Build #3: sitka/black walnut 000

[Fathand]

Did you use distilled water? Minerals in undistilled water may cause discoloration although it could be minerals in the wood. I like tin foil to wrap, keeps more steam in, not had discoloration from it.

I prefer to bend from the waist first, as I usually see others do it, or from one end to the other, otherwise you are pulling the waist against the end clamps and stressing it but you got it done so good for you.

When deciding which end is which, I like the more interesting grain of the sides at the tail end where it is more visible than under the neck heel, matter of taste though.

I also like to precut the side profile before bending but lot's of people do it after. I find it a lot easier if the profile is available on your plan.

Good luck on your journey.

[Neil K Walk]

No, I didn't use water. I used Windex with ammonia based on suggestions from John Hall of Blues Creek Guitars. The pink stain was from dye in the butcher paper.

Also per Mr. Hall, I lower the waist to just low enough to how the side in place. Then I wait for the heat to get up to 240-250F before bending, doing the lower bout first then moving immediately to the upper bout, which has a stiffer set of springs so I am much more careful in "walking" the caul down before finally doing the waist.

FWIW these are the 4th and 5th bends I've done with this equipment. The first two (sapele and African mahogany) resulted in the waists and upper bouts buckling - but that was more because they were too thick. The next three (a piece of zebrawood and these two slats of black walnut) I thinned down to around .085" thick and just spritzed them with Windex.

PS: for my first two builds I worked with another amateur luthier and made more mistakes. Build #1 was mahogany and we bent three left sides, one of which split along the grain. Build #2 was east Indian rosewood and it bent just as easily as these last 3 did. Any nervousness I've had going into this process has all but disappeared.

Next up, trimming the excess off these slats and gluing in the neck and tail blocks. These sides are already profiled to be slightly deep for an OM/000 but I may keep the body on the deep side.

[Neil K Walk]

Sorry about the broken image links. I've been unhappy with Photobucket and more recently Flickr capping both the amount of images I can upload as well as have them host for the links. I've been taking videos but I find that having a camera on causes a distraction.

FWIW, since bending the sides I've been mapping out where the braces will go. This week I've glued in the blocks and the soundboard side of the kerfed lining on the rim assembly. The 24.9" scale was messing me up but I have measured several times and am confident on where I need to put the junction point for the X brace and the center hole for the rosette and soundhole. Today I'm going to shift focus on where to arrange the back ladder braces.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...2XHVC-0N19PB97

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...K_F0Y9c7ksIvJA

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...UV0zleRT3L1f9r

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...t-pR-0y5zb4usF

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...YpykEQlZciTZeT

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...UN1LsQtiKaTeQ2

[Fathand]

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

FWIW, since bending the sides I've been mapping out where the braces will go. This week I've glued in the blocks and the soundboard side of the kerfed lining on the rim assembly. The 24.9" scale was messing me up but I have measured several times and am confident on where I need to put the junction point for the X brace and the center hole for the rosette and soundhole. Today I'm going to shift focus on where to arrange the back ladder braces.

Martin has moved the X joint back and forth about an inch over the years and currently offers several bracing variations. A small variation wont hurt.

You can download the free Grelllier OM plans and use the bracing and soundhole layout for a 000, I have and it sounded great. Some suggest moving it 1/8" closer to the fretboard for a 000.

https://www.grellier.fr/en/downloads

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by Fathand

Martin has moved the X joint back and forth about an inch over the years and currently offers several bracing variations. A small variation wont hurt.

You can download the free Grelllier OM plans and use the bracing and soundhole layout for a 000, I have and it sounded great. Some suggest moving it 1/8" closer to the fretboard for a 000.

https://www.grellier.fr/en/downloads

Thanks. I bought plans from LMI but am just using them as a guide since I already have precut and preradiused bracing, a belly bridge and a Stewmac Saddlematic. The bracing came with a maple bridge plate that is slightly smaller than the width of the bridge but I think I found a good spot to lay everything out. The issue I was having was finding where I can put the X-brace to have the lower arms beneath where the wings of the bridge needs to go. It turns out the spot is about 1.75" from the edge of the sound hole.

[Neil K Walk]

Moving right along, I put my DIY gobar deck/radiusing workstation back together yesterday. Then, referring to the plans I bought from Stewmac I marked the centerline and where the back braces are to be located. Then, I glued on the spruce center reinforcing strip on the back place.

Finally, I went about taking a block plane to the side of the rim assembly for the back plate and taking away the excess. This is my current challenge because I don't have a radius dish but I at least have the taper in a mostly straight line. I also made a sanding stick radiused to 15' with a central mounting point which I can mount to the top of my gobar deck via a threaded rod. The trick will be to make it so that I can sand a consistent height as if it were a dish.

PS: does anybody know if Google images hosts URLs to pictures? EDIT: looks like they do.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...UqmmIVYwEsuMFE

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...pbv9prdp1FHN8G

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...Zgmnb2mMqJ3-VA

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...zDYzQ_QbVdQNvK

[Neil K Walk]

Today I'm working toward finishing the rims and bracing the back plate so that I can eventually make a "boat."

