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  #1  
Old 03-22-2018, 10:54 AM
printer2 printer2 is offline
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Default Sitka Maple 00 Guitar

I started to make a guitar for my niece's husband with Jatoba back and sides but found it cracked in lower humidity. Since he will be playing out in all kinds of places I decided to go with a laminate of maple and spruce for the back and sides.



I sort of winged it gluing the laminate together with thinned Tightbond on the bending mold. It worked (cough cough) but I will need a better method if I do another one. A little asymmetrical, rather than trash it I figure should give it some character.



Gluing on the neck block.



Spruce kerfed linings.



The maple has been lightly torrified. The sitka has some bearclaw down the middle and a flawed grain pattern/coloring. One of my tops selected from a pallet of rejects. Perfectly quartered and taps well.



Now I need to decide on the rosette.
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Old 03-22-2018, 03:20 PM
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Decided. Torrified Cherry with accents.
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Old 03-24-2018, 08:13 PM
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I guess I didn't take pictures of the bracing, tapered X brace, single lower bout back brace. Box closed up, Have to decide what to make the neck out of. Not in a hurry on it, another week with my cast on, don't think I will be carving with it on.

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Last edited by printer2; 03-25-2018 at 07:06 PM.
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Old 03-25-2018, 09:26 AM
redir redir is offline
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Looking good. I've always liked maple necks on a maple guitar. You could put some rosewood or some dark wood runners in it to jazz it up.
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Old 03-25-2018, 08:02 PM
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I did something with another guitar which I just remembered I was working on but got left by the wayside. I used ABS binding and I sanded it with, I am guessing 100 grit. It looks similar to ebony if you don't get right up close. I have to see what it looks with some finish on it. I was asked to do a burst if I could, I'll see what I can come up with when I get that far. I went through my maple and I have what seems like two different densities, one is about 10-15% lighter than the other bunch. I'll be using that stuff for the neck.

I am trying a few new things on this one. First the laminated sides and also the cutaway. Because some of you build with little arc in the tops and backs I thought I would go for it, built the top and back flat. Not concerned with it drying out, my place has been about 18-20% RH for most of the winter. We'll see what happens when it get to normal humidity. I am going to do a neck with a fretboard extension floating over the top so when the top bellies out it doesn't effect the neck. Might just shim for any changes in geometry. At least that is the theory, we will see how it fairs in half a year.

Since I can't really carve a neck until I get the half-cast off my hand I thought, I know, I'll start another guitar! You know you can't just build one. Since I haven't done any in the Rosewood end of things I thought I would build one out of Black Locust. I picked up some 2nd grade stuff relatively cheap in order to mess about with. I am going to use some Lutz with it that doesn't look like much but rings nicely. I am going to see if that Sexauer character actually knows a thing or two or is just blowing smoke . I am going to try and build light, I thinned the back to 0.090", sides to 0.075" and the top I am guessing will be in the 0.100" or less range. I just thinned the stock and joined them this evening. No real plan other than build the same size as the maple and see what gives at the end.

The top joined and the back getting joined, the sides in the back.

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Old 03-28-2018, 07:54 PM
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I wanted to bend the sides on my hot pipe again for this one but my hand in a chunk of plaster was making it difficult. So I did a preliminary bend where I could clamp the side down in the form with a heat blanket and just give it a shot of heat and let it cool off to set the shape. I did not bother with a metal slat between the wood and the heat blanket, It won't be long, right? Well seems I charred the pattern of the heating element into the wood. Should just sand right out but something to note, use slat next time.

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Old 03-29-2018, 09:18 PM
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Got the sides together, tomorrow start on the back and top.

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Old 03-31-2018, 08:06 AM
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Things have been going too smooth. Times for a couple of lessons in building. I carved the sides down to what I thought was the right depth and put the linings on. Once everything was glued together and solid I sanded the linings flat, this is when I noticed I had a low spot in the lower bout. I debated leaving it and the back having a sight arc, might not even be noticeable. What the heck, I have the opportunity of replacing the lining in the area and extend it down to where it should be. The binding will fill in the gap. So I tried getting the lining off with a chisel, bad idea.

This is the fixed picture, I didn't think to take a before shot. The wood goes from rift sawn on one side to flat sawn, the flat sawn portion had a few knots. I was pretty good at getting the sides bent with the knots but the stress of chiseling off the binding split the side lengthwise and the knot took some wood with it. In hindsight I should have used a router to get most of the binding off. Should have just ran with it the way it was with a slight dip but I wanted it flat to see what would happen once the guitar gets into normal humidity. Anyway, spread apart the cracks and flooded it with Tightbond, ran a length of masking tap over the area to keep the fibers in their place and clamped it tight. It actually worked well.



