Engelmann/Hog 000... em... self build(?)

[magirus]

Thanks for sharing your progress, it's been very interesting indeed!

[CycleBob]

Originally Posted by magirus

Thanks for sharing your progress, it's been very interesting indeed!

Hey thanks magirus. It’s cool to think others might get something out of the thread.

Just trying to get myself out of bed for day 9... it’s cold this morning by Aussie standards: 6 deg C (42ish deg F).

[CycleBob]

Forgot to mention: we got the truss rod in and the fretboard glued to the neck before we called it a day last night. Should set us up for today’s work.

[CycleBob]

Day 9: Long day but made good progress. Started the morning by finishing shaping the neck. We’d already shaped the headstock and heel areas, which are a bit trickier, but the larger middle portion remained. As planned went with quite a chunky neck, commensurate with the size of my hands. The necks about 2 mm thicker than my Furch travel guitar which has a fairly generous neck itself. After thinking about the ergonomics and discussing with Phil went with more of a “C” shape than a “V” shape, it’s just a capital c.
After neck shaping and sanding we quickly made a rosewood heel cap, placed and installed the threads in the heel and drilled the corresponding holes in the block of the body. Also remembered to drill a hole through to access the truss rod (we had joked about that previously). We then drilled the holes for the tuning machines in the headstock.
In the afternoon we were into finishing. Did the neck sand: 120 - 220 - 320 and gave the body a once over with the orbital sander (which had previously been sanded). Then we made a grain fill mixture for the mahogany which included sanding ebony to collect the dust that was then mixed with ground pumice, an oxide of some kind, and shellac. As the name suggests this is chiefly to fill in the pores to get a smooth finish, but also darkens the mahogany and brings out the wood grain. It was remarkably effective. You let the mixture sit for a few minutes and then wipe away with metho.
We then managed to spray several coats of lacquer before calling an end to a longish day. Tomorrow we’ll sand back with 400 and apply more coats.

[Southern Cross]

Wow, your guitar is really looking good. I can’t wait to hear how you think it sounds.
Clifford

[CycleBob]

Originally Posted by Southern Cross

Wow, your guitar is really looking good. I can’t wait to hear how you think it sounds.

Clifford

Thanks very much Clifford. The change in the mahogany after a bit of grain fill and lacquer is pretty amazing.
I can’t wait to hear it too! The plan is to post a video or at least a sound file, but that might have to wait until I get back home.

[CycleBob]

Day 10: Finished the finish! after a couple more iterations of sanding and lacquering.
The color and grain really came through. The close up picture was taken after the first sand.

While waiting for the lacquer to dry we made the rosewood bridge... well we made 9. I chose bridge number 7 (ha ha).

On the downhill slope now. We need to install the bridge, make and install the nut and saddle, install the machine heads. I’m pretty sure that’s it... then string, set up and play!

[Guizan]

Fascinating thread! She really looks beautiful... Can't wait to hear how she sounds!

[CycleBob]

Originally Posted by Guizan

Fascinating thread! She really looks beautiful... Can't wait to hear how she sounds!

Thanks Guizan. Shouldn’t be long now—we’ll need to get the bridge glued down today so it can dry over night, and she’ll be ready to string and play tomorrow all going well!

[emmsone]

Originally Posted by CycleBob

While waiting for the lacquer to dry we made the rosewood bridge... well we made 9. I chose bridge number 7 (ha ha).

you're doing nice work here.

Care to explain why you made 9 bridges? were you not happy with the other 8? or were you making mistakes? or playing with designs and thicknesses/weights?

David

[CycleBob]

Originally Posted by emmsone

you're doing nice work here.



Care to explain why you made 9 bridges? were you not happy with the other 8? or were you making mistakes? or playing with designs and thicknesses/weights?



David

Hi David. I should have explained that: we made a bunch of them only because it’s a bit of effort to set up the router jigs so seemed a bit of a waste to do just one. We also had the time yesterday in between sanding and lacquering. Having a number of shaped bridges in stock is useful for Phil on his other builds. It was kind of my community service to the workshop!

