Engelmann/Honduran Mahogany Dread

[Mary]

Off the record ... I see the grill. What's for supper tonight?

[Jim.S]

Excuse my cat in your thread please Bob, looks like you have the spray gun sorted out. About the Tom catting Mary, he wasn't a Christmas cat (no nuts). It turns out my lovely neighbour had decided to use a cat trap (without telling anyone like he is supposed to) and as my cat was not micro chipped he ended up at the pound. I got him back (very happy kids) but neighbourhood relationships are not looking too good.

Jim

[Mary]

Hmmm... Grilled neighbors are not so tasty.

I'm glad your kids got their favorite family member back. We have learned that family pets are definitely "the other brother."

...And now back to the guitar thread. (Sorry.)

[naccoachbob]

Mary, my wife was very active for a while with an animal rescue organization. She would bring home cats and/or dogs (mostly cats) to care for until a home could be found. She nursed very young ones that hadn't been weaned, and feed and care for any that made their way to the house. It was always "oh, these won't be here but a week or 2". We've ended up with 3 cats and a dog. I think we've made our contribution. Did I mention that cats make me sneeze?
I finally told her that the next time 4 legs walked in, 2 legs were walking out!!

[Mary]

And her first thoughts was, "Empty threat."

[naccoachbob]

Oh, noooooooooooooooo, there have been no more animals here, except when our daughter goes out of town or a couple of my wife's friends do so. I'm just trying to out-live the ones we still have.

Finally I got some time to make some progress on this thing. Work has been the busiest I've seen in 15 years here. Plus, I had to wait for the logo a very long time. Also, the thought of shaping the neck overwhelmed me at first.

I don't have any experience in doing this, so it was intimidating. But I just finally gritted it out and got it done.

First pic is the headstock after attaching it to the neck. Doing the routing was somewhat straightforward even though I thought I had goofed it up. Ebony dust has become my greatest friend. Andy DePaule emailed me a 1:1 scale of the inlay that was being sent, and recommended printing it, then super-gluing the paper to the headstock where I wanted it to go. That was probably better than trying to etch it out with an Xacto knife, but still was a bit hard to see. It worked, however, and looks pretty good.

First pic is the headstock being glued up, and the second is sanded, ready to spray tomorrow.



I had hoped for a totally black ebony head plate, but the wisping, smokey look going up the right side of this piece is catching my attention. I like it.



Here's the neck with a coat of Zpoxy pore filler, after being shaped the best that I can. I really like the wide neck heel. I capped it with some white fiber and a piece of cocobolo.



As I said, tomorrow and Monday, I'll spray the neck. Last Monday I had cataract surgery, and this Monday I'll have the 2nd eye done. I've taken the time between as a bit of vacation. My first in 13 months. While the finish sets up on the neck, I'll start sanding the body, and polishing it to be ready to fit things together.

One question for the real luthiers here. Do you recommend drilling the tuner holes before or after finishing the neck? If you do it first, do you wet sand any - and how do you protect the raw wood inside the holes?

Thanks for viewing,
Bob

[Jim.S]

The Inlay looks fine fro here Bob.

You can drill those tuner holes whenever and whichever way you want as long as you do a good job of it. I have done it both ways without any troubles. If I spray after the holes are drilled I don't bother about a little water in the hole as I wet sand but you could just brush a little of your finish in there before you spray if it worries you.

Jim

[naccoachbob]

I finally finished this one on Sunday evening. I strung it up about 8:15 that evening, and at first was a bit disappointed. No bass, no volume, and no sustain. I was expecting it to be kinda loud with some good decent bass, and of course with sustain, since I had built the top pretty thin, and the bracing on the light side. Because of the thin-ness of the top, I was uncomfortable going very far with the braces, but they were definitely lighter than on my first uitar build. Granted the nut slots were very high, the action was high. But still I thought I'd get more right off the bat.

24 hours later, after lowering the nut slots to the ball park of where they'll end, I began to enjoy the guitar. Not a lot of bass, and still not very loud. But the sustain was coming along. Today I tweaked the slots down to where they'll stay, and the bridge down pretty close. Things are getting better.
Considering I used Engelmann for the top, if I understand what I've read and heard, Engelmann is not the best spruce to use for booming bass. There's supposedly not a lot of headroom. So my top choice was not good if I wanted to play in a bluegrass band.

But I'm learning fingerstyle, and playing it, I was very satisfied with the distinctness of each note, and was hearing the fundamental well with some very nice overtones. Each bass note is distinct and not muddy at all - which is a problem on my first guitar. I found the fingerstyle sound to be pretty pleasing. So I'm hoping there's more to come as the wood ages.

If you were to build a guitar with Engelmann and Honduran Mahogany, what would you expect from it?

I wasn't going to confess this, but as it might be helpful to other new folks, I'll spit it out. I had taken pains, great pains, to make sure I measured everything 2-4 times before I did anything. I'd measure twice, walk away, come back and measure again. Recalculate if needed and measure yet again - EXCEPT for the very last measurement of where the bridge was to go. After drilling holes for the clamp, gluing it up, coming to it the next morning, I noticed the bridge looked a bit close to the sound hole. 1" to be exact. I thought back and realized I'd only measured once. Please get a good laugh out of that and learn from it. I got the bridge off by using my blanked for the sides supported on one end by the bending machine, a block of wood either side of the bridge, and a brick holding it down on the bridge. It came up remarkably easy with very little tear out at all. Of course, I had to sand down the top to feather in the new finish, and made rectangles of the 2 holes, putting in some off-cuts of the spruce in them and glued them on. Now that it's finished, they aren't noticeable unless you're pretty close. A tough lesson to learn.

I'm having a truss rod cover made, so there's not one and the rod shows in a pic or two, but other than that and some more setup type tweaking, it's a done deal. Here are some pictures of the completed project.















For me there were several firsts in this project. The neck was semi-carved, allowing me to make a wide heel and to shape the headstock like I wanted. It did have the truss rod slot cut and was fairly close to final dimension. So it gave me new work to do and to learn, but not a total scratch thing. That will come soon. This was the first time I'd bent my own sides, and that was the most exciting part. After using some orphan sides from one of the vendors, I bent these, and it went fairly easily. Next time, I'll probably do some more orphans as I'm learning how much or how little water to use to make them come out good. The rosette was somewhat inspired by luthiers here whose work I admire. To make one in segments requires some very extensive fore-thought that I learned in hindsight. All stuff to put away for next time. Lastly, this was the first time I've used an air compressor and spray gun. That was a real treat for me, and I'll use it from now on with the Emtech 6000 water based finish. I used to have a soccer player who was so afraid of making a mistake that he often just didn't do anything. I took the advice I gave him and allowed myself to make mistakes so that I could learn from them. And boy, I'm learning a lot!

Thanks for looking,

Bob

[Jim.S]

Looks good Bob, so you are getting the woodwork sorted out, next step is tone. From you description it just sound a little stiffly braced. You could measure you bridge rotation and then go in and take a bit of brace off if you are game.

Jim

[Mary]

Always a joy to see a finished project. We understand your feeling. It looks nice.