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8 string acoustic


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Well the gimbals were good this morning so I glued the top on using the go deck. Braces to follow this afternoon after a cuppa.

Fit was nice and tight with only one section at the waist needing further glue and clamp. Definitely a gluing, not a fit boo boo. At the moment the thing bongs like a drum. Feeling quite chuffed.

 

 

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Sure. It's noisy. On mine the spindle isn't true to the base, not off by much and there's no undue vibration - I've yet to tear mine apart. Did I mention it's noisy. All in all I wouldn't be without it, but this is the only one I've owned so I can't really comment on it's relative merits. Oh and it's noisy.

On reflection, for my needs I think a disc sander would have been better, but for the money, cautious thumbs up.

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Oh hell yeah. That and the added noise of an extractor. Over the noise of the machine. I've owned two and used several, from benchtop to free-standing combination sanders. By far this one is the noisiest. Even over the noise of a 4ft oscillating drum/belt sander. It sounds like an old noise-powered vacuum cleaner whose primary function is to create noise, and pick up dust as an incidental bonus.

Funny thing is, I bought it and can hate its poor aspects quite freely. I know of one shill who isn't able to say anything bad about it. :lol:

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I wouldn't know where to start with that. Let me know if you come up with anything.

I'm downing tools for the day. All the internal braces etc are in, but not trimmed. Tomorrow shall be mostly sanding and shaving, unless as originally intended, a soundport finds its way onto the top forward edge of the lower bout.

@ScottR 8 individual strings - thinking high a, low b, but as with everything else, this is up for change...

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It only seems fast because I spend a stupid amount of time pondering over what I'm going to do first, so when it comes time to make some dust, its all pretty quick.

Tap tuning, mmmm like a bounder and without reference to any form of common decency, I'm going to fit the neck first. I've always wondered why tops are voiced before attaching them to anything else, so I thought I'd see if it works with everything in situ. I also reckon a couple of cosmetic things may be easier with the neck attached first, then back. we'll see.

I took these halfway though. Firstly I nibbled out the centre portion of where the heel buts to the ribs using clumsiness, brute force, a chisel and a mallet. At an arbitrary depth I stopped and started working away at the joint with a bit of adhesive sandpaper stuck to the ribs with the feeling that this is probably cheating a bit. I'm confident that the chasm of despair a the bottom and top right edges will close up once the heels been shaped and clamping pressure is applied and for now, this'll do.

 

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Matt, you and Andy share a literary loquaciousness to your postings. If we could get you two caught up in a spirited back and forth, the rest of us could pop up some popcorn and pour a cold beer, put our feet up and enjoy an evening of fine reading.

And the build is looking quite worthy as well

SR

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Sir, I thank you.

This is what I was on about with the dowel bolts. 10mm holes sunk top and bottom just deep enough to hold the dowel in the right place and 8mm holes to receive the M6 bolts. Gives a nice bit of wiggle for any fitting indiscretions and the 'oles will be hidden by the fretboard and heel cap. Now that's done I can relax a bit and get back to shaping the heel.

 

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I'm a fair fan of threaded inserts or cross-drilled dowels to spread loads. The immense tension these arrangements can be cranked up to, and the resultant compression in the mating wood surfaces is amazingly high if you run the numbers. I designed the structure of some very spartan 6-8 seater dining tables with judicious use of M8 to M12 bolts and zero truss support otherwise. They can really engineer a well-coupled structure both mechanically and I guess "acoustically" if that's even a real thing. A lot of people seem to make it sound like it's something real of course, providing nebulous backstories and justifications that can't easily be disproven, never mind proven in the first place. That kind of thing. Still, solid and structurally-sound is always the basis upon which a good instrument is built. That won't be flapping in the breeze anytime soon.

 

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I think a lot of people would like to have you believe that this is a bit more complicated that it is. There is definitely still money in snake oil.

The gent who taught me how to build got me into these  dowel things and he thanked Ikea... Though much more forgiving, having played with this joint a bit, I think that given smaller inserts, I could have drilled accurately enough to negate the need for a bit of give. It is nice to have that bit of safety blanket though.

