Build Thread - Christian Druery Cedar/Ancient Kauri OM

[tkoehler1]

I’ve started my first custom build with Christian Druery. I am pumped to ** try** to get all the features I’ve always wanted in one guitar.

It all started when I was looking for a guitar with an offset sound hole, reason being my pinky (which I like to rest on the sound board) kept falling into the sound hole when I was playing. I saw one of Christian’s guitars here on AGF and was intrigued by the design and the natural vibe. I contacted Christian and as we started talking the design fell into place. I wanted:

- Christian’s Kauri design - OM size
- Offset kauri leaf sound holes
- Side kauri leaf sound port
- 12 fret 24.9” scale, 1 ¾” at the nut and 2 ¼” at the saddle
- Jumbo Jescar frets
- Gotoh 510 tuners
- Arm rest
- Cutaway
- Maton’s APMic pickup

So that’s pretty well where we started. Of course the woods Christian uses are completely different from what I am used to. So Christian graciously shipped one of his guitars to me to try out, this beautiful cedar/ancient kauri 000:




What a pleasant surprise the guitar was to play. The Kauri design throws a ton of bass, but somehow it has excellent note separation and never sounds muddy. The bass does not drown out the mid-range or the trebles. As loud as the Charis SJ I had at the time. And unlike the Charis or my R Taylor – no annoying wolf notes to deal with.

After that I knew I wanted the same woods. I’ve generally preferred cedar topped guitars in the past, and the ancient kauri sounds great and looks stunning. I’m opting for the gloss finish on this!

Next post - wood pics and construction pics!

[Eclectichick]

Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing, I'm looking forward to following this build.

[tkoehler1]

Top wood – cedar. Christian always has an interesting story on where he gets his woods from, every wood but the cedar that is. Maybe it’s not exotic enough to warrant a write up on his web page! Anyway here’s the set he chose for me:



Back and sides – ancient kauri. Kauri trees that fell into a swamp and were preserved for 50,000 years. Really spectacular looking! I understand it’s similar to walnut in tone. Here’s the set for the guitar:



Quick pic of ancient kauri being harvested:



Fretboard, bridge and armrest – recycled puriri which is New Zealand Teak. I’ve asked for a matching puriri armrest to keep my arm off the sound board. Makes the guitar sound better plus avoids wear on the top of the guitar. Below is a pic of one of Christian’s guitars with an ebony armrest - from the planning stage. The puriri one will be custom carved by Christian to fit the guitar.



Neck – recycled matai from the floorboards of a farm house. Got to admit I don’t know much about this wood. The sample guitar Christian sent me had a great feel to the neck – very smooth, very fast.

All the woods for the project in a pile. Doesn't look like much right now, but it will be!

[KevinLPederson]

Looks like a really awesome guitar. I love the styling.

I got to know Laurie Williams at Healdsburg and he uses ancient Kauri.

I also like the native woods you're using in the guitar.

Kevin.

[Berf]

Crikey, that's quite the log isn't it? Looking forward to watching the progress on your build. Cheers, berf

[nickinbruns]

Mate, if you've got Christian making a guitar for you, you're in for a treat. Love his work, sense of styling and attention to detail. Oh yeah, they seem to sound pretty good too......

[michaelht1]

Congratulations on your build, that is an incredibly interesting history on the woods, looking forward to seeing this build. Thank you for sharing it.

[tkoehler1]

Thanks for all the interest and compliments!

Now on to the design phase. I wanted to get all the favorite features into one guitar. The first thing I wanted was a cutaway. Here’s Christian’s first two photoshop efforts of a cutaway:



I chose the venetian.

We also had a discussion about OM vs Small Jumbo for the body shape. I had just picked up a Charis SJ from the classifieds here at AGF and I liked the guitar a lot. I asked Christian if he could build me one, and he said yes he could. It would be a first for him so he spent some time on this mockup:



The Small Jumbo as drawn uses the dimensions of the Charis. I don’t know if it would have been built exactly like the Charis or not, we’ll never know because I chose the OM. I picked it because it was a bigger version of the 000 sample guitar I tried, so I knew what I was getting; plus Christian’s OM has a surface area that is almost equal to the small jumbo. I wasn’t going to get a bigger guitar, I would get an unknown guitar if I went the SJ route.

