#196
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Tom, I can assure you that the buffing wheel is the source of many luthier "crash and burn" incidents involving buffing through the finish (particularly on edges and radii), overheating the finish and having the piece grabbed from your hands...(ouch!)
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#197
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Gorgeous...
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Larry Pattis on Spotify and Pandora LarryPattis.com American Guitar Masters 100 Greatest Acoustic Guitarists Steel-string guitars by Rebecca Urlacher and Simon Fay Classical guitars by Anders Sterner |
#198
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Schweeet!!!!!!
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Life is like a box of chocolates .... |
#199
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Thanks Gents....
The Brazilian Rosewood belly bridge has been fabricated goes on today. This weekend it will make it on to Nick’s set up fixture which hopefully I can share pictures of.
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#200
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Yum!
What a Beauty!
Anticipation.... Getting close! Cheers Paul
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3 John Kinnaird SS 12c CUSTOMS: Big Maple/Cedar Dread Jumbo Spanish Cedar/WRC Jumbo OLD Brazilian RW/WRC R.T 2 12c sinker RW/Claro 96 422ce bought new! 96 LKSM 12 552ce 12x12 J. Stepick Bari Weissy WRC/Walnut More |
#201
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Indeed it is... BUT the weather forecast in Portland, Oregon (where Nick is located) is for ***snow***this weekend. It is one of those cities that gets overwhelmed by a bit of the white stuff, so I have a feeling the meeting of the guitar with strings may be delayed.
Aside from attaching the Brazilian Rosewood bridge, fabricating a saddle/nut and setting up the guitar, Nick also still needs to custom cast some pickguards using his neighbor and friend John Greven’s recipe. Hopefully it will produce a pleasant sound next week...
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#202
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Nick doesn’t mask off the area of the top pre-nitro that falls beneath the fretboard. He chooses to mask off the after the finishing is complete and strips the local area of nitro finish to allow for good adhesion between the underside of the Ebony fretboard and German Spruce top.
Nick prefers to use Brazilian Rosewood for his bridges and never uses Ebony. Sometimes he dyes the BRW, and I have seen a number of his guitars listed as having Ebony bridges but they are actually dyed BRW (mine will be natural). He of course chose a Brazilian Rosewood bridge blank to match the peghead veneer. The blank is sized using a thickness planer and checked for fit on the guitar top to present the saddle 0.022” above the bridge surface. The basic plan view profile is then cut using a bandsaw. The bridge has the six pin holes bored through it and countersunk so he can affix it to his saddle slot routing jig. Thinning the wings of the bridge.
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… Last edited by iim7V7IM7; 02-09-2019 at 04:42 PM. |
#203
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Stunning guitar !
Thank you for this very detailed and documented thread, I'm really enjoying it, being one of the rare (and lucky) Franklin owner in Europe |
#204
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Quote:
Luthiers, being solitary artisans tend to develop divergent approaches in the isolation of their workshops for creating their instruments over the decades they refine their craft. Their individual methods can appear odd to one another when viewed by their peers. Build threads that appear in this forum not only display the beauty of materials and artistry of guitars, but can also at times chronicle the hidden subtilty underpinning why each builders guitars have their unique sonic signatures.
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… Last edited by iim7V7IM7; 02-09-2019 at 07:35 PM. |
#205
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Very interesting that Nick only uses Brazilian rosewood for his bridges. I am assuming this is not for aesthetic purposes, since as you note he sometimes dyes the bridge black (on my Franklin the bridge is black to match the ebony fingerboard). Did he give you his reason for his preference?
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#206
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Quote:
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#207
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That makes sense, and the "formula" certainly works!
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#208
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Franklin Guitars
That's what Nick has told me.
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El McMeen elmcmeen.com elmcmeen.bandcamp.com |
#209
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Nick uses this plastic fixture to locate the bridge by referencing the from edge of his bone saddle (final intonation is handled within the saddle shaping itself). The bottom shots show him scribing the bridge perimeter into the nitro finish. The most interesting aspect of this shot are the shims he has adhered on the end of the fixture to compensate for the shrinkage of the fixture across the decades!
This sequence shows how Nick masks along the scribed lines defining the bridge perimeter and how he applies stripper to remove the nitro finish beneath the bridge. This sequence chronicles how Nick locates his bridge with pins in the saddle slot. You can also see just how thin the wings of his Brazilian Rosewood belly bridge are taken to (about 3/32”) to keep the bridge weight low. He uses Titebond Type 1 glue to adhere it to the German Spruce top. You can see his custom cawl that applies pressure to both the center and the wings. When hand making instruments sometimes a luthier will discover small defects in the finish after the guitar has come out of that process. Nick discovered some very small bubbles in the neck finish in the heel of the Honduran Mahogany neck near the heel cap. He bottomed out the area and applied a touch up to the area. As a result, the guitar will need some time before he can progress further on it. What is great to me in this shot is the depth of the color in the 50 year old mahogany without pore filler or stain to darken it.
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#210
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Nice to see you still frequent AGF... (it’s been a while since you posted)
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |