Phoenix Guitar Co. Archtop Building Class Starting 1-9-16

[George Leach]

Before the class started, I prepared a few things in advance...
I got a nice Sitka spruce wedge, and sanded the edges before gluing:


Here is the top, glued up and clamped, with a couple of bags of lead shot holding things down:


Then, I took one side (the student will bend the other side in class), and wetted it to prepare it for the bender:


Here is the side in the bender, clamping down the upper bout:


After bending, I'm getting the side clamped into the mold:


Lastly, I'm bandsawing the neck blank.


OK--Day one, first thing will be to prepare the cutaway side to be bent. We start by thinning the side up by the cutaway by about .020". We will take a piece of veneer, and glue it to the thinned section.


Here is the side, glued up and clamped:


Now we trace lines on the top that show where we will route material away, to prepare for carving the top:


Here, the overhead router is being set up for a cut. You can see that one cut has been made, and the next cut is being prepared:


After all the levels have been cut, I have started carving the top, using an angle grinder. I learned this method from Tom Ribbecke. After a demo of how to do it, my student, Nick, takes a hand at it.


Next, Nick uses a small curved sole plane to clean up some areas:


After some sanding, the top part is getting pretty close. Next, we start using the drill press to drill out the underside of the top:


Finally, Nick uses the angle grinder again, to hog away material on the underside of the top:


This is the end of day 1.

[George Leach]

At the start of Day 2, Nick is using a random orbital sander to remove tooling marks from the surface of the underside of the top:


While he finishes this, I finish shaping the headblock and the end block. Shown below is the end block:


After the top looks pretty good, we use the overhead pin router to cut the f-holes:


After the f-holes are cut, Nick uses some homemade sanding blocks and files to smooth the edges:


Once the top is ready, Nick uses a compass to mark the profile of the top onto one of the x-braces:



Here, Nick is using the bandsaw to cut the brace near the line marked above:


Next, he sands the saw marks from the brace:


Now, Nick is using a piece of sandpaper to sand the bottom of the brace while holding it in its position on the top to create a good fit:


Before we end the day, we glue the sides together by gluing and clamping on the end block and headblock.


This is the end of day 2

[George Leach]

At the start of day 3, the other "X" brace is marked, cut, sanded, and shaped until it fits properly. Then, Nick begins to cut the notches in the "X" using a thin kerf saw.


Once the "X" fits properly, the braces are glued to the top using cam clamps


While the glue is drying on the braces, Nick begins to profile the sides. First, we remove all the spring clamps that hold the sides against the mold, and insert a set of go-bars to hold the sides firmly against the mold. Then, Nick uses a hand plane to cut the sides down close to the proper size:


Next, Nick uses a flat sanding board to bring the sides evenly down to their proper size:


Here is a photo of the sides--all profiled, ready for kerf:


We step away from the sides for a while, and get the top braces carved:


Here is the top, with the braces carved, and ready to glue to the sides. We've measured the thickness of the top, and it is very uniform. We will mainly need to add a little recurve after the body is glued together:


Nick has glued on the kerf, and here he is again using a hand plane to plane down the highest parts. After this, he uses the flat sanding board to get the kerf level with the sides:


Here, we are gluing on the top:

End of day 3.

[George Leach]

At the start of day 4, Nick brushes a washcoat of shellac onto the underside of the top. This is commonly done on carved arch tops:


Now it's time to get the back ready. It has been pressed to shape in advance, and Nick is scraping uneven edges and glue:


Here is the back, scraped and ready.


Nick is cutting the back to within about 3/8" from the outline of the sides:


Here is the back, glued and clamped:


This is starting to look like a guitar....


Here, Nick is using a flush cut router to trim the overhanging edges:


Now, Nick sands the top, where some scratches remain after carving. We want the top edge to be smooth before cutting the binding and purling slots:


Here, Nick is cutting the slots for the binding and purfling:


Finally, we get the binding and purfling glued on:


End of day 4.

[birkenweg42]

Thanks for posting the progress report and especially the pictures, George. What an interesting thread.

[CoolerKing]

Wow! Thanks for posting such cool photos.

[George Leach]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback.

[Mr LV19E]

Looking forward to seeing the next steps.
Thanks for posting.

[George Leach]

Day 5 begins with Nick scraping back the bindings and purflings, followed by sanding away glue marks. Today will consist mainly of scraping and sanding:


Next, he uses a sharp curved scraper, and starts to shape the recurve.


Now, there's a lot of sanding- repairing the marks from the scraper, and blending the new recurve shape into the top profile. After creating the recurve, we could notice a significant difference in the tap tone of the top.


While Nick has been sanding and scraping, I cut the fret slots into a fingerboard blank, and shaped the fingerboard on the router table. We then glued a thin layer of maple onto the fingerboard edges- which will be a purfling layer. Nick is using a thin kerf saw to cut the fret slots into the purling layer.


Finally, we glue on the bindings- ebony in this case. Nick is using a special tool to scrape any glue out of the fret slots.

End of day 5.

[George Leach]

As day 6 begins, it's time to cut the dovetail into the body:


Here's a shot of the dovetail:


Now, moving to the neck, I'm cutting the truss rod slot:


After the truss rod slot is cut, the neck is put into a jig that will hold the neck at a 15 degree angle, allowing us to cut the proper headstock angle on the jointer:


Next, the neck is clamped into the jig for routing the proper shape onto the neck blank:


Nick is cutting the proper angle onto the heel, in preparation for cutting the neck dovetail:


Here is the neck, clamped into the jig we use for cutting dovetails:


Nick is now using a chisel to trim material from the flat surface around the dovetail:


After cutting the dovetail on the neck, and doing a test neck fit, we find that we have to slightly change the neck angle. Nick is pulling some sandpaper between the body and the shoulder of the neck to accomplish this:


Once the initial neck fit looks good, we get the neck ready to glue on the fingerboard. Here, I'm putting epoxy into the slots we cut for the carbon fiber rods. The tape over the fingerboard is to keep the glue job clean:


Here, I'm using a homemade jig to sand the radius onto the fingerboard:


While I'm sanding the fingerboard radius, Nick is doing more sanding of the guitar body.


