An acoustic for my nephew.

[Dave Higham]

Binding the fretboard. Has anyone had any experience of CA glue deteriorating? I’d been using Stewmac thin CA and I’d had the bottle for a quite a while, but I kept it in the fridge and it hadn’t thickened up, which I thought was the only way it could go off.

However, it seemed to be much more reluctant to set than it used to be, and with some things it would not set at all; dyed-black veneer, for instance.

 

Stewmac won’t send me their accelerator, so I got this one from a local model-making store but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the Stewmac CA. So I went back to the store and bought a bottle of the same brand of CA as the accelerator. What a difference! I started gluing my fingers to things again! In fact, for most things, I don’t even need the accelerator. I’ll stick with this brand now. (The pun was unintentional).

Fretboard bound. Those whitish streaks are actually brown, but I don’t mind a few streaks in ebony. They make it look like wood rather than black plastic.

Frets installed and fretboard glued on but I didn’t take any photos. I pressed the frets in on the drill press.

I used a Stewmac 16” rad. caul and made a holder for it. Some things that Stewmac sells for a lot of money, you can make yourself for next to nothing.

[Bizman62]

That caul holder looks like it would cost some serious money at any luthier store! Beautiful craftmanship!

That one proves true that if you know what you need and have the tools to make it, there's no need to buy it. Too many budding luthiers spend fortunes on simple tools like that and struggle to make the ends meet. Building band saws and sander thicknessers and other power tools out of plywood and a washing machine motor can be dangerous and even prohibited without authorization in some countries but simple holders like that should belong to everyone's toolchest.

I find it somewhat contradictory that people who want to do the finest of fine woodworking have no imagination or inventiveness, not even to the level of copying a tool. Or, could it be that building a guitar is somehow kin to being a guitar hero, potential sex partners buzzing around?

[Dave Higham]

Gluing an ebony heel cap. I make the heel cap its finished shape and blend the heel into it. I then carved the neck and completely forgot about taking photos. This seems to happen when I’m concentrating on the job in hand.

This photo shows how the two brass plugs that sit on the neck adjustment screws are aligned with the centre of the barrel nut holding the neck in place. This means that, in theory, the neck can tilt backwards or forwards without loosening the barrel bolt. We’ll see if it works.

Having got the neck to this stage, I can start fitting it to the body, and to do that I have to cut the aperture in the top for the neck extension. I was going to make a router template but finished up just carefully cutting it with chisels etc.

This shows the beginning of the aperture for the neck heel. Once this was done I could fit the neck by engaging the holes in the neck’s brass plugs with the points on the adjustment screws and carefully scribing around the heel with a craft knife. I then opened up the recess until the heel just fit into it.

After some slow and careful chisel work.

 

[Alucard0811]

This is just poor woodworking and craftsmanship p*rn WOW

[Bizman62]

Craftmanship pork, never thought of that but makes perfectly sense!

[Dave Higham]

After quite a lot of sanding I could start on the finishing. I finally decided to do the neck in Tru-Oil and the body in French polish. Here I’m starting on the body and it’s beginning to shine.

While I’m applying zillions of coats of Tru-Oil and shellac I can make the bridge, so I had to saw another piece off my lump of ebony. That involved quite a lot of perspiration as the saw isn’t as sharp as it used to be.

Once I’d got my blank squared up I started on the saddle slot. The advantage

in using CAD is that having drawn the bridge with the compensated saddle slot, I could draw two tapered cauls at the same angle as the slot. Stick the drawing onto a bit of ¾” MDF and sand up to the lines and my blank is held perfectly at the correct angle.

While it’s in there I can drill the pin holes too.

After sawing off the surplus on the bandsaw I sanded a curve onto the top surface. The two triangular blocks are attached with double sided tape and help me keep hold of the bridge and keep it square to the sanding belt.

After which it looked like this.

[Nicco]

Oh wow, this whole thing is looking absolutely spectacular!!

[Bizman62]

8 hours ago, Dave Higham said:

The two triangular blocks are attached with double sided tape and help me keep hold of the bridge and keep it square to the sanding belt.

Angled handles! Yay! A method that's both safe and accurate. and often forgotten.

[Dave Higham]

I then cut out the profile and countersunk the pin holes. Countersink bits have tendency to wander if the surface being countersunk isn’t perpendicular to the axis of the bit and the workpiece isn’t clamped down. So to avoid this I is clamped a board to the drill press table and drilled a hole in the board for a locating pin the same diameter as the holes in the bridgePhoto

Then I located the bridge on the pin to countersink the holes.

And here it is finished.

To match the underside of the bridge to the surface of the soundboard, the usual method is to tape sandpaper to the soundboard and rub the bridge on it, but you can’t press too hard and it takes an eternity. So I made a sanding board by sanding a piece of ¾” MDF in the radius dish to form a convex surface and sticking some 80-grit abrasive to it. I used this until all the surface of the bridge was in contact with it and then finished of with some 400 grit paper on the soundboard.

Only a few fiddly jobs to do now, one of which is drilling the holes for the tuners. I already had 5mm pilot holes drilled using the template, which I had to open up to 10mm diameter. To do this I used a similar method to that for drilling the bridge pin holes. I drilled a 5 mm hole in the base board and inserted a brass dowel which was a nice sliding fit, and then changed the 5mm drill bit for a 10mm brad point bit.

