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#1
05-21-2015, 04:12 PM
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The Fiat Lux Pharos
Fiat Lux--let there be light!
My name is Tim Shaffer. I've always considered music to be a form of light in the darkness...it has certainly illumined my life. So when I was about to seal the box on my first guitar, and Steve Sheriff (of Edwinson Guitars), my mentor, suggested that I sign the inside of the soundboard, the words "Fiat Lux" were the first that came to mind to describe how I felt. The guitar is now done, so this thread will technically be a post-build description of the process. It's been a lot of work. I've made my share of mistakes (I learned a long time ago that I learn best from the things I don't do so well.) It's brought out a level of patience I didn't know I possessed (my wife would probably agree). But it's been great fun, even when I spent hours sanding, finishing, polishing...even when I had to build a second fretboard...even when I sanded through the KTM for the third or fourth time. There was never a time when I asked myself what I'd gotten into, never a time when I thought "I'll be glad when this is over and I'll never do it again." Steve just did a professional photo shoot, and he will post some of those pictures in the next week or so. But we'll also share pictures from the process. My overwhelming feeling, though, as I got closer and closer to completion, was likereading a good book. I wanted to keep going, but I didn't want it to be over. So I'm already making plans for my second guitar and I've been retrofitting a pretty sizable shed into my new shop. That's all for today, but I'll post more over the next few days. Tim 
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#2
05-21-2015, 04:52 PM
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Hello Tim and welcome to the AGF.
May the Fiat Lux be with you.
__________________
VintageParlorGuitars.com Fresh inventory just added, click link at left to view
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#3
05-21-2015, 06:09 PM
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Hey Tim ... welcome! Looking forward to seeing your guitar!
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David Wren
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#4
05-22-2015, 11:00 AM
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Quote:
__________________
Rodger Knox, PE 1917 Martin 0-28 1956 Gibson J-50 et al
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#5
05-22-2015, 11:27 AM
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This was quite a journey for Tim AND me. Tim just built his first guitar, which already has the quality of legend in its tone- a great success, by any metric...
And I have just launched my first lutherie student. So, I share abundantly in Tim's success! I'd call that a WIN-WIN situation- don't you agree? I apologize for the delay in posting photos. I am currently up to my neck in guitars, which I'm photographing one-by-one; I'll download the whole batch of pix into my iPhoto soon, and edit them, and clean them up, and then upload to Photobucket, and then post them here. The Memphis clock is ticking louder and faster every day, as I'm sure so many of you know. Never a dull minute, getting ready for a major guitar show... Tim is going to be attending the Memphis show too, and he's bringing his NUMBER ONE Fiat Lux- a 000-size guitar, built on my ECS Consort 000 plan. If you ask nicely, he may show it to you, and even let you try it out. Trust me, the tone will knock you back on your heels! It is a really GREAT sounding instrument. So you'd better be sitting down when you strum that first G chord! More soon... stay tuned! -Steve
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Edwinson
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#6
05-22-2015, 03:51 PM
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Good for you, Steve for nurturing a young talent into the fray. Thank you!
__________________
VintageParlorGuitars.com Fresh inventory just added, click link at left to view
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#8
05-22-2015, 05:21 PM
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Hope I'm not hijacking Tim's thread here- but I just uploaded a bunch of photos, and thought it would be appropriate to start at the finish line. Here's Tim with his first guitar, the name of which is also the title of this thread.
 Okay, now I'll turn it back over to Tim.
__________________
Edwinson
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#10
05-27-2015, 06:42 AM
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Hello Tim.....
Great job!!! I can't wait to see more pics. Steve had some really inspiring things to say about you and this maiden-voyage of your lutherie-ship. The grin on your face (in the above pic), and the stack of back/side sets that I know you've already accumulated, tell me that you intend to build many, many more guitars in the coming years. Good luck and have fun in Memphis.....I do intend on accompanying you guys next time!!! Joel Teel
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#11
05-30-2015, 05:42 AM
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The Fiat Lux Pharos
Thanks, everyobe. Sorry I have not posted more. I have been busier than a one armed paper shredder at Enron. And my Internet has been out for four days now, as lightning hit about 20 yards from the house and blew the telephone interface across the yard. It's supposed to be back up today and I will post more.
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#12
06-01-2015, 07:38 PM
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Internet is back!!
Hello, everyone. Well, after five days without Internet due to a lightning strike, I am back online. Steve has a picture of my telephone interface post-lightning strike, and will share it later.