[CycleBob]

Day 11: The guitar looked great with the finish this morning. It’s obviously not a full glossy finish—I’d characterize it more as a good satin finish. I’m really happy with it, both the spruce and mahogany are looking good to my eye.
With the finish complete we spent the first part of the morning making cardboard placards to protect the body while we worked on installing the bridge and neck.
We first installed the neck. It’s pretty easy to do up the bolts and glue the fretboard onto the body. The tricky bit is carefully removing the lacquer in the gluing area. The installed neck facilitates the placement of the bridge, and similarly the time is really in the controlled removal of the lacquer in only the bridge area.
The balance of the day was spent detailing the fretboard which had been tapped up for finishing and also cutting and shaping the saddle and nut (both bone).
Tomorrow’s the final day and we’re in pretty good shape provided nothing unexpected happens. I’m pretty excited to hear the guitar for the first time.

[HOF dad]

Dang Bob - that thing looks great!
I must say after watching and reading all of this, it's something I would love to do some day.
Like you - can't wait to hear it now.

[CycleBob]

Day 12: Final day! After morning coffee We got straight onto the saddle that had been glued the evening before. We lightened and shaped it with planing and sanding. This was also to take the sharp and potentially uncomfortable edges off. Then we drilled and reamed the bridge pin holes.

With the bridge sorted we got the machine heads in. Phil realized he didn’t have any open-backed tuners which were in the original plan, but I was fine with the standard closed Schallers he had on hand.

We then started on the set up by getting the low and high e strings on and notching the nut. We adjusted and shaped the saddle and slightly notching it as well. All these processes were delicate and incremental so took longer than we thought. Perhaps stupidly, we’d agreed yesterday that there was only a morning of work left, so I failed to bring any lunch or food. This was of course, a silly decision.

The guitar finally looked complete after many days with bridge pins, tuners, and strings on.

We finally strung the rest of the strings and I sat down to play. The guitar sounded.... odd. While it was balanced from highs to lows — one of my main wishes — it didn’t sound great in many other respects.

The bass strings were strange sounding (I couldn’t quite put my finger on it) which was exacerbated by the A string buzzing badly on the first fret as well as the D from time to time. We had to knock out the nut and build up the bottom fractionally with bone dust and glue and re-sand flat. It was a clever and effective way to shim, but by this time I was dying of hunger and both Phil and I were struggling to maintain an especially light mood.

I should mention that, despite the less than amazing tone, the guitar played really very easily—action was on the low side (talking about further down the fretboard now), but that is my slight preference. I don’t strum hard. String tension seemed low even though we went for full scale and light strings as always (so it must just have been perception). Barre chords seemed ridiculously easy to fret. The big neck is just fantastic for me, and probably not so much for others. Overall, the guitar played really, really nicely.

After shimming the nut we restrung, tuned and both took turns playing. In a phenomenon I’d never heard before, the sound of the guitar changed materially over the next 30 or 40 min. The change was very noticeable. It became much more coherent and articulate, less strange. I wish I had a better vocabulary for guitar tone to explain it. The 1st fret buzzing problem had been solved as well. The guitar’s not overly resonant and loud, which is fine, even preferable and specifically not the objective of the guitar. In fact I wanted something that wouldn’t drown out my singing voice (my audience may beg to differ on the point). To my ear is no jangle, sizzle, or glassiness all of which pleases me greatly.

Phil mentioned that it was pretty common for the tone to evolve rapidly in a new build, but I think was thrown a bit himself by the initial sound, probably in part by my choice of Martin Monels for strings.

Playing the guitar this evening the tone seems to continue to evolve and meets the stated objectives of balanced, warm, and clear when flat-picking or fingerpicking. I’m still not totally down with the tone when strumming, but I’ve really been amazed by how much the tone has changed in the first afternoon, so stay tuned (ha - pun).

Thanks to everyone that followed along over the last 12 days. I’ve been compiling my thoughts on this experience as a whole, which I’ll share in this thread for those that are interested or are considering doing something similar, but not tonight. Now I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine and probably go to bed early. For anyone that’s made a guitar before and especially to those that do it for a living: respect [emoji3]

[emmsone]

Something i discovered on my first acoustic build was that although I was actually pleased with my tone and character from the very first stringing up, not every guitar responds to the same string the same way, so strings you've been happy with on other guitars may not be the solution here, and vice versa. Once you've got to 20-30 hours of playing in time, if you're still not totally happy where the sound is i'd say to try a different string. I went through several different strings and types of strings before i found the ones that really suited my guitar and they weren't ones that I had previously considered. It really made a difference as the strings I ended up with complimented the guitar as opposed to others that made the guitar sound quite flat in comparison.

David