John Abbett

This thread is amazing work. It makes me want to build another Archtop. Very nice attention to detail and quality work. I can't wait to see the finished project. John

Have you tried green gardening tape? It's a non-stick, green plastic that is used to tie plants to stakes. When I do binding I use a little brown tape to hold the ends, but then wrap the binding (The entire guitar) with this tape. It's stretches tight and doesn't break. The nice thing is it doesn't pull fibres out of wood binding. It's cheap, a few bucks for a 100 ft roll and it can be used over and over, you just roll it back up. -John

Thinking it might be a bad batch.. But here is something to think about. Take a white rag, and blow your air compressor into it for a minute. See if the rag has any oil on it. Does your compressor use oil? Maybe you've blown a ring and it's putting oil into your air stream. Your process is to blow the dust off before the coats.. It wouldn't take much oil to cause a problem. -John

I've bent strips on a soldering iron. Small enough to get good tight curves. -John

Hmm, that's a tough one. Is it a two part mix? Maybe grabbed the wrong catalyst? Was it cold in the shop when you sprayed? Shouldn't cause that drastic of failure even if it were. Failure on bare wood on one? It's got to be something in the clear. Sounds like it's missing something.

Anytime. Rock - On! My next build is going to be a 335 made from black walnut. Should be pretty cool looking. Should sound similar to a maple one. I have to finish the kitchen before I can start it. John

The neck pickup I had to notch the braces a little. I took about 1/3 off of one side. If I had pre-planned it I wouldn't have had to. I would have rather narrowed the brace, instead of notching. It would have been stronger. The bridge pickup actually sits on top of the braces in my case. If you pull out the pickup you can see the braces, they went between the pickup screws. It all sorta worked out in my case. Luck. Next time I will draw it out better. -John

That's funny. I'm at work and had the volume down so I couldn't hear it. I just thought the tooling was cool. -John

This is a cool video. Some serious equipment here. -John

I have one of the 220 volt electric heaters. It has a blower which runs when it's on and the coil never gets red hot. It heats my 2 1/2 car garage in about 15 minutes. Don't know what it costs to run, but it works well. Bought it at Granger.com Tried the smaller ones, they just don't do the job. The small electrics would heat it, but it took over an hour until it was comfortable, and the tools never really warmed up. ice cold table saw, etc. -John

I found a picture of a Byrdland on the web that was square to the face of the guitar. I snagged it, converted it to outline in photoshop, and scaled it up to known dimensions. I knew the width at the widest point, and the width of the neck at the 12th fret. I scaled it up until it matched really close. Once I had that I printed it out on a large format printer. The binding jig is not my idea.. I copied it from someone (Sorry can't remember who to give credit to.).. It works really well. Cutting the slots was easy, bending the maple and black fibre binding was a realy pain. I'll never do it that way again, plastic next time. I used the bushing kit from Stu-Mac. Very nice set of 6 or 7 router bushings. I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. I think that was 13 ply binding in the end. Way too much work. Stay tuned, I'm in the middle of a room remodel, but when that's done I'm thinking about a full hollowbody carved from black walnut plates. Should be sick. -John

Ken, Thanks. It was a big project. -John

Yup, it's a jigsaw puzzle. Think of it this way, the sting has to have a clear path to the hole, so what you do it put all the strings on with the harness outside the body, and make sure that each string will have a clear path to it's destination. Imagine you have a huge opening, and you are pulling the whole thing at once and they all have to land in their hole. Once you have that outdie the body, put the whole harness inside the body in the exact same orinatation. It should lay in the body the same way it was outside, with all the strings having a clear path to their destination. Once you have that, pull each string 1/2 inch or so, so they all move forward together. You are keeping the strings from getting tangled. You should have all the pots poke through at the same time. Some use plastic tubing instead of string. It fits tight over the knob shaft, but will still go through the hole. Oh, put some masking tape over your f-hole edges, you will chip the paint with the pots. Ask me how I know.... Looks like you have quite a distance there.. Have fun! -John

I wasn't clear. I would make a full hollowbody with 1/8 inch thick front and back and 3/16 inch sides out of large black walnut boards carved out. The body would be black walnut panels carved out of solid wood. The neck would be black walnut with a ebony fretboard. It could have black hardware. Several coats of gloss nitro and it would be something to see. Not something that would show up well on stage I admit, but in person it would be pretty cool. I think it would sound like a full Mahogany guitar. The byrdland I built has a spruce top and a maple back. The maple is more dense then black walnut, the spruce much less. Black walnut and Mahogany are about the same. I have a full walnut (Not black walnut) Gretsch Hollowbody that sounds pretty good. The carved panels are about 1/8 inch thick, with spruce supports. There are some full Mahogany Acoustics that sound good. If I make the top the right thickness and support it, I think it will work. Only one way to find out - right? -John

Thanks. It was a challenge to make. Not perfect but not bad for a first try at something this complex. I have some black walnut, 2 inch thick by 18 inch x 8 ft long. Thinking about making this guitar in black walnut.. Carved 1 board Face and Back, black walnut neck and ebony fretboard... Lots of dark woods.. I'm thinking it would look pretty cool.

