Progress on my third

wingman399 · #1 03-20-2010, 06:58 PM

Well I finally got to order my wood and begin the process. It's been rough this winter and the humidity is making me suffer a long time. It's the first day of spring and it was 65 degrees yesterday and snowing 6 inches today. Absolutely crazy here in Kansas right now but I did get started on my next one today.

So this one is Walnut and Redwood. I know there are a couple of them running around but I guess I will fit in well. So far I have cut out my top and inlaid my mahogany rosette, cut my fingerboard and also inlaid it. Got some pics to share with you guys and will update as progress comes along. Hopefully the weather will cooperate soon so I can get to gluing. Until then.....

This is by far THE BEST rosette I have inlaid yet. It took me a couple of guitars to get it right but I would say this one turned out beautifully.

I was really proud of this fingerboard too. I did have one small gap in one of them but the rest were almost perfect. Overall I am happy with this one and think it will look great on a walnut neck as well.

Just wanted to give you an idea of what she will look like. I'm excited.

Not the best quality top but it will work. Didn't want to waste a lot of money when I'm still working out the bugs of my process' anyway.

rlouie · #2 03-20-2010, 08:30 PM

excellent work on the fretboard wingman !!!! this one will be fun to watch !!!!!

martinedwards · #3 03-21-2010, 02:59 AM

like the understated rosette AND the neck inlay.

good so far!

dekutree64 · #4 03-25-2010, 02:12 AM

Ah, another KC builder! Don't you just love the weather here? Now in a few weeks we'll have tornadoes all over the place

Looking good on the build so far. Is that a layer of spruce laminated onto that redwood top, or just a closely fitted workboard?

I'm in the early stages of my first. Currently working on the neck. Got the truss rod in, headplate attached, and shellac'd to prevent glue from soaking in when sticking my inlay pattern to it for routing.

I've got a long way to go, but we should get together when both of our guitars are finished. Or before then just for the heck of it. Maybe hit some open mics or something

wingman399 · #5 03-25-2010, 08:17 AM

It actually is a layer of spruce from an old soundboard. I was going to try a different idea and bind my soundhole but I couldn't pull it off on this one. I just made a brace out of it and will not use the three seperate braces. It buts up against the X brace and the upper traverse brace. Good eye...

Yeah the weather is horrible for building right now. I need the humidity to go back up in my house to keep going. Just trying to get what I can done.

We should totally catch up sometime and share ideas. It's nice to finally find someone around here that builds.

wingman399 · #6 04-01-2010, 11:42 AM

Ok I've been bracing my top and I have a few questions. I need some constructive criticism. I don't have a great grasp on the whole tap tone thing so I was wondering if you guys would see anything wrong with my bracing as it is. The middle braces are scalloped and the lowest point is about 14mm. The lower bout braces are dialing in about 13mm tall and the finger braces are shorter than that, I don't know how high as I didn't measure the,. I thought that they were small enough.

My main concern is how much the top is suppossed to ring out. It does ring but the sustain is not overwhelming. Is this normal. Anyone know how many seconds it should last? I'm totally clueless at this point and wanted to ask before I glued up to my rim.

And yes before someone asks, I did use 2 different kinds of wood on my bracing. The X brace is sitka spruce and the others are engleman. I'm not trying anything fancy just working on getting my build right before I really stress about anything like that. FYI....

And just for looks I threw in a pic of my end graft. Not perfect as there are a few gaps but I think I can fill in pretty easy.

Coke_zero · #7 04-01-2010, 02:52 PM

I am no expert by a long way, but I posted a similar question to you in another forum and the answer I got was you can take more mass off the centre braces. Maybe a few more experienced builders will chime in with a lot more useful information though as I don't want to tell you anything misleading.

Try www.luthiersforum.com, a lot of great builders hang around there.

wingman399 · #8 04-08-2010, 09:52 PM

Well based on the advice of Tim McKnight I took off all my braces and started over. I have to admit it was a big ordeal for me but I got through it. I think this set of braces should be much better this time, at least I hope. Please feel free to comment.

Here is a couple of pics. One that I started with and one of the almost finished deal.

I'll post more when I finish sand a little bit more.

Kitchen Guitars · #9 04-09-2010, 04:57 AM

Tim is good at getting us newbies to cut off our braces! We are now in a club

I thought those first ones looked a touch short. Good job. Do it right.

You were talking inlay. I found some Moroccan Cedar? in the form of a 1' Pyramid statue. It was damaged and marked down to $5. I brought it home and broke it apart. It will be the Rosette in a future build. If I had bought it as hobby wood I would have paid $20+ for it!

wingman399 · #10 04-09-2010, 08:39 AM

Nice find Yamaha. That's awesome. I love finding cheap wood that you can still use. That's definitely a steal.

Yeah the major issue was that all my braces were too short because I didn't understand the importance of what they did. I ran them all short of the sides on guitar 1-2 because I was afraid of putting them into the sides. Out of all the books I read I never caught that point. Duh... ohh well at least I fixed it on this one and it's going pretty good so far. This build has been a lot cleaner and easier to do so far.