Juntunen Guitars

And there will be plenty of dust to do that too.

Got the sides bent yesterday. I used a heating blanket from LMI for heat. The sides are wetted down then a paper towel is folded over them to hold more moisture and then tin foil is wrapped to keep the steam in. The heating blanket goes on top of that and two pieces of spring steel are put on the top and bottom of that. The bending process should take 3 minutes tops. Plug the blanket in wait 45 seconds, clamp the waist then bend the lower bout slowly and then the upper bout. Let it sit for about 40 minutes then re-align the side if you need to and re-heat it for 3 minutes, this will help keep the side in that shape when you take it out without the side springing back a bit. I love the look of Padauk You want to make sure that you get everything centered right or the sides won't line up right. I added an inch on each end just in case something got off centered so I could work with it a little. I also finished bracing the top.

Time to shape some braces on the top I used a block plane to plane a taper into the braces then a chisel to shape and a finger plane for the finalizing then I just used a sanding stick. I like to use rulers as sanding sticks because they will usually bend a little bit so you can sand tight areas a little better. I just realised these posts are out of order. Basically glue the X-brace first, shape it then glue the rest of the braces and shape them. I will post more on glueing braces later today.

More braces glued Shapping the sides before bending Thicknessing the sides in the Timesaver This is what I mean by using a lot of sand paper, that was abot 5 passes.

I usually do that but I have no air hose in my class and it would take to long to have to walk out into the shop every minute or two to blow the dust off. I use self adhesive from Grizzly and just pull the paper up and stick it back down to get all the dust off, it makes it look practically brand new but not with oily woods.

Thanks. I agree there is just something about them that always draw me to an acoustic build. I have three braces left to glue tomorrow and then I will be bending the sides as well. I've been going through a lot of sandpaper too, this padauk just cloggs it right up.

I got some of the braces ready yesterday too and glued the X-brace today. This is a jig for radiusing the bottoms of braces. Matrin's have 25' radius on their tops. This jig is held in place in the miter slot on an edge sander and the piece the brace is clamped to has the radius cut into it. The part in the miter slot has a stop just before the belt that you pivot the clamping jig on to radius the braces. Braces drawn out. X-brace slotted and ready to be glued. Martin guitars have a 98 degree X-brace. You measure an X-braces angle by using the angle facing the soundhole. Using a go bar deck to glue down the X-brace. I used titebond 2 here because it doesn't give as easily as hot hide glue or regular titebond does. The top is sitting in a 25' radius dish for glueing.

Rosette slot Glueing in the rosette. When you buy premade rosettes be sure to check their width in multiple places, there was a .006" difference in the thickness depending on where you measured it at so I had gaps here and there. I used titebond since it has water in it so it would help expand the rosette a bit which helped out, there are no gaps now. Rosette installed and soundhole cut out.

Danish oil is amazing stuff, I used it on a walnut body once and it came out looking really nice. I use it on fingerboards now. That cocobolo looks great too, I'm putting one like that on my padauk acoustic build.

I like that idea, it would be cool to see all the past winners of the year again without having to dig back through the forums.

How will the cedar body level out in weight with the neck?

I started the rosette today. I decided to combine all three rings into one big one. I used a laminate router to cut the channel. I good tip to avoid chipping and to help keep dyes in the rosette from spreading to the top is to spray lacquer over the area first. Since I'm using super glue and it has a tendancy to bleed colors I sprayed lacquer first. Gluing the rosette later this afternoon.

Back being glued Back out of the jig Headstock template

I think I remember seeing the original post. Are you building a new one or just reviving the images of this one?

A lot of my family is from Finland, I'm only the third generation in America and a lot of family is still there. You had me confused for a second on who you were too, I have a cousin on here who's name is HenryM haha I had to double check to be sure I wasn't seeing things. And congrats, that's definatelly an excuse to not build for a while.

Starting to mark out the braces for the top. LMI sells brace blanks, if you get them in bocks like I have in this picture it's actually cheaper and easier in a way. The sitka blanks I bought I got all the top braces out of it in 5 strips, I cut them oversized and longer than needed because they still need to be radiused for the tops radius and they need to be final thicknessed down still. I had to do some wierd angled cuts to get quartersawn wood out of them but I Will explain that later. Here is the jointer for the thinner woods. You want to use these for thin woods like the top and backs, It's really frustrating sometimes but you can get better glue joints out of it than using a power jointer since a top is to thin for one even if you hold them together instead of doing them one at a time. If you use these jointers it's a good idea to sharpen the blade everytime you go to use it, especially on the back woods since they are harder, when the blade is dull it gets super hard to cut anything cleanly. And be carefull with oily woods. My hand slipped today and it deflected off my finger nail (took a chunk of the skin with it) and decided to dig into my knuckle and leave a nice chunk on the blade. It didn't feel too good. For those who don't know about looking at grain direction, when you are planning by hand you might notice that it's harder to plane in one direction than the other. That's because of the grain runout. A tree doesn't grow straight, they grow in a twisting motion, you can see this mostly on acoustic tops if you look at them in the light, one side will be darker than the other, that's because of grain run out. This sad attempt at drawing in paint on my laptop is my attempt at explaning this. The way I showed is the bad way to plane. You have a higher chance of splitting deep into the grain or haveing tear out. If you switched the planes direction in that picture then you are planning the right way. And the last picture for today is the back before I jointed it. I have some more on my phone of the back jointed, in the glueing jib and with my templates on it but I can't get them off my phone quite yet.