First, I went about making notches in the spruce reinforcing strip and dry fitting the braces. I don't have a radius dish but don't really need one. The braces came pre-shaped for a 15' radius to give the back a dome to help aid in projection. A radius dish would act as a caul for the glue up but fortunately I have a lot of clamps with varying depth throats and clips that do the job just as well.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...LPFHMYgAlJgPet

The rims need to share that radius as well, but first I need to work on the taper of the back of the body so that I can then glue in the kerfed lining. Again, a radius dish would come in handy but for my first couple of builds I'd already fashioned a sanding stick with a 15' radial arc on it mount on the top of my gobar deck.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...W_CHy6xM8Gf3Sg

I put a 3/4 board beneath the neck block in order to make the surface generally level. Then the trick here is to figure out where the "high spots" are on the rim and lock the height of the sanding stick so that it doesn't go up or down, then focus on the "low spots." In this case, the waist is the high spot and the end blocks are the low spots, with some variation at the sides of the bouts which I address with the block plane.

(EDIT: sorry for only the URLs to the photo pages. I tried doing an inline IMG tag and while it worked for a time, Google decided that it didn't like it and broke the link.)

[Neil K Walk]

My sanding stick worked well so yesterday I glued in the kerfed lining for the back edge of the rims.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q..._WhI2c47BO_Gbj

Then I finally did a full glue up of the back braces.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...NBR1svIbSv4EbF

Next step is to make a 60' radius sanding stick and sanding the top of the kerfed lining down on the top, then take the 15' radius sanding stick and repeat the process yet again for the back. Once that's done, it's a matter of notching the excess reinforcing strip on the back plate and notching the rims for the back braces. Then I'll be gluing on the back and "making a boat."

I'm waiting to do the top because I want to be able to clean away any glue squeeze out when I do the back plate glue up. I had to do a lot of it when I glued on the kerfed lining. I'm still learning about how much glue I need and erring on the side of excess. It's not wasteful; I'd have to pitch the bottle of Titebond in 5 months anyway.

After that. I focus on the top, starting with the rosette. The template I'm using for the top is actually the original top for this build that I thinned down too much but the routing for the rosette was perfect so I have something that I can use to dial in the circle cutter again.

[Treenewt]

Neil

Just wanted to let you know I'm getting 404 errors on your pics.

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by Treenewt

Neil

Just wanted to let you know I'm getting 404 errors on your pics.

That's disappointing. I suppose they show up for me because I'm logged into my Google account? If so, then part of me is comforted in knowing that Google is protecting potentially personal information.

The other part of me is frustrated and is of the mind that I may need to start researching blog sites (such as WordPress) who provide image hosting services as part of their service. It probably wouldn't be free, but that would likely motivate me to turn this hobby into a side hustle - and legitimize it in the eyes of some. FWIW I also post on YouTube and Instagram and have actually gotten some inquiries from some online acquaintance who I've been politely brushing off for the past few years.

[Treenewt]

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

That's disappointing. I suppose they show up for me because I'm logged into my Google account? If so, then part of me is comforted in knowing that Google is protecting potentially personal information.

The other part of me is frustrated and is of the mind that I may need to start researching blog sites (such as WordPress) who provide image hosting services as part of their service. It probably wouldn't be free, but that would likely motivate me to turn this hobby into a side hustle - and legitimize it in the eyes of some. FWIW I also post on YouTube and Instagram and have actually gotten some inquiries from some online acquaintance who I've been politely brushing off for the past few years.

Hahahah I hear ya man. Best of luck! I’m on build 3&4 right now and have the bug bad.

[Fathand]

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

That's disappointing. I suppose they show up for me because I'm logged into my Google account? If so, then part of me is comforted in knowing that Google is protecting potentially personal information.

The other part of me is frustrated and is of the mind that I may need to start researching blog sites (such as WordPress) who provide image hosting services as part of their service. It probably wouldn't be free, but that would likely motivate me to turn this hobby into a side hustle - and legitimize it in the eyes of some. FWIW I also post on YouTube and Instagram and have actually gotten some inquiries from some online acquaintance who I've been politely brushing off for the past few years.

I load mine on Flickr and sometimes I can manage to post them here and sometimes I can just post a link.

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by Treenewt

Hahahah I hear ya man. Best of luck! I’m on build 3&4 right now and have the bug bad.

Yeah, I never got into the whole buy & sell rage but now I'm crunching numbers on what I should be charging. I'm thinking the first few are going to be sold at cost plus the cost of new jigs. I have blueprints for a 00 and a dreadnought that I need to kit up for.

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by Fathand

I load mine on Flickr and sometimes I can manage to post them here and sometimes I can just post a link.

I have Flickr as well but at one point I had to delete a bunch of photos because they put a cap on my account. Now I see that I'm back to having a 1000 images allowed. Let me see if this recent upload isn't yanked too.

[Fathand]

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

I have Flickr as well but at one point I had to delete a bunch of photos because they put a cap on my account. Now I see that I'm back to having a 1000 images allowed. Let me see if this recent upload isn't yanked too.

Confirming that pic works.

If 1000 pics is not enough, you could always create multiple accounts.