fryovanni

Indian Hills

Why cant you take the string lenght off your other 7 string? Does not matter what bridge you used. i have no idea what you mean by that, or why you said that. If he has intonated his 7 string properly, and he intends to use the same gauge strings, and similar action(seems like that would be a reasonable assumption if he has set his other seven up as he likes them, or at least as good or better than generic info). Stew Mac is referencing a 6 string bridge(about 1/8th sounds right for a 6). The larger 7th string will need more length, but I am not sure exactly how much(never built a 7 string, or checked a properly intonated one), so I am not sure if that would allow enough adjustment. If you have numbers from your 7 string projects, maybe you could share your info(string gauge, tuning, action, and length of your intonated lowest string nut to saddle). Did you set back your TOM's 1/8" and it worked out fine? EDIT; This is why it is better to refer to your instruments. You know your preferences.

Not sure what finish Martin uses on this model, do you know? Sometimes water and heat will have negative effects on a finish.

Jammy, What kind of glue does Martin use to attach the back to the rim originally? I am sure he could do an existing HHG with little prep, but Titebond over old glues is not usually a real solid bond. Maybe a bit of a prep would be good if he is going to use Titebond.

I doubt you quoted $175 to drop a 3A(you grade on a 5A scale if I read your site correctly) curly cap on one of your $70 prepped African Mahogany body blanks?

Price range on a 1/4" top that is surfaced(sanded with a thickness sander) is going to start at probably $15 for a lower grade, the next grade up would probably be $10-15($25-30) more(that would be a nice looking top, but figure would be broken or irregular, possibly a bit of color), the next grade up would be another $10-15($35-40) more and would have really good even figure, the higher grade could have a wider range of price but should be somewhere between another $15-40($50-80) at this grade you should see strong full even figure, no displeasing color variation, the wood should be quartersawn(prices in the upper end of this grade are going up right now). Mind you this is all 1/4"-3/8" drop top, Curly Maple. If you look for carved tops in the 3/4"-1" range these prices are going to be about 125% higher(larger volume of wood). 6/4-8/4 Khaya lumber is running less than $7 bd. ft. (kiln dried, select). Your probably looking at 4-4.7 bd. ft(something like $30). If you can buy that locally you would save a bundle on shipping. If you have it thicknessed and jointed locally at a cabnet shop or similar they will probably charge $10-$20(which is about the same as what most dealers charge plus they need to add a bit to cover packaging to shipping and handling). Locally you could spend $40-50 after paying for wood and machining(basic cabnet shop) maybe a bit less, Shipped from an instrument wood dealer, your cost will be closer to $70-75(allowing $20ish for shipping) for African Mahogany. Genuine Mahogany is running up to twice the price of Khaya, services remain the same. If I remember correctly Mammoth link offers body blanks and they are members of the board. Chuck at 3D Hardwoods is oustanding, and can set you up with a fine set of figured maple.link Be sure to let him know you need the wood surface(he normally surfaces, but make sure he understands you do not have a planer or drum sander). There are other dealers, but Chuck seems to me to be about as fine a dealer as you will find. Have a look at Gilmer(west coast wood dealer)-link and Exotic Hardwoods (east coast wood dealer)link. That will give you a bit of reference to what is out there, both of these dealers are quality instrument wood suppliers. There are other members of the forum that may be willing to help out. I would offer, but I don't have much time right now. Peace,Rich

I never had seen Mario's build, but man that is a great step by step. link. Thanks for pointing me that direction Setch!

Can you elaborate on what the 3A grade top looked like(I am trying to figure out the grading scale used). Some dealers use a 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, and "instrument" grade scale. On that scale many dealers have fair but broken figure that is not strong throughout a board @ 4A. If that is the scale that this dealer is using the top is not going to be very expensive(especially at 1/4"). A picture of a board with similar figure to what you are after would be handy. If you are interested in keeping the cost down I would suggest a Khaya(african Mahogany) body blank. In service Khaya is exceptionally stable, and weighs just a bit less than honduran Mahogany. It is a great wood for bodies, and the price right now is significantly lower (about 50%) the cost of Honduran. Figured maple prices are on the rise in the highest grades. ONLY the highest grades demand huge premiums. A little flexability in the look and you can have your 1/4" drop top for significantly less. If really strong figure is a must but a bit of color is cool, that can cut the price 30%. Most of the cost of what you are asking for is in the cost to make the blank up. You will pay $60 an hour(pretty standard shop rate, but can be higher) for that prep. The work is not really difficult, and if you are going to build a guitar it would be good to get into these tasks(this is what we do). If you want to buy a well surfaced drop top and a prepped body blank, your surfaces will be very close to ready to glue up. Rich

