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#61
01-25-2024, 02:58 AM
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My plan was/is:
Does that sound OK? 
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#62
01-25-2024, 04:33 PM
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#64
01-26-2024, 06:47 AM
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#65
01-26-2024, 11:20 AM
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  I don't think there's any problem though. I've not decided how I'll clamp the bridge when I glue it - I was thinking about making some deep throat 'G' clamps, but hadn't ruled out making a bolt-through caul. If I do, I can cope with the 4mm holes I have there currently. Thanks for the thought.
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#66
01-26-2024, 06:50 PM
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Deep throat C clamp $5.99 mine works well, I use it as well as a bolt through clamp. Larger bolts are a bit easier to tighten. The 3/16 or 5mm bolts alread have smallish wing nuts. https://www.harborfreight.com/hand-t...amp-45916.html
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#67
02-14-2024, 04:47 PM
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I am still here and slowly making progress
 A few little jobs needed to finish off the construction phase... Sanding the bottom of the bridge to match the top  Then some very careful measuring, checking, and checking again to try and set the bridge in the correct(?) place.   With a double check using string lines  Then it was squeaky bum time as I drilled the top through the outer holes in the bridge:  (^Dramatic reconstruction - I didn't try and take a photo while I was doing it!) I pressed the clamping caul (that I'd made before closing the box) under the bridge plate while drilling to try and avoid tear-out, and it seemed to work. Time will tell whether the holes are in the right place. Making the neck heel cap was one of those jobs that just took much longer than I was expecting. I found it very fiddly to try and get it to fit well against the body, but eventually I was happy, so I fitted the neck and glued the oversized cap on in-situ, followed by carefully removing the neck to stop it being stuck to the body:  Carving it to shape was OK and I was pleased with the eventual fit, but wish that the glue lines weren't quite so obvious.    I also decided to mark and drill a hole for the end pin at this stage (I will still need to ream it out). I pushed the long stick you see in the photo against the tail block as I drilled the hole to discourage tear-out.  I couldn't resist putting it all together to get an idea of how the finished item might look:   Stoked.
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#68
03-04-2024, 03:17 PM
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So to finishing...
I've used Tru-Oil previously on my Firebird and my Telecaster neck. I like it for necks, but didn't want to use it for the acoustic body. Having never used shellac for anything other than sealing knots before, I decided that I wanted to try and French Polish the body. There are many, many articles and videos about the process that I read and watched diligently, but the two most useful resources that I found were an article by Bob and Orville Milburn: https://www.guitarsint.com/article/I...ssical_Guitars And a video series on Youtube by Pablo Requena: https://youtu.be/Uf4z14Vjkxk?si=GRD5cKGtSjWxPF1m These were broadly in agreement with each other (which is something of a miracle as there are many, many different approaches!). I was intending to use epoxy for grain filling the rosewood, but after trying out both the epoxy and the shellac / pumice method on some offcuts, I decided that the epoxy process was a bit too committing, and sanding back the epoxy was too much like work as I find it clogs the paper badly. So... Three coat of thinned shellac wiped onto the body, using a new, clean cloth for each of the bindings.  After a few more coats on the bindings to protect them from staining I set to work with a cotton pad, alcohol and a small amount of pumice powder, working it into the surface to generate a wood dust slurry that stuck in the pores. (I was following the process in the Milburn article). It's a gradual process that you can take your time over and stop at any time (unlike the race against time to spread epoxy). After the first session:  I quickly learned that there is only so much that can be done in one session - there comes a point where the only thing you're doing is moving the slurry around without any actually staying in the pores. Far better to stop, let everything settle for a few hours, and then come back for another 10 minutes. When you think you're done, and you spot an open pore, it's easy to come back and spend a few minutes working that area to fill it in. Altogether a more relaxed process than epoxy. This is what it looked like with the grain filled:   The residue on the surface needs to be removed (and the bindings cleaned) before finishing. It could be sanded, but after trying that in a few areas, I changed to just wiping it off with alcohol.  