I then located the headstock on the dowel and lowered the 10mm bit which pushed the dowel down and drilled a clean 10mm hole concentric with the 5mm one.

So now I have 6 nice clean holes waiting for the tuners.

[Dave Higham]

Now came the moment of truth and I couldn’t put it off any longer. Gluing the bridge.

I made a clamping caul as shown. It consists of a piece of 12mm ply with two threaded inserts and two Allen screws. Behind that there’s the off-cut from the bridge with a piece of thick card attached with double sided tape as a sort of cushion. Behind that are two brass dowels which allow me to align this lot with the bridge itself when I actually come to glue it in place.

Assembled, it looks like this. The ebony off-cut is so thin in the middle that it’s very flexible, and, once I’ve clamped the caul in the centre I can apply pressure to the ends by turning the two screws. Again, it’s a sort of home-made version of what Stewmac sells.

This was a dry run. After measuring and checking 3 or 4 times I scribed round the bridge and scraped the finish off. Not my favourite job, using one of those single sided razor blades as a scraper. I then applied several layers of masking tape around the bridge as a tape-dam and glued it on. I didn’t take any photos… I was a bit too busy.

All that remained was to make a nut, using another home-made tool to hold the nut and then screw all the bits together.

One or two problems cropped up. Even with the two neck levelling screws lowered almost as far as they could go (so the neck almost bottomed out in the body recess) it was still 13-and-a-bit frets to the body and it was supposed to be 13. Obviously I miscalculated somewhere. But the other problem turned out to be a sort of blessing in disguise. Even after all the measuring and checking, with the neck adjustment as far towards the bridge as it would go, I still had too much intonation. i.e. the bridge was too far from the neck. So I had to deepen the recess in the neck block which was a bit nerve-wracking as the body was finished. Anyway, in the end, when the intonation was as good as I could get it, the 13^th fret turned out to be in line with the body junction, which I put down gratefully to beginner’s luck.

 

So I finally got it strung up and I could hear what it sounded like. Well, at least it didn’t sound like a banjo. I hear people describing a guitar’s sound with terms like ‘sparkling trebles’, ‘shimmering mids’, ‘growling bass’, etc. and it just doesn’t mean a thing to me. Probably because I’m not a guitarist. But some months later, on a trip to the UK, I gave it to my nephew who was suitably gobsmacked and, in his hands, it sounded rather good to me. So all was well that ended well.

[Bizman62]

7 hours ago, Dave Higham said:

Well, at least it didn’t sound like a banjo

Because I didn't play it!

What a lovely journey! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Dave Higham]

15 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for your comments Biz.

[Dave Higham]

I suppose I ought to show some photos of the finished article?

[Professor Woozle]

Please do - this has been an enjoyable and informative journey to follow, so some good shots of the end result would be very welcome!

[Dave Higham]

5 hours ago, Professor Woozle said:

some good shots of the end result would be very welcome

Eyup Prof. I see you're in the Peak District. From the age of 5 to 45 I was a Sheffielder. Still am really

Here goes then.

A view of the arm bevel.

And one of the 'Manzer' wedge body.

That's all folks! If you have been, thanks for watching.

 

 

[Professor Woozle]

Thanks @Dave Higham that's a really classy looking guitar.

A Sheff lad, then? Do you get Hendos sent out to France specially?

For the benefit of non-Yorkshire site members, Hendos (Hendersons relish) is a Sheffield delicacy, which greatly enhances a meat and potato pie.

[Bizman62]

Oh. My. Gosh.

The build quality is just stunning! I won't name all the fancy details here but I'll raise one up: The arm bevel looks like a shadow, the edge of the top curves naturally with no sharp corners to reveal that it has been narrowed.

[JGTay]

You can adopt me if it means I get one of these made!

Your nephew is a very lucky boy, fantastic build. Thanks for sharing.

[Dave Higham]

1 hour ago, Professor Woozle said:

Do you get Hendos sent out to France specially?

No, I'm afraid I have to make do with Worcestershire Sauce. 'Tin't the same though.

 

[Professor Woozle]

3 hours ago, Dave Higham said:

No, I'm afraid I have to make do with Worcestershire Sauce. 'Tin't the same though.

 

Aye, it'll do fer cheese on toast but not fer a meat n' tater - nowt but Hendos on them!

[Nicco]

Bravo! Sensational build. I'm with Bizman, there are too many details that are noteworthy to mention, but the bevel is a standout for me too, such a smooth transition into it. 

The rosette subtly moving from darker to lighter is gorgeous as well. 

[Gogzs]

It's both sad an happy seeing the finished build pictures. Absolutely stunning, but nothing less was expected. The way you approach building tools/jigs you'll use to build this showed early on that this will be absolutely flawless... great build, thanks for posting so many detailed pictures of every step it took to make this.

[ScottR]

Bravo Dave!

SR

[Dave Higham]

Thank you very much guys for your kind words. They really are appreciated.

Perhaps I ought to think about posting another old build thread. Rather more in keeping with what's usually seen on this forum.

A 5-string, multi-scale, semi-headless bass. How does that sound?

[Bizman62]

Keep them coming!