Here's a potatoey shot of where I landed with the heel. the bottom has been brought down to match the radius of the back. Plenty of meat yet to come off here, but I wanted to get the joint done. I'm sticking here. there are a couple of small hairline gaps toward to exteme top edges, but when cranked and glued + finished, I think it will be fine for my purposes. WP_20170326_13_39_09_Pro.thumb.jpg.dd1f9a19ae478553e3bdf046487cffce.jpg

Neck angle was the real concern. but we landed OK (able to balance a ruler) and with a quick tickle with some sandpaper will be dead flat. WP_20170326_14_57_59_Pro.thumb.jpg.ac1af66fc693a513bb7792a3bd3fd7f0.jpg

This is where impatience kicks in - I just want to get this neck glued and cranked, but I guess I'm just going to have to knuckle down a build a sled so I can route binding channels.

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That joint looks very nicely fitted to me.  I find achieving a gapless joint on components like this very challenging.

I'm interested in the aspects of this build where you are pulling away from 'convention' - an attitude after my own heart! :) 

The one I noticed in this post is that you have no locating tenon on the joint.  I don't think I've seen a simple butt joint before on a neck, but can't see why it shouldn't work fine.

One thing I found on one of my own builds using the same type of fixings was that I had to re-tighten the bolts after a few months playing.  I guess the wood continues to compress for a while, even though it was massively tight to begin with.

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Don't know about positive reinforcement, a couple of beers maybe.

Andy, the necks going to be glues and clamped with the nuts. I figured theyd need tightening down the line, but wanted to see if this arrangement would work. Given the fretboard is going ontop of the neck and a good portion of the body, I don't think they'll be anything to be concerned by - think being the word. We'll see.

So last night was a bit of a late one. Top tuned - channelling mystical tap juju. Got three differently pitched clear bongs from different sections of the board before loosing my nerve and calling it a day. This is a practice thing that I need to work on. When done with that I thought I'd cut the kerfing for the back. That turned into why not glue the back when we're here. Easy you say. Piffle. next time I'll be cutting all mitres in the kerfing before either back or top gets glued. The second piffle was that the back had move quite a bit since I last looked at. I'm afraid this was sorted with brute strength during the gluing - body sandwiched between the two radius dished and clamped the living bejesus outa. We have a box.

It worked rather nicely as we're gap free. Today was spent waiting for MOTs and trimming the xs from the top and back.

 

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Cheers Norris.

Well this ones going to be on hold while order some bindings, a fretboard and a bridge. I'm going to try rocklite ebano for this one. None more black, but more importantly slightly cheaper and a lot more sustainable. Aparently it also works nicer than ebony and glues better. We'll see.

I bluntened a chisel on the back strip this morning. I think I'll put it down at this point and practive routing binding and purfling channels.....

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I go to pieces when asked to play an acoustic. Part of the reason for getting into building them was to force me into learning a bit more. Its failed dismally.

So the wood-not-wood arrived. Looks good, well black, and sands nicely. Biggest + so far is that its square from the wrapping and uniform - not cracks/warps anywhere. With this build that needs quite a wide board, it means I can get a bit creative when it comes to laying out the board on the blank. Thumbs up so far.

Guitar wise, this is where is gets a bit fiddly and really in-nerving. I routed the binding channels and fitted the back thing. This is ebony. Hate the dust this stuff chucks out, so am sticking with scrapers. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I routed the binding channels first, fitted the ebony (nice snug fit after a couple of taps) then routed the top of the ebony 1.5mm up from the main channel to allow for the mitring of the fancy stuff. Final shaping will be with the scrapers. No dust. This is the new mantra, NO DUST.

First couple of screw ups today as well. Managed to pull the grain up on the top in a couple of places. it'll sand out, but god knows how thin this will take the top. The binding channel on the top is also a bit deep ( along the x axis)  again this'll scrap out and may even be a good thing as looking at things, it may square out the sides a bit. Every cloud..... Galling though as it wasn't on the plan.

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