Once the epoxy is dry gluing in the carbon fiber rods on the neck, we glue the "ears" onto the headstock:


Once the headstock is dry, the channel for the fingerboard extension is cut, and the extension is glued on:


Finally, at the end of a long day, we get the fingerboard glued and clamped to the neck:

End of day 6.

[George Leach]

As we begin day 7, we will glue the headstock laminate onto the bare headstock. First, Nick takes the laminate (a piece of ebony about 1/8" thick), and sands a 15 degree angle onto the edge that will come in contact with the nut.


Now, Nick is using a bandsaw to create a slot in the headstock laminate, that will fit around the truss rod:


Here, Nick is filing the edges of the slot:


After the headstock laminate is glued and clamped, Nick cleans glue squeeze out from the nut slot:


Now, Nick starts to cut his inlay. He has designed a logo, made a couple of copies, and has glued it onto a couple of pieces of mother-of-pearl and abalam.


While he's preparing the inlay, I'm getting the headstock ready. First, screwing on the headstock template into two of the tuning machine locations:


Next, bandsawing close to the template to get rid of excess material:


Now, bandsawing excess material from around the fingerboard:


It's time to use the router table to trim the excess down to the template:


After trimming the headstock and the excess around the neck to the fingerboard, here's what the neck looks like:


Now, we're sanding the headstock to its proper thickness on the belt sander:


Nick can now finish his inlay. Since he has finished cutting out his logo, he can use a dremel tool to put it into the headstock:


Here's his finished inlay--looking pretty good.


Lastly, before the end of the day, Nick starts to prepare for fitting the neck, by carving a thin "shoulder" (about 1/8" wide) onto the edges of the fingerboard extension. This will simplify the job of fitting the overhang to the top of the guitar by only having to fit the shoulder, instead of the entire width of the fingerboard.

End of day 7.

[George Leach]

Day 8 will be mainly devoted to getting the neck fit. We start by putting the neck onto the body, and marking the profile of the top onto the fingerboard extension with a compass:


Nick now uses a chisel to carve the fingerboard extension back to the new pencil line:


Here, Nick uses a chisel to carve down the dovetail to drop the neck into the dovetail slot:


He also uses a file (rasp) to carve the dovetail:


After the neck is nearly in position, Nick pulls sandpaper between the body and the fingerboard extension to make an exact fit:


I'm using the belt sander to remove some material toward the end of the fingerboard extension:


Here's what the final fit looks like on the fingerboard extension. The dovetail fit is also nice and tight:


We re-measure the neck angle (both side to side and vertically). Everything is looking good.


At this point, we start to carve the neck. Nick is starting out with a microplane, hogging material away:


After carving some material away, we start to focus on getting an area around the nut, and another around the 9th or 10th fret to fit exactly:


Nick checks his work with a template:

End of day 8.

[George Leach]

Day 9 will be mainly devoted to carving the neck. Nick starts out with a microplane, and moves to a coarse rasp, followed by a more fine rasp:


To keep the neck straight and level, Nick is using a flat board with 80 grit sandpaper on it, to sand the whole length of the neck at once. This not only sands it level, but it helps find high and low spots:


Here, Nick is using a file to smooth out the transition from the fingerboard to the headstock:


As we get ready to work on the heel, it needs to be cut down. Nick is taking a little material off the heel before we glue on the heel cap and start carving:


This is our jig to cut the heel to a pre-measured length, for gluing on the heel cap. We want the heel cap to be glued down exactly at the edge of the binding.


After gluing on the heel cap, we go over to the belt sander to hog off some material:


Nick takes a pass at using the belt sander. It's really easy to make a catastrophic mistake using a tool like this....


Now, we start to carve the heel. This is just about as hard as carving the rest of the neck:


Once the heel is done, Nick puts in his side dots:


Here's the neck--a few tooling marks to still sand out, but it looks really good:


Just before the end of the day, we have time to draw the curve of the top onto the bridge using a compass, bandsawing on the line, and sanding it down...the fit looks pretty good--we'll get the bridge fit tomorrow:

End of day 9.

[George Leach]

As we start day 10, we continue working on the bridge. Here, after drilling the holes for the bridge posts, we are using a tap to put the proper thread in the holes:


Next, we screw the bridge posts into the holes:


Now, using a Stew-Mac jig, we sand the bottom of the bridge against a piece of sandpaper taped to the top of the guitar:


To prepare the top of the bridge, we have marked the fingerboard radius (16" in our case) onto the ebony bridge piece, and sand the radius onto it:


The compensation is then sanded into the top of the bridge:


Next, the string slots are filed, using the same files we will use to file the nut:


We now sand the "wings" onto the ends of the bridge. This is to reduce weight and to add some styling to the bridge:


Here is the bridge with its "wings":


So much for the creative part of the day. It's time to get ready to spray a finish, so, sanding, sanding, sanding


Sanding, sanding, sanding


Sanding, sanding, sanding......

End of day 10.

[Taylorplayer]

I may have missed it, but how long does the class / construction typically take?