Dave Higham

6 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Presumably that meant all of the bracing work again?

Yep!

2 hours ago, mattharris75 said:

Personally I've wanted to see a step by step of this technique for years, so thank you!

You're most welcome.

I then cut the rebate for the top purfling and finally got a fairly smooth transition into the armrest. Not perfect, but not bad for a first attempt.

I stuck this off-cut from the top back where it came from while routing the purfling rebate, so that the ‘donut’ which rides on the top didn’t fall into the armrest area and ruin everything.

The top purfling was now glued in place. (Why don’t they make it long enough to go all the way round?)

The last photo gives a false impression of what the armrest should look like as the shape includes the surplus which will be trimmed off after the top is glued on, as shown here. My intention was to try to achieve a smooth blend of the armrest into the body shape.

I then re-routed the binding rebate, slightly deeper than the first time. At this point the transition from armrest to body profile still isn’t smooth, but the purfling rebate has still to be cut.

I decided, this time around, to make wooden bindings using the off-cuts from the sides. The front bindings can be straight, but the back has such a wavy profile that I used the templates I made for the linings to make profiled back bindings. It wasn’t wasteful as the side off-cut already had that profile. It just needed smoothing out.

This time, I glued a single white side purfling veneer to the bindings before bending them. I used waterproof (exterior) PVA wood glue and it worked fine. The two bindings back-to-back (nearest the camera) are the straight ones for the top. The other two are the wavy back bindings which couldn’t be bent back to back but the purflings didn’t come unstuck even so. There was a little spring back, although there doesn’t seem to be in the photo. That’s because the bindings were stuck to the kraft paper and the paper stuck to the slat.

You can see the little green clips I spoke about earlier. There are 8 in all and they keep the inner slat in place while dismantling the rest, so the slat can’t straighten out and break the bindings.

Now I needed to cut the armrest profile into the side. I drew the curve I wanted and stuck it onto the side and very slowly and carefully cut it using a craft knife and chisels.

What happened next was that I glued the front on, routed for bindings and glued in bindings and purflings and during all that I completely forgot about taking photos.

I also have to confess that I chickened out on the arm-rest bevel, so I just installed faux tortoise binding without side purflings.

It didn’t look very nice.

My little 1/8” down-cut router cutter was knackered so there was rather a lot of chipping out in the binding rebate that I only noticed when I’d finished cutting it. But I was hoping that glue and sanding dust would disguise it. This curly Claro does seem to be rather brittle and chips easily.

The cold weather had set in (this was in January) so I‘d bought a humidifier which kept the workshop at about 40 to 45% RH. It worked fine for about a month, and then it gave up the ghost. I took it back to the shop where they said they’d have to send it away to be repaired and then we left for ten days to go to Venice for the Carnival. Of course, I should have turned the heating off in the workshop, but I forgot and when we got back I found the humidity down to about 20% and the top had a 5” crack in it. Oh, and a message from the shop to say that my humidifier was ready for collection.

I didn’t mention this before, but I’d already had a couple of problems with the rosette. One was that there was some slight tear-out of the spruce in the purfling channel. The other was that in spite of sealing with shellac, it would appear that some of the CA leached into the end grain of the spruce and discoloured it slightly. I think the problem was that the shellac I used is old and didn’t dry hard, but I decided it would have to do.

I now had a distinct feeling that something or someone was trying to tell me something. Like I shouldn’t have ‘made do’ with tear out in the rosette channel, CA staining the spruce, using plastic binding and avoiding the side purflings and chickening out on the arm-rest bevel and was now being told to try ‘making do’ with a cracked top! So with more than a little helpful advice from kind people on another forum, I routed the top off and started again; which is why some of the previous photos are of the first top and rosette and some are of the second.

Having decided that this time I should try to make a proper job of it, I made a new top and thought I really ought to have a go at the arm rest. By now, I’d gleaned some more information about how different people go about it and one thing I’d found is that some cut the armrest profile into the top and the side before assembling them. I couldn’t do that with the side as the lining was already glued to it, but I could do it to the new top, so after a bit of fiddling about drawing the profile in CAD, I cut the shape into the top and this is what it looked like.

Thanks for your comments Biz and Gogzs. I truly don't think of myself as a 'craftsman', perhaps because in the past I worked with some real ones (silversmiths). The boss was a reputed designer/silversmith who also taught at the Art College so he only invited the best of the apprentices who studied there to come and work for him. We called him 'Hawkeye' because, if there was the slightest blemish on a piece of work, he saw it! I suppose some of the attention to detail, etc., rubbed off on me.

