at the moment, I could see myself maybe doing a GA down the track but for now I'm very happy with my guitars.
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Old 06-06-2022, 04:37 PM
Nemoman Nemoman is offline
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Looks like a beautiful guitar, Paul--you did an amazing job on it!

As someone that has done a student guitar build myself, I really appreciate all the time and effort you put in to create this instrument.

Kudos and congrats--may you enjoy a lifetime of music with your new guitar.
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Old 06-06-2022, 04:51 PM
Dogma Dogma is offline
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Agree! Looks really nice. It's interesting, too, to see the falcate (sp?) bracing system up close and personal. We don't see that as frequently in the build threads here. I appreciate your ability to address mistakes and whip out a new whatever needs to be done, and in good spirit (or so it seems ; ) )
Thanks for sharing your experience.
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Old 06-07-2022, 05:46 AM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nemoman View Post
Looks like a beautiful guitar, Paul--you did an amazing job on it!

As someone that has done a student guitar build myself, I really appreciate all the time and effort you put in to create this instrument.

Kudos and congrats--may you enjoy a lifetime of music with your new guitar.
Thanks - as I note earlier it sounds really good in my study so will encourage me to play more !!
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Old 06-07-2022, 05:50 AM
paulvdb paulvdb is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dogma View Post
Agree! Looks really nice. It's interesting, too, to see the falcate (sp?) bracing system up close and personal. We don't see that as frequently in the build threads here. I appreciate your ability to address mistakes and whip out a new whatever needs to be done, and in good spirit (or so it seems ; ) )
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thanks. I was really lucky that I was ahead of plan each time I made a mistake so had enough time to either correct the mistake or re-make. Nearly everything on a guitar is fixable during the build apart from the neck shape (which I've gone a little thin on for my classical guitar).

Down the track I wouldn't mind playing further with the falcate bracing but on a classical.
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Old 06-08-2022, 09:21 AM
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Guitars44me Guitars44me is offline
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Thanks for sharing all this with us all!

The woods are beautiful! And the dyed burl bits are very appealing too.

Your choice of a 12 fret cut with cedar top is bound to please you. My faves tend to have these features too.

Enjoy it in fine health and spirits

Paul
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Old 06-09-2022, 06:07 AM
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Great build, and great thread to share it with us! I agree with dogma, the falcate bracing was particularly interesting.

I think you have a floating armrest. Did you finish it separately then attach it?
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