Still need to do binding and inlay on Pickguard. Sounds Great.

If you rub the mating pieces together quickly, build up some heat then they will produce an oil which when scraped off, and condensed can be used to bond the wood. Be sure to use the correct types of wood for this of course. The working time of the adhesive is only .004 of a second. Gotta work fast. -j

I'm still a little confused about "Church Bass". Now I know what a regular Bass is, but how is a "Church Bass" Different? Does it only play amazing grace or something? Limited to 70 BPM? Not allow slapback? Sorry, I crack myself up.

Have you tried thicker strings? Switching from 8's to 11's will thicken your tone considerably. Note: If you switch you will need to re-set up your guitar.. -J

It's nice to know I'm not alone.. Sometimes I feel like the guys on the board come up with these perfect guitars, what you don't see is all the re-do's and pain and anguish. My guitars come out nice, but I have to work hard to get them that way. I'm finishing one now that I've stripped twice because I didn't like the way the burst came out. I was really getting bummed about it until I read this thread.. My last attempt at finishing this latest guitar, the paint can ran out while doing the shading on the sides and threw droplets all over the sides instead of nice fade. I knew better, didn't want to go to the store for another can when all I needed was one little bit.. Ugh. I think half of my problem is that I rush things. With life moving by so fast, kids, work, responsibiliteis I get an hour here and an hour there. When I get in there I rush to get as much done as I can. That's always a bad Idea. I need to put a neon sign over the door saying SLOW DOWN STUPID! Hmm.. SDS.. Catchy. -John

1/16 thinner.. That's custom. Charge Extra. -john

It's getting a tobacco burst. One layer of yellow/golden transtint dye, with a little black sanded back then yellow/golden. Then Shelac to seal it up. Then Nitro brown, Amber, then a few coats of Nitro. It will be burst on the back, front, sides and back of the neck. Just like the picture that started this thread. Neat trick. I messed up the front burst.. Heavy handed and got a run. I grabbed a rag and Lacquer thinner and took it right off becaue the lacquer thinner doesn't do anything to the shelac coat. I didn't have to sand back to wood, just took off the color and lightly sanded the blush off. It's a great do-over. Plus, the shelac makes the curly maple really pop. -John

I've got one for ya. I made a panel jig for the table saw, the cabnet panels sit on end and run with a sled to give the edges a nice angle for inset panels. I cut a notch in the top and slipped a clamp in the notch holding the panel to the jig. I ran about 20 of the doors through, and all of a sudden BAM! The metal clamp popped loose because it was worn and dropped into the blade. It removed the carbide from the blade, stopped the 3 HP saw cold and deposited the carbide tips in my stomach. After I turned off the saw, I had to get pliers and pull the carbide tips out. They were about 1/4 inch in the meaty (Fat) part. I had 8 little round holes in a smily face on my stomach for a few days. I think I was lucky. Saw was ok, just needed a new blade. Clamp was almost cut in 1/2.

All, The below picture is what I'm going for for finish. I've used natural maple binding, If I get stain on it, it will not come out easily. I've been thinking about it, and have a solution, I want to run it by the group and make sure I'm not missing something. With a rag. Not Sprayed.. 1. Mask the F-Hole Binding 2. Put the yellow on the middle, not all the way to the edge binding. 3. Sand back the curly maple parts to highlight. 4. Apply yellow for the finished color and depth again not all the way to the edge binding. 5. Apply the transition color, which is the light brown/red fade, not all the way to the binding. 6. Mask off the ebony part of the fingerboard 7. Spray a light coat of Nitro for a sealer on the whole guitar including the binding. 8. Let sit for a few days so I can mask over the lacquer. 9. Mask the binding. 10. Mask the center of the guitar with a egg shapped paper, just to catch drips. 11. Add my dark walnut/black to nitro and spray the edges (Toner/Shader) 12. Remove the binding mask and clean up any binding problems (Sealed up, it should clean up at this point). 13. Spray the rest of the nitro coats, let dry a while, level sand, buff, etc. This should keep my edge binding crisp, and if there are problems it should allow me to fix them without having stain on maple binding. The only tedious part will be the F-Holes. I was thinking I could take an artists brush and some masking and give them a vey light coat of nitro to seal them up. That may help a little with the bleed through. This should give me a highlighted, hand stained look in the middle, fade to dark, and the dark is opaque shader suspended in the lacquer. Any further suggestions?

I bought a really great hunk of curly maple. It was thick enough to bookmatch for a hollowbody, 1 inch full bookmatched, no blemishes. Glued it up, plunked my template on it roughed it out, and started carving. 2 hours later I was feeling pretty proud of the progress, it was starting to be a hollow plate. So I went to play a little air guitar, and oh crap... the template was flipped around, I carved a top. Ooops.. It will make a nice top someday, if I can get it to work. It's on the wall telling me to double check my template orientations before I carve. -john