The back and front were now ready to glue to the sides but, before doing that I had to make the access panel. The access panel isn’t really essential, but it means I can get my hand inside the guitar to adjust the yaw or pitch or whatever of the neck without taking the strings off. If I knew what I was doing, it would also enable me to get inside to fine tune the brace carving with the guitar strung up; but I don’t, so it won’t. I should also mention that this, again, isn’t my design; I borrowed it, with his permission, from another luthier, Kent Chasson.

This, together with the birch ply disc we saw earlier and a piece of very old dark mahogany (because that’s what I had), also thicknessed to 5mm, will form the access panel.

I trimmed the maple flush with the tiles and glued a piece of white veneer on either side.

A 5mm hole was drilled through the end graft to locate it, and the mahogany cut into two pieces and the cut edges trimmed.

The mahogany pieces were band-sawn to an oversize circular shape and glued to the plywood disk. The tapered end graft isn’t glued in place yet. It’s positioned with a dowel pin through the hole and into the plywood disc.

Now the wedge is removed and the mahogany trimmed to the required diameter.

A piece of white veneer is glued to the outside of each mahogany segment.

The ends of the wedge are trimmed, the veneers are trimmed flush with the mahogany but the wedge still isn’t glued in place.

17 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Ooh the sound hole in the center fan brace!

As I said earlier, Stephen Sheriff very generously gave me a detailed drawing of his bracing system and very comprehensive notes on his construction process, so I'll quote him.

"I carve the center brace to "fly" over the bridge saddle area, to leave an open space for the installation of bridge-plate transducer pickup elements, or pickups such as the L.R. Baggs Lyric".

I didn't intend installing a pickup, but Steve's instructions were so detailed that I decided to follow them 'to the letter'.

After that I carved and sanded the X-brace to its finished profile and started on the fan braces. All the front braces are let into the X-brace to form a solid framework. Here is one of the fan braces with its notch in the X.

And here it is in place. The sand paper stuck onto the yellow masking tape was used to sand the underside of the fan brace so that it made contact perfectly with the front and the bridge plate, but I forgot to photograph that too.

Here the left and right fan braces are being glued in place. They have had the tops profiled and the off-cuts from the tops are used as clamping cauls.

Here the centre fan brace is also being glued.

Three fan  braces glued.

All the braces fitted and ‘carved’. I haven’t a clue about carving and tuning braces so I just made them look nice. There’s no upper transverse brace as I think it won’t be necessary. The part of the fingerboard which extends over the body will be supported by a neck extension, so there’ll be a cut out in the top for that. I’ve reinforced that area of the top with a cross-grained spruce patch. I think that, together with the A-braces, should make it strong enough. If the box implodes I’ll be proved wrong.

5 hours ago, Prostheta said:

"Not half bad" is more familiar to me with my Yorkshire roots.

I know what you mean. I'm a Yorkshireman.

The front has a 25-foot radius and the front braces get the same treatment as the back braces. All the braces are clamped together to sand them so there’s less risk of wobbling than doing them one at a time.

Starting by gluing the X-brace and the cap.

Now I need a bridge plate. This will be laminated from a 0.6mm carbon fibre sheet and a piece of padauk about 1.9mm thick. Apparently padauk is a very musical wood and I had a whopping great plank of it.

They were glued together using 30-minute epoxy in the radius dish. The MDF caul was also sanded in the dish to a 25-foot radius.

The bridge plate was then trimmed to shape and a piece of cross-grained spruce sanded to the same thickness as the bridge plate and trimmed to fill the space between the bridge plate and the X-brace.

Here they are being glued in place. The same sanding caul was trimmed down to fit the bridge plate.

On 1/3/2022 at 8:40 AM, Bizman62 said:

In that case, shouldn't a single pin aligned with the router work?

It might.

If I had a production line, making the same instrument time after time, it might be worth it.  But I don't. I make instruments as a passtime. It's a hobby I enjoy and in the past 15 years or so I've only made two identical instruments (a pair of ukuleles) and I found it a PITA having completed an operation on one, having to do it again on the other.

I started making bass guitars because I was plonking along on one in a little folk-dance band and thought 'I could make one of these'. So I did, out of the remains of an antique solid mahogany chest of drawers.

It was a 5-string neck-through all-mahogany with EMG Jazz Bass pickups

Then a 4-string bolt-on, padauk body, maple and walnut neck, Seymour Duncan MM pickup.

A semi-solid 5-string similar to a Rick Turner Renaissance in rosewood and spruce.

A 'headless' 5-string for which I made everything but the strings and the Glockenklang electronics.

Etc., etc.