Onto build pictures! Here is the top in the clamping jig. This jig is easy to make, basically it's a piece of plywood reinforced with 2x4's on the bottom and has one board screwed into the edge to but up the wood against. It works by when you puit the glued wood in there you fit 4-5 sets of small wooden blocks cut corner to corner inbetween the top/back wood and then you clamp another board behind those. The reason the little pieces are cut is so that you can push them together with two blocks of wood and that acts as the clamps. I forgot to take pictures of the little pieces but I will try to get some next week. As a side note, I am using titebond 2 for glue. It's not the best to use since it's water based and makes the wood swell but it's a nice glue to use either way plus it is good for about 2 years compared to a couple weeks like hot hide glue is. Titebond 1 is the better glue to use for guitar making. I typically use titebond because that's all I have around usually and it's handy for repairing cracks in acoustic tops particularily because since it makes the wood swell it helps close the cracks up better. I would avoid using epoxy for this because if the top ever did crack along the glue joint, which it likey would even with epoxy over time, it couldn't be reheated easily, yuou would almost have to remove the top to make a nice clean repair unless you really knew what you were doing. I think it's better to use titebond or even better hot hide glue since it can be reheated easily (Titebond 1 is easier to heat than Titebond 2) The only problem with hot hide glue is getting the mix right and that once it's out of the glue pot you have barely more than a minute to spread the glue and clamp it down tightly before it jells to much to have a good bond. Some people say hot hide glue is better for vibrations to and add to the acoustic quality but I'm not sure on that, I haven't used it enough to have an opinion. Top freshly out of the glueing jig. After it's out you want to measure 8.5" out on each side and cut the top to be 17" wide. The reason for this is to when you run it through a drum sander it will be more likely to not take off more wood in one area than another. Be sure to save the cutoffs for a center strip down the glue line on the back on the inside of the guitar, you want to be sure you have long strips that are cross grained. Plus it never hurts to have extra wood just in case. Cut out the top a little oversized then at the top edge where the neck meets the body sand it down flush to the outline of the guitar. This way when you measure for the soundhole and rosette you can have a spot where you can always measure from so you don't get off centered.

Specs on the guitar. Top: Sitka spruce with bearclaw figure Back and sides: Padauk Bridge: Cocobolo Headcap: Cocobolo Fingerboard: Cocobolo Brace wood: Sitka spruce: Rosette: Stewmac's three ring heringbone. Binding: Either bloodwood or maple Purfling: B/W/B plastic purfling Nut and saddle: Bone Frets: I kind of am thinking of doing something different with this guitar, if I end up doing it you all will see later. It's being built on a Martin scale so 25.4" scale length and has a Martin brace pattern I may play around with the bracing if we are able to but otherwise it will be off the Martin plans. Originally I was going to put a cutaway in it but I guess we aren't allowed to here. Here are the pictures of progress so far. Side mold This is the work board I was making. It is a quarter sheet of plywood cut in half and glued on top of each other then I sanded the edges flush then it was ran through a timesaver to thickness it down so both sides were flush. Screws go in the side of it later for the bungie cord used to glue the top down, I will have pictures of that when I get to that point. When the workboard is done You reccess two holes and using lag bolts screw in a block of wood to the bottom. It makes it so that when you glue and voice the top you can clamp the workboard in a vice so it won't move anywhere. Finger planes are nice for carving braces. This one is a 35mm blade if I remember right but it is about $35 from Lee Valley.

I started an acoustic in tech school on monday for a class. It's being made with padauk for back and sides and bearclaw sitka for the top, sitka braces, cocobolo fingerboard, headcap, and bridge. So far I have the top glued, cut out, thicknessed, the back to jointed and ready to be glued this afternoon and I have the brace stock cut. I am stuck until next week for now since I have to wait for Stewmac to send my rosette. I will post pictures tonight after class and give a more in depth spec sheet on the guitar.

Good to see you back. The control knobs will be interesting I think.

They were I did not and will not sell them haha. I only used one strip on padauk down the center, they are about 8 or 9 laminates. I did spruce and then the center was walnut/padauk/walnut only to add strength.

I looked at that wrong haha sorry I thought the two holes you drill in it that are perpendicular to the fingerboard were meant for dowels but I see now. I just find dovetails easier to work on. If you find the measurments of the changes you need to make first you don't need to string up the guitar until it is all over and done with. You can get very clean results to using sand paper strips and chisels if you k now how to use them right. All in all it should take about two hours or less working at a steady pace to get all the measurments and make the changes and get the neck glued back on. Just my take on it though, I was hesitant towards those joints until this year when I had it demonstrated to me how to do it properly and now it's just pretty simple for me ... Plus, in my opinion, if I open a guitar up and see it has a dovetail it usually means the guitar was built very nicely and won't be a pain in the a$$ to get to do what you need it to do. Just my two cents on that subject anyways. This is the joys of guitar building, everyone has their own way of doing things, more or less.

The problem with that joint is that when time comes for that neck to be re-set you will need to cut through the dowels and then when the re-set is done you would basically have to re-position the bolt insert and the dowels. That is why I like dovetail joints, they make neck repair work easier with less work in my opinion.

Good to know. I am building a dreadnaught mostly to Martin specs in luthier school in January with Padauk back, sides and possibly neck too. I asked my instructors about it and they said they have never had a problem bending or routing padauk, they said it was one of the easier woods to work with but they said you have to know how to work with it. They said to take no more than 1/32"-2/32" passes a time with a router and don't hog off to much depth either and for bending it like any other woods they said, just take your sweet time and it will turn out perfectly and will barely ever crack. I wouldn't know though I have never used it for guitars, I have only used it in bent shaft canoe paddles and it worked fine for me ...

Amazing, if you wake up one morning and it's gone it wasn't me