TheCaffeinatedOne

A new toy arrived by brown truck yesterday. Nicely machined and just under $100. Down cut router bits for the trusty Dremel are on their way. Now maybe I can stop being afraid to work on the rosette. . .

My shooting board. Simple and does a good job with a decent plane.

Somewhere I picked up the trick of using a shop vac to pull glue through an irregular crack. In this case you'd flood the crack with titebond and apply the hose to the sound hole. Magic! And I agree that Jerry Rosa is a master!

Just on a hunch, it occurs to me that your endpin jack may be wired backwards. Try swapping the leads on the jack to see if that stops the hum. You'd need to disconnect the grounding alterations you've made, though. The other first thought possibility is that your cable has a cold solder break in one of its plugs. Try another cable, or simply resolder the ground / shield connection at each end of the cable.

Here are the sides together. The heel block will be substantially lightened before it's complete. The detail shows some nice flash from the African walnut. Side reinforcements are curly maple. They go right to the rim, top and back. I didn't want a weak spot at the edge of the kerfing as would result if I ran them to the edge of the kerfing but not beyond. That would become a spot where moments of force would congregate, so to speak. I used a light coat of shellac on the inside.

I've been intending to do this for the last 30 years, but life kept intervening. Recently retired - I have no more excuses. So here goes. It's a dreadnought. The sides and back materials are Lovoa (aka "African walnut" for some reason. It's part of the Mahogany family). Top will be Sitka spruce. Neck is Honduras mahogany, fretboard and bridge are ebony, and I'm toying with the idea of using curly maple for binding the body and the fretboard. I just finished binding a rosewood fretboard in maple and it came out well. I'm going slowly as each minute seems like a learning experience. I've been studying this stuff all my adult life, since the mid - 1970s when Michael Gurian and Charles Fox were both within 40 miles of my door in Vermont. Been hanging onto the wood I bought from Gurian all these years. I expect its probably dry enough now. . . Here are a few shots of my crazy small shop and progress to date.

Wow... Really, really clean work!

Don't over strategize it. Just work on the guitar, get it right, and then see where you are. I think it's a mistake to wade into this stuff looking for a dollar angle. It's a good way to get discouraged. But if you wade into it looking for a way to build your chops, whether playing or building / repairing, you will succeed. Somewhere along the line it might even stop costing you way too much money, and at least in theory, some time after that you might find yourself money ahead.