+1 to what Mattia said

I agree 100%. The degree of face grain runnout is going to modify the strength of the wood, even if it appears perfectly quartered and straight grained. One up side to most of the woods we use for necks is that they exceed the strength requirement significantly, so it would take a fair bit of runout to cause a structural issue(meaning leading to failure). Of course it is great if you can select wood that has the best orientation you can. One thing I have consistently found splitting wood to detect grain orientation, is that medullary rays appear the best when a wood is split with the grain. Different woods have larger or smaller medullary rays. Hard Maple for instance has very large easy to spot rays. A piece of well quartered, straight, clear hard maple that has very strong medullary rays. Is likely going to be a fine cut. Some woods like Mahogany have interlocked grain (it actually twists and interlocks), so runnout is less of an issue. Go download The Wood Handbook (put together by the Dept. of Agriculture)- link It is the best book around for information on many subjects dealing with wood, and woodworking topics. Best of all it is free to download Rich

Gonna give this one more bump. The show starts tomorrow. Hope to see you there

Well look the plans over and make sure your hardware is the same as shown in the drawing. I am not sure what the angle they are showing relates to. I have always wound up beween 2-3 degrees, but they may be showing something different. I figure it is better to speak up now and have you make sure all is in order, rather than wind up with a suprise. Rich

I remembered where I put this drawing I put together a while back (when I was trying to nail down the dynamics of neck relief). I tried creating a picture of the drawing and putting it up on my photobucket album (but the compression makes it impossible to read the text). This is the picture. The drawing has three situations. One a dead straight neck with a given 1st fret clearance, and 12th fret clearance. I show the string open, then fretted at different frets) The next two drawings show strong relief, one drawing indicates a corrected 1st fret clearance after adding relief, the second without adjustment for first fret clearance. My modeling in CAD was based on typical placement of a truss rod (which of course could vary a bit, but it illustates the concept pretty clearly). If you would like a copy of a ledgable PDF. Shoot me a PM with an email address and I will send it to you. Peace,Rich

Not really, Fingerboard between 3/16" and 1/4" (.1875-.25") min. 1/8" behind truss (.125") Truss rod (.25-.375"-double acting, depending on model) Bare Min.- .5625"(allied double acting, 3/16" board, 1/8" behind the TR) with more room and thicker parts-.6875" (hot rod, 1/4" freboard, 1/8" behind the TR) bump up the material behind the truss to 3/16", and use wideer parts-.750"

rich, that is hands down the shortes reply i have ever seen from you. and no sig? Rich

Spanish Cedar kerfed linings adds a nice scent. Spruce also has a nice scent.Some rosewoods have a nice scent (brazilian, Honduran come to mind). Western Red Cedar has a nice scent. If you want the smell you are recognizing as woody I suspect using these types of woods are your best option. I suppose you could place a couple bits of freshly cut wood in the case to give you a strong first hit, and fill a room with that scent. Maybe someone makes a bottle of "new guitar" air freshener you could use to bring it back as it fades(or maybe there is a market for little packets of saw dust, I keep having to pack out of my shop, hmmmm....). I would be willing to let anyone who wants to clean my dust collector inhale all the scent they can handle Peace,Rich

On this one neck, with a 42 gauge string, the low E buzzes a lot and its only the low E, which I find odd. More relief is the only thing that cures it. Other necks are fine. Frets are nicely crowned, no high frets. Open string is fine, 1st-2nd frets are fine too. When I get to the G, its buzz city. G# is fine but buzz remains right up to the 14th fret which to me, point to not enough relief. In the end, the guitar is spec'd to be setup with a 46 low E so does it really matter? Not really I guess. The 42 was just a test I did. I'd still like to understand this and really, it should work. On most guitars, I set the relief at 0.3mm, which is pretty low in my opinion and a 9-42 set of strings should work just fine with relief setup that way and low action. There will be some buzzing but it should be kept to a minimum with a good neck. If I do need more relief, I'd like to be able to have more, naturally, without having to force it in. It just seems that I build stiff necks. Never been a problem 'till now but I'm probab;y just not understanding what's going on here. The thing about relief, if it was to allow for a little extra string vibration due to a slightly greater clearance when strings are played open or to say about the third fret. The benifit is gone much higher than that. Because although you have made a dip that centers around the middle of the neck, as soon as you drop your action back down at say the 12th fret you have little more clearance as you approach that dip. I am not being very articulate here, but draw it out on paper referencing your string clearance with relief added(may be helpful to draw in cad so you can really look close and use measuring tools to see what is happening), then use a straight edge to see what happens to the clearance. You are doing one of two things here I suspect. Either you pluck too heavy for the action you are using or you have something that is off on that neck (likely very small problem that is hard for you to detect). Don't confuse yourself by grasping for obscure problems. A dead straight neck with no relief whatsoever will hold the clearance you mentioned without strong fret buzz. Adding relief mainly adds an element of protection against neck movement(that could go into a real problem if it took a straight neck into slight back bow). It has the effect of possibly masking bad geometry, but it will not clear up the problem all the way down the neck. Peace,Rich Peace,Rich

