Juntunen Guitars

Ignore the email I sent you earlier