As long as you don't try and do too much at once, or get the surface too wet, it works nicely. It probably leaves more of a texture on the surface than sanding would, but I'm OK with that - it's not a dining table  So then began the cycle of French Polishing. The first few sessions are without oil, then I started using just a drop of olive oil each time I charged the pad. The shine on the guitar starts to build quickly, and then all the surface flaws really start to show! I sanded the top back several times in different places to steam out small dings and scratches that had gone un-noticed on the unfinished wood. The beauty of Shellac is that you can work on these areas until they catch up with the rest of the surface and it blends in seamlessly. I also completely sanded the back as it became apparent that there was a line of grain filling residue that hadn't been completely cleaned off. I'm about half way through the 'bodying' phase of polishing and the wood in the guitar already looks superb - I don't know what it is about shellac, but it really seems to make the wood glow. No decent photos yet, but this might give you an idea: 
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#69
03-21-2024, 07:15 AM
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Right, time for an update:
I carried on the 'bodying up' phase for a total of about 10 sessions of polishing. I was aiming to do two sessions per day but sometimes I only did one session, and a few times, life got in the way and I didn't do any. As Pablo Requena says in his video at this point, the guitar looks really good, until you look at it closely. While very shiny, the surface has a texture to it which you can see when it catches the light. It's really highlighted here over the complicated grain pattern in the top.  I wet sanded the whole guitar back with 2400 grade micromesh (equivalent to about P1500 grit) using white spirit as a lubricant. Sr. Requena does the sanding dry, but the abrasive kept clogging when I tried - perhaps I needed to let the shellac harden for longer. Using white spirit as a lubricant stopped the clogging but did make it harder to gauge progress until the surface dried. Before flatting:  After:  My approach to cleaning after grain filling came back to bite me a little here: There were places where wiping back after grain filling had left depressions in the surface that were too deep to sand out. The process of flatting the surface off left a white residue in these places. This was mostly just the odd spot, but one edge of the lower bout was quite bad:  I could have gone back to pumice powder and filled these in, but didn't really feel inclined. Luckily Sr. Requena addresses this issue too: A little bit of alcohol on a finger tip rubbed over each spot is enough to re-melt the shellac dust and get rid of the white colour. This is the same area afterwards:  Then it was back to adding shellac again. After another 5 or so bodying sessions, I'm starting to think that I'm approaching the finish line.     I've got a holiday next week, so I'm thinking I might get another 2 or 3 bodying sessions in, then it can harden while I'm away, ready for 'spiriting off' when I get back. While this has been going on, the bridge has been getting the same treatment.  As mentioned previously, I'm finishing the neck with Tru-Oil. The mahogany responded beautifully to the same approach that I'd used before - sanding the oil in with progressively finer grit paper and polishing off with a coffee filter. However I simply could not get a decent finish on the rosewood headplate. No matter how much I tried, I simply couldn't get a couple of grain lines to fill - on the left hand edge of the headstock:  I abandoned the sanding approach and just kept coating it with Tru-Oil. After a dozen or more coats, I think it's pretty much there now. (I might give it a light flatting and another coat.)  While I was messing with the headplate, I managed to ding the back of the neck quite badly  It steamed out OK, but frustrating, none the less!  I'm really looking forward to putting this together.  Thank you for reading if you got this far!