So how did this all start? It's been a long strange trip, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere than where I am right now, getting ready to build my second guitar. I need to say up front that I am what I call a "recovering lawyer." No offense to anyone in a real program, but I like to tell people that I'm in a 12 step program for attorneys, with the first and most difficult part being admitting that I'm an attorney. Suffice it to say that, after three years of hitting the books pretty hard at the University of Michigan Law School, the practice of law simply never came close to what I thought it would be. I fumbled around for a few years (to make my wife happy and because, hey, I'd gone to law school, I had to practice law, right?). Ultimately, though, I just couldn't keep doing it. I just don't have the adversarial heart. Around the time I decided I couldn't work in the field of law anymore (and took a job with Habitat for Humanity), I had an itch to build some furniture, and signed up for one of those community ed classes. I became good friends with the guy who taught the class, and he started inviting me in a couple nights a week while he sharpened knives in the planer at the local high school, or did other maintenance. Next thing I knew, I was building furniture in all my spare time, including a queen-sized Stickley-style bed. One of my close friends said at the time "yes, Tim was just a lost soul until he learned that he loved to work with his hands." So I've been building furniture off and on for about 20 years. The other important part of the story--my lifelong love of music. I started playing in the band in 5th grade, but I was a drummer. So I never thought I could play a melody instrument. Played in bands, played all different kinds of percussion instruments, but never picked up a guitar until about 15 years ago. My early days on the guitar were a struggle, but listening to a 13 year old girl play with abandon was a kick in the butt to me and I started playing every day. Now I'm playing in a band at church (mostly mandolin), and having a high old time. A couple years ago, after one of our performances at church, a woman came up to me and said, hey, you should meet Steve Sheriff. He builds guitars. (Steve is the son of one of the long time members of our church). I thought, "wow, that sounds amazing." But I couldn't imagine working with the detail involved with a guitar. We had an arts festival at church a couple months later and there was Steve, with two or three guitars on display...and I was simply blown away. We talked for a long time and I got contact info from him. I called a couple months later and went over to his shop a couple times. I was really interested, but still in awe of what it required. But he offered to teach me everything he knew, in part because he believes that is what he is called to do, but also because he wanted to have the experience of teaching someone else. I was really busy at the time and a couple months passed before I looked in the mirror one day and said "you would really be a fool to pass up this opportunity." So I called him again and we started to map out the process. I believe we looked at tonewoods for the back and sides in October,2014, and started the process that same month. Since then, we have average between 2 and 3 days a month (I have other obligations, and so does Steve). I did a calculation and I estimate that I spent somewhere around 80 hours working on the guitar. I would estimate I did about 75% of the labor, but there were a few times when Steve said, "we only have one chance to do this, so I can do it if you want me to." Some of the time I took him up on his offer, and other times I took a big gulp and did it myself (routing the rabbets for the bindings and purflings was a big one). But I simply couldn't have come close to what I built without his guidance. And I've come out of the process knowing that I still have a lot to learn, but believing that I can do whatever I need to do to build a really fine guitar. Okay...enough rambling on. The first step was choosing my woods. We talked about getting a kit, but I really wanted to learn to build from scratch. Fortunately, Steve has quite the supply of tonewoods. We both agreed that I couldn't go wrong with Indian rosewood for the back and sides. I looked at a number of sets, and found one with really beautiful color and incredibly straight grain. I looked at a lot of soundboard, but ultimately went with Alaskan Sitka spruce, with some bearclaw. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that part of the process. My first day in the shop, we went to work on the sides, dimensioning and thicknessing the wood. I believe we bent the sides that first day, but I'm not sure...hey, I can't remember things I did yesterday!!! But we decided to do double sides...the rosewood on the outside and walnut on the inside. I agreed with Steve's advice that it would reduce the likelihood of cracking or splitting. I suspect I probably looked like a deer in the headlights that day. It was all so new and I was taking so much in. Here are the first pictures that I can find.   That's all for today. I have a lot of catching up to do after five days without Internet. I will post more tomorrow. Tim
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#14
06-02-2015, 08:26 PM
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Working on back and sound board
As I said in an earlier post, I have built furniture in the past, but it was mostly big stuff...beds, coffee tables, end tables and some other types of tables. I was usually looking at a glue joint that was at least 3/4 of an inch...that was one of the first things that gave me pause. When we were gluing the back together, I was amazed at how thin the glue joint was.
In the early stages of building the guitar, I also found that a lot of the confidence I used to have working with power tools had ebbed in the years I hadn't been building anything. I have an immense respect for table saws, band saws, routers and other power tools, and because I hadn't used them on a regular basis in a while, I was pretty tentative about using them. But as the process moved forward, I got a lot of my confidence back. Here are some pictures taken while I was working on the back. I'd never used a go-bar before...in fact, I don't think I'd ever seen one. And I was also unfamiliar with the clamping system Steve uses for the back and top...I'm not even sure what it's called (with the ropes and wedges of wood). So all of that was fascinating.   When we got to the rosette, we had an inspiration that ended up significantly affecting the final look of the guitar. Steve had a block of quilted spalted maple, and has used some of it on another guitar. The dark lines/stains of the spalting seemed to go really well with the color of the rosewood, so we cut a circular piece to form the core of the rosette, and put additional bindings on both sides. As it turned out, we would put a wedge of the maple down the back and on the tailpiece, and would laminate the front and back of the headstock with it. It's one of my favorite parts of the look of the guitar.   Another busy day here... I will post additional pictures tomorrow and then see some of you at the show. Tim
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