Buy or borrow a book on basic inlay techniques. Maybe there is something on you tube? Sounds like you need to see or read through the process. Good luck, Rich

Yes

Not sure why you would think you need less stiffness, or more relief. A dead straight neck with no relief will allow you to get low action. Adding a lot of relief has little effect on performance (well at least if you reset your action back to the same point). A bit of relief may help control issues with changes due to humidity. It sounds to me like you have another problem happening here. Rich

That's what I was afraid of. Are you sure that there is no way to salvage it? Anyway, how do I prevent this from happening again? I suspect that is more movement than you would have got from small humidity changes if the wood was well aclimated to begin with. You are either dealing with some stored tension that caused some movement(you mentioned a bit of odd grain), and or the wood was still drying, or it is possible the wood was dried too agressively and it had some case hardening(trapping core moisture, which was able to dry rapidly after a bit of surfacing. As for Oak, it has only a slightly higher tangential shrinkage rate then hard Maple and the radial is about the same. It has been used for necks with success (although personally I don't care for it as a neck wood) So how do you prevent this. 1. choose your wood well. Straight Grain, no defects or odd grain, choose wood that has low volumetric shrinkage and most importantly wood that has low dimensional change at moisture levels between 6-14%(in service moisture contents), also choosing a wood that has closer radial to tangential shrinkage ratios helps, Quartersawn wood will generally move less with changes in moisture(this is a plus), not to say it is absolutely required. Quality neck wood is critical, body wood not so much. There are plenty of guys who have winged it or used odd grained wood for necks and fretboards. Personally, I think that is not very wise, and if it worked out ok for them it was partially dumb luck, possibly problematic down the road, and certainly building in stress that did not need to be there. Quality cuts of wood are available, you just have to look. 2. Buy your wood well dried, kiln dried is usually ok. You need to allow that wood time to aclimate to your shop. The longer the better. If you need to use wood very quickly, you should buy very well dried neck blanks from a reputable dealer, preferably located in a similar climate to yours. Buy several neck blanks worth of wood in advance and allow them to aclimate so they are ready to use when your ready for your next project. 3. Ruff carving as you did is not a bad way to go(saved you from a problem when you had done more work). The idea behind ruff carving is to allow you to make minor changes if it tweaks a little. Allow a little extra material to remain during the ruff carve step. Allow the blank a week or two to see if it moves. True it up and cut closer to final dimension. 4. If you want you can use a glue that does not introduce a lot of moisture when attaching your fretboard. This can be a plus. Titebond has worked fine for me in the past, and is not particularly problematic, but epoxy will reduce moisture introduced.

You can do it with an exacto knife to cut your outside pattern. Depending on the wood this will take a lot of blades (especially if your inlaying dense fretboard wood)as you have to slice down the full depth of the inlay. Then you need a couple deadly sharp chisels, and you best know how to use them. You will be wishing for a dremel if you do much inlay at all. Personally I would never do it this way unless there was no option. You also need a jewlers saw and a bunch of 3/0(this is the size blade I prefer at least) for shell or #2 works well for most wood. A selection of small jewlers files. A work board with a small V cut in the end to help cut your inlay. You will want to design your pattern (photo copies are handy so you can cut out each individual shape if you build multi piece inlays). CA works well to glue up multi piece inlays. Either Epoxy or CA works when glueing the inlay in place. Epoxy does not ahear to epoxy well, so when you need to drop fill bubbles or gaps CA is a better way to go. A book on the process or a video would go a long way if you are serious about wanting to do inlay work. Peace,Rich

Not sure if you have drawn out your guitar full size using actual hardware you will be using for measurements. However 4.5 degrees seems awfully strong, you should double check that, else you may end up with a bridge that is set really high. I usually use a flat fretting surface and shape/ cut the back of my necks to accomodate my neck angle. I have a couple methods I use depending on whether it is neck though, Set, or Bolt on. I think Setch had a pretty good topic on his LP. So a search for his topics, or visit his blog. As for sanding(assuming this means hand sanding). Sanding is usually the last method I use to remove material or attempt to freehand accurately. Planes, saws, router bits with guide jigs are much prefered to me. Good luck, Rich

How dry was the wood? How long did it aclimate in your shop prior to use? Do you monitor or control your humidity in your shop? How long ago was the neck ruff profiled? 1/8" bow in 1" thick wood makes me think either the wood was not dry, and or the wood has a very odd grain in some area. Here are a few recent topics- link link link Rich

Nice looking Maple Cap!