cooltouch

Hey Chris, I'm new to this forum, but not new to building and I found I could really relate to a lot of your difficulties -- and your perseverance in overcoming them. I'm the same way -- I don't like giving up either. But boy do I sure hate making mistakes. I've found that often it takes an inordinate amount of time to fix a simple mistake, so it really has kept me on my toes to try and avoid them in the first place. I've build "only" acoustics so far and I too would like to build a Les Paul type of solid body electric. Seeing you scratch build a Paul as your first guitar has pushed me in that direction, rather than buying a kit of precut woods. I think you've done an outstanding job and any visible mistakes just add character to the finished product. Plus, they act as constant reminders what not to do on one's next build. I plan to observe your next build closely and pick up as many pointers as I can. Again, congrats on a job well done.

Never mind that above reply. The edit window expired before I could fix it. The above is not my 6th build, it's my 7th. Here is the post as I intended, in its entirety: This is my 7th classical build. Euro spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides. I modeled it very closely after a 1941 Hauser, for which I have plans, and the top thickness of Andres Segovia's famous 1939 Hauser. Hermann Hauser typically used old growth European spruce and Brazilian rosewood for his guitar builds. There isn't much old growth Euro spruce left and Brazilian rosewood is largely unobtainium, so what I did was I used the nicest Euro spruce top I could find and the best Indian rosewood back and sides I could also find, plus a premium grade piece of Honduran mahogany for the neck. Not exact duplicates of the woods Hauser used, but the closest I could come up with. My fourth build, and my only steel string acoustic so far. I built it in 2004 to my own specs. I play classical guitar quite a bit, and I like the wide neck your typical classical has. So when I was in the planning stages with this guitar, I decided to go with a 1-7/8" nut width. Quite wide by steel-string acoustic standards. A bit narrow for a classical, but a good compromise, I thought, for a fingerstyle steel string acoustic. In a nod to my classical roots, I elected to go with an ebony fingerboard with no inlays, although there are side dot markers. Materials include a bearclaw sitka top, claro walnut back and sides, and a Honduran mahogany neck. Bearclaw is a really stiff type of sitka. After I built this guitar, I was rather disappointed. It sounded okay but didn't have much volume or projection. Years went by and my opinion didn't change much. And then a couple years ago, I began to notice a change. Its sound had become much fuller, it was more responsive, and its volume had increased by a quite noticeable amount. And it continues to improve in sound. Now, here it is, almoust 12 years after I built it, and it's one of the best steel strings I have ever played.

Apparently there's an "edit window" here that expires rather quickly? I thought I'd add some photos of a couple of my builds, but they're gonna have to go into this new post. This is my 6th classical build. Sitka spruce top and cocobolo back and sides, mahogany neck.

I just found out about this place. I had a look around and liked what I saw, so I decided to join. My first post. I've been building guitars since 2004. My specialty is classicals, although I've built one steel-string acoustic for personal use. Most recently I "assembled" a baritone Telecaster, using a Warmoth 24-fret baritone neck and a Squier Tele body. I wouldn't really call that process building, since all I did was bolt components together, then install tuners and a couple of string trees. Still, it came out well, and I'm very happy with the results. I got started in the building process in a couple of ways. I bought and read Cumpiano and Natelson's Guitarmaking, which has pretty much become the bible of the acoustic guitar making community. It's a great reference for both classical and steel-string building. I also found an old copy of Irving Sloane's Classical Guitar Constructtion, and read it from cover to cover. And then I spent an intensive 10 days in Ft. Bragg, California, with Brian Burns, studying how he went about building classical guitars. As it turned out, I found Burns' building process to be highly idiosyncratic and ended up not using his techniques. I did learn from him how to put a scary sharp edge onto plane irons and chisels, though. So I ended up applying what I'd learned from books and from hanging out in a couple of internet-based lutherie forums to my builds. It wasn't too long before I'd evolved my own building style, which I've been using pretty much ever since. In recent years, I haven't been very active. I've been battling some health issues, but I think I've pretty much got them under control now. But my biggest problem is I've lost my shop. I used to have a small shop attached to the back of the garage in the house we used to live, but we moved recently and this new house has no outbuildings or any place inside that I can convert to shop space. I'm planning to discuss building a shop attached to the back of our detached garage with the homeowners' association here, but I have no idea how that will go. In the mean-time it would be great if I could find some sort of woodworking co-op in my area, but as near as I've been able to determine, none such exists. I thought I'd share some photos with the group. They're various shots of builds in progress. Some component woods, already partially fabricated. A top, just after I've finished carving the braces. This bracing pattern is my own design. The second image shows the soundhole donut in place and shaped. A shot of one of my guitars with a Westernred cedar top, showing my "flying tonebar" design. My side bending rig. It consists of a heating blanket, a very accurate temperature controller and a darkroom timer that I use to shut off the temperature after a given amount of time. My brace carving/shaping tools. A little cutter I cobbled together. I use it for starting the cut of the soundhole diameter as well as the rosette channel. It helps resist tear-out.