BACK OF THE MIND CRAZY THOUGHT – Have Christian build me a full jumbo version next time!

Another consideration was the markers along the top of the fret board. Christian’s sample guitar had paua (a species of abalone from New Zealand) position markers that were beautiful but hard to see. I came up with the idea of gold kauri leaf position markers. Here’s a rough photo shop I sent over one nite:



My photoshop skills are so-so – those gold blobs are supposed to be kauri leaves (use your imagination!).

I thought if they were bright gold like the Jescar evo frets they would look cool and show up better (blame my old eyes). Jescar is hard as a rock so Christian will use brass to crate the kauri leaves and inlay them on the top of the neck. When the brass is highly polished it will be just as bright as (and indistinguishable color-wise from) the jescar frets.

Originally I wanted to have the face of the fretboard completely free of inlays or dots, but we then started thinking about putting a few kauri leaf inlays at the 12th fret. We played out a few options with different materials until Christian had the stellar idea of inlaying a real kauri leaf! You heard me a real actual kauri leaf inlaid onto the fret board. I was pumped – what a cool way to tie the whole guitar together!

Here’s some early versions:



And here’s the final, with a slightly smaller leaf. I don’t know how he is going to do it but it will LOOK AWESOME!!!

[tkoehler1]

Last design post before we get to the construction pics. I wanted to get the Maton APMic pickup system for this guitar. I had it on a Maton guitar previously and I thought it rocked.

As of June of this year, the APMic was replaced with the new AP5Pro. It still has an undersaddle pick up and interior microphone, but it's a newer version and is supposed to be improved. So I'm going to have the new AP5Pro installed.

Here's a pic that tells you about it, and borrows some of Tommy's mojo for my guitar!

[tkoehler1]

Here she goes under construction!


Gluing the top:




Gluing the back:




Cutting out the top:




Cut but not mitered:




mitering the top:




The miter (or is it mitre??) is finished. One of the things I love about Christian's guitars is they way the box fits together. The finished product is seamless and cool looking - I don't miss the edge stuff at all (or the rosette, for that matter).




PS - If I've screwed up any where on these construction pics Christian please let me know! I think I know how these guitars go together!

[ChristianD]

Hi Tristan,

Clearly you are a much better story teller than me, not much to add here at all.
I do have a short story on the cedar for this instrument. It's one of 15 tops I milled, from two french doors I salvaged back in my joinery days. It's amazing what people throw out!!

Laurie Williams, lives about an hour up the road from me, and the huge Kauri log you see would have been unearthed somewhere in our Far North region. Unfortunately very little of this Ancient Kauri is suitable for instrument building.

Cheers,

Christian.

[tkoehler1]

Setting up the top



Planning the bracing



Braces going on



Braces rough draft



Making the kauri leaf sound holes



The braces finito



And the back

[tkoehler1]

Sanding the sides



Bending the sides



Keep bending



They're bent!

[Nonvintage]

Though I'll never be able to get a custom build. I really enjoy watching the process. Lovely guitar in the making. Clips when it's done please

[tkoehler1]

Here's some recent pics of the neck coming together.

Here's the blank neck with the truss rod slot cut. The neck is recycled matai.



Cutting the neck angle:



Cutting the tenon:



Cutting the heel:



The ears are ready:



Gluing the ears onto the head stock.



Cutting the Koru symbol into the ancient kauri head plate.

The best known and most widely used Maori art motifs are the Koru and the spiral. The Koru is basically a stalk with a bulb at one end. No one knows how it was first invented or who elaborated this versatile element of pattern.

Koru-like motifs are present in the arts of ancient Asia, notably in the areas of Southern China and South-east Asia. They abound in the tribal arts of Melanesia. The Maori Koru probably had it's origins in such regions and was carried to New Zealand by the Maori ancestors.

The word is defined in the Maori language as meaning folded, coiled, looped. A popular explanation of the Koru is that it represents the unfolding of a tree fern frond, as seen in the uncurling corm with it's rolled-up inner leaflets.

The Koru represents the unfolding of new life, renewal, hope for the future.



The Koru symbol is made from paua. The Paua shellfish is a species of abalone (Haliotis iris). Found only in the seas around New Zealand.



It's shaped and ready to go!