I admit to sometimes thinking how I can make a jig or fixture to do some operation, and then think 'don't be daft, just grab a plane or a chisel and get on with it'!

James Olsen, who makes very beautiful and expensive guitars for the likes of James Taylor has a collection of routers, one for every operation that needs one. But he makes guitars in batches and they start at $20,000.

Now to start on the front. I shall ramble on a bit here, so bear with me. When I started drawing up plans I found French luthier Christophe Grellier’s OM plan on his web site and then thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask around about bracing.

I’d been thinking about the PRS acoustics that Martin Simpson and Tony McManus were playing at the time. I’d had a brief chat with Martin Simpson at a folk festival in the UK, and he was genuinely enthusiastic about the PRS guitar he was playing.If you’re not familiar with Martin Simpson, there’s loads of stuff on You tube. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAoQGSiVsy4

The PRS acoustic was developed for Paul Reed Smith by an independent luthier called Steve Fischer and has what they call Hybrid X-fan bracing. I’d also come across another luthier, Stephen Sheriff, who uses a similar bracing pattern. So, I thought, there’s no harm in asking, and I wrote to them both, asking if they were prepared to share information on their bracing systems. I wasn’t counting on getting a reply from either one; after all, they are both professional luthiers.

I’ve often said that the world-wide community of luthiers, both amateur and professional must be the most generous one there is. Even so, I was a bit gobsmacked by the answers I got from both Steves. In a nutshell, they both said ‘yes, I’ll tell you anything you want to know’. So, I finished up with a long email from Steve Fisher, explaining his bracing pattern and giving dimensions, etc. and an even longer one from Steve Sheriff with masses of information. He also sent me a full-size, fully dimensioned hand drawn plan of the guitar he makes which is the nearest to an OM and other goodies like radius templates and CF sheet which he uses for bridge plates. So there I was with an embarrassment of riches. I decided to start with the Stephen Sheriff version. By the way, he goes under the name of Edwinson Lutherie.

As I said, I’ve used the ‘tent’ method when joining fronts and backs but I’ve sometimes had trouble getting both halves aligned, as, especially if both halves are not dead flat or aren’t the same thickness, when I push the two halves down, the glue grabs and that’s it. So this time I did it in the go-bar deck. The go-bars hold both halves down flat and the wedges force the two halves together. There’s a strip of polythene film under the join area which stops them sticking to the base and helps them slide together when pushed by the wedges. It seemed to work OK.

On 1/1/2022 at 11:01 AM, Bizman62 said:

Do you have a stopper pin or two on the bottom side of the extension to prevent cutting the side? Like so:

No, no stopper pins. It would get a bit complicated as they would have to stop at a curved surface which isn't always the same. I just route up to the sides and it doesn't really matter if I cut into them a bit. I cut the braces a little bit short, to leave a gap between their ends and the sides. Braces have been known to expand in length (under extreme conditions) and push the bindings away from the top or back.

I then moved on to bracing the back. Here are all the back braces clamped together to sand the 15-foot radius in the radius dish.

Starting to sand. Pencil lines on the surface to be sanded will show when  it’s finished.

And there are no pencil lines left.

Started by gluing the X-brace in place.

Then forgot to take photos until I’d glued and shaped all the other back braces.

I marked the positions of the back braces on the linings and cut recesses for them where necessary. The Dremel router base is mounted on a board long enough to span the whole of the body. This keeps it rock-steady whilst routing small notches in a narrow surface.

On 12/29/2021 at 5:53 PM, Prostheta said:

Go to eBay, advanced search, then search by seller id as "magic_wood".

It worked! Thank you.

I still can't find them. Anyone got a link?

7 hours ago, Nicco said:

It's a pleasure to follow along. 

Thank you.

Who (or what) is magic_wood? I googled but didn't find much.

Time to start on the back and front plates. I don’t find joining the plates easy. I’ve tried everything except routing a slot between the two halves (which should be foolproof but I’d need to make yet another jig). The best join I ever got was by simply running them over a jointer, but my planer/thicknesser blades were knackered when I did this. I eventually got them good enough by a combination of improvised shooting board and sanding board. I joined them in the same way as the front, but of course it didn’t occur to me to take photos . . .

I stuck them down onto a piece of 1mm ply.(The stuff they use to make model aircraft)

This overlay showed me what the finished circle should look like. Er… you may have noticed it’s not the same rosette. I’ll explain later.

Trimming to finished size.

Trimmed.

12 hours ago, mattharris75 said:

Your work is ridiculously clean, just amazing

I suppose I go to ridiculous lengths to make it look that way (or to hide the mistakes)