Almost braced the top and forgot about the rosette. Sometimes you just have one of those kinds of days. Sanded thin some cherry for the rosette and cut a ring from it. I used some ABS binding split in two to sandwich the cherry, some plastic purfling strips to highlight the rings.



Routed a little too deep for the ring, I have a crappy router which is hard to adjust, I made up some shims to bring up the level. The shim was a little thick at 0.040" where I needed 0.030" but I can just scrape the rosette flat. I practiced getting all the pieces in position and then went for it. Could use three hands as they were not cooperating, I decided to give a shot of CA as I get the purfling in. This is where things went wrong. The CA wicked under the cherry and glued it down a little too close to the bottom and I could not get the white purfling in. I fought with it and tried cutting a slot with an exacto knife to get the purfling in.



I got part of the purfling in, hope I got enough.



Nope, not enough to hold it in when I scraped the rosette flat.



No cigar this time. So I have a choice of scraping the top (I can use it for some testing experiments I want to do this summer. Routing out the rosette and doing it over, cut out a little channel to insert the purfling, say what the heck the wood is not the best the guitar can be a beater. Learning outcomes, I should have cut a thinner filler piece, got more of the strips in position before wicking in the CA. Or better yet only rout as deep into the top for the thickness of material I have. Hopefully today will go better.
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Old 04-01-2018, 08:08 PM
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So I need to put an under saddle pickup in the maple body. Anybody have some wisdom on them? Should I make the bridge a little taller to make up for the space taken up by the transducer?


Can't wait for Wednesday, getting this cast off. IT IS DRIVING ME NUTS!!!!
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Old 04-02-2018, 06:29 PM
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I guess no love for UST's.

I should have taken a picture of the top of my gobar deck. All these rods concentrated in one small space, one slip and they all go flying.



I was hoping to get the box closed by today, might be a while yet now. I have some real world duties to take care of and it might take a week to get back to woodworking. As far as I got.

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Old 04-03-2018, 07:54 PM
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I used to glue the reinforcing strips (not that they reinforce anything, more to limit the spread of a crack) with clamps through the unglued top or bottom with the clamps and to give some clamping pressure at the other end I would have sticks across the body pushing on the, little sticks. I want to make a bunch of clamps to do these, I went half way today by using some wedges I use to glue the tops and back together and a sort of C wooden clip. Looks awkward but wasn't too bad. This summer I am going to knock off building guitars and build some tooling to help build with.



I did sort of a Martin A brace tying the X brace, cross brace and neck block together. I hope the guitar can resonate after that. It might have been easier for me to figure it all out before getting to this point, more like a last minute addition.



And another thing I will build this summer, Cam clamps. I had enough of the black and orange clamps but they end up falling apart on me. I know I am hard on tools but darn it!



So much for me not working on the guitar today.
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Old 04-04-2018, 06:47 PM
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No more bandage and cast, a shower was never so sweet. The surgery went well, the hand has some movement issues but given that the pain is mostly gone I can work on it. This time I really mean it when I said I have some other things to take care of. Next is binding and a couple of necks for these two. They have a different tap tone compared to each other. The maple has lower frequency resonances. The 2"x4" guitar I made is even lower. Really interested to hear how they sound.

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Old 04-06-2018, 02:46 PM
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Glad you’re out of your cast printer. Amazing what you were able to do with your hand in a cast. Guitars are looking good.
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Old 04-06-2018, 09:06 PM
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My fingers were free, it was just the fact that I had this big ball of stuff around my hand and it sometimes got in the way. Things took longer, you rethought how to do some operations. The stupid rosette was in part due to the hand issues. I needed two good hands to set up the router, it is a really bad design. Then afterward I thought about the shim I put in and it being too high. I should have just used the router to take it down some after it was glued in. Another lesson I learned the hard way. I may fix the rosette yet, otherwise the box is not that bad. I still have some issues with certain movements, physio next week, we'll see what they have to say.
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Old 04-09-2018, 01:09 PM
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We were talking about rosewood substitutes in another thread and fuming Black Locus with ammonia came up. I only managed to get some general purpose cleaner with about 5% or less concentration and just thought I would have to let the reaction go longer to get a change. It seems to work better than I thought it would, a few hours later.



I am going to have to clean up the sides and find me a big plastic bag to put it in.
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