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#70
04-15-2024, 02:52 PM
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When I got back from my holiday, I gave the guitar a good looking over with fresh eyes, and was still happy with the level of polish - this is what I had been using for polishing, by the way:
 The small bottle contained olive oil that I now needed to remove from the surface by 'spiriting off'. I made a new 'rubber' that could be kept free from oil. This was the same as the polishing 'rubber': Cotton wool wrapped in a threadbare cotton sheet. (I found that the worn cotton sheet worked noticeable nicer than the washed out T-shirt material that I also tried.)   This rubber is used almost dry, with a small amount of very diluted shellac (in the bottle on the left). The surface is worked in the direction of the grain, removing the oil and smoothing out any residual marks - it takes a surprising amount of pressure that tails away as the pad dries out, leaving a beautiful surface. It only needed a few sessions before I thought that I'd got it as good as I was likely to, and I put the body to one side to harden off again. The neck still had the fingerboard masked off, and when I took the masking tape off, it left a noticeable ridge in the finish (I should have taken it off sooner, I think).  I had to carefully scrape this back and gave the neck another couple of coats of Tru Oil and it all came good.  I gave the body a week to harden, and then polished and waxed it. I followed Sr. Requena's lead and used Mer car polish, but followed with Collinite wax (because I happened to have both)  I'm really pleased with the way the finish came up. There are plenty of flaws in it, but I have to go looking for them. Being shellac, all the flaws should be curable, but one needs to draw the line somewhere - you could spend forever getting it perfect but it's an instrument made to be played, not looked at, so it will inevitably pick up more marks. At the moment, I'd rate it as 'good' to 'very good'. Most of the people I've shown it to have asked if they can touch it...    The rosewood looks *really* nice under the shellac, even if I say so myself Very, pleased. Itching to find out how it sounds now. Thanks for reading. Last edited by misterg; 04-15-2024 at 03:05 PM.
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#71
04-17-2024, 04:48 AM
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Thank you so much for your detailed building report! You did all the work perfectly and it made me want to maybe build another guitar - like yours. The French polishing also looks so good that I want to do it too. I used always nitro laquer on my couple of self built guitars guitars until now. Your new guitar will definitely sound as good as it looks! Congratulation!!!
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Thanks!  Martin D28 (1973) 12-string cutaway ...finished ;-) Hoyer 12-string (1965) Yamaha FG-340 (1970) Yamaha FG-512 (ca. 1980) D.Maurer 8-string baritone (2013-2014) and 4 electric axes
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#73
04-17-2024, 03:45 PM
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On the home straight now!
Since I'd used CNC to make the bridge, it was easy to machine an inverse shape to act as a caul.  I offset the surface in CAD to allow for some cork padding  I had deliberately cut the masking tape in the bridge location slightly smaller than the bridge outline, so I positioned the bridge using the alignment holes that I'd made before finishing and carefully scribed around it with a scalpel and scraped off the narrow line of shellac.  It was interesting that you could sort of feel the bridge 'fall into place' when it was aligned correctly. After a dry fitting, it was time to swallow hard and reach for the glue. I just clamped the bridge between the two cauls using two close fitting bolts (M4) in the alignment holes.  When it had dried the bolts came out easily enough. I'd already made a saddle blank before I finished the bridge, but it was a bit of a struggle to get it to fit because some of the finish had built up inside the bridge slot and I chipped the finish on the edge of the slot trying to clear it out. I drilled the rest of the string holes and reamed them to suit the bridge pins with a home made 3° reamer. (I'd bought a reamer described as being suitable for bridge pins, but it's far too steep an angle.)   While the bridge was drying I dressed the fret ends. I will level the frets when I do a set-up on the guitar so these will need to be touched up again later on, but hopefully the bulk of the work is done. My first attempt at something like spherical fret ends.  Then it was time for a nut blank  I've always marked out the string spacing using this little graphic that came from the TDPRI forum years ago.  I'd got some Gotoh SG381 tuning machines that look nice (IMHO) but are surprisingly heavy.  I dry fitted the neck temporarily so that I could string it up and try and confirm that the neck angle was somewhere close   I did tune it up to pitch (with GREAT trepidation) - there may be a video of it below: Luckily all appeared OK (as far as I could tell with a very high nut and a flat topped saddle, anyway). Then I took the neck off again and refitted it with glue under the fingerboard extension. Gulp.   I strung it up again and spent some time getting the nut and saddle a bit closer, but it will need a full setup after it has settled down for a week or two before I can see how it plays. (Almost) Finished photos to follow... (Edit: Video fixed) Last edited by misterg; 04-17-2024 at 04:17 PM.
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#74
04-17-2024, 04:56 PM
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Grellier OM ... done!
Photo dump:
               I'm well pleased with how it looks. I'll let it settle for a week or two, then level the frets and do a set-up and see how it plays. Thanks for reading! Last edited by misterg; 04-17-2024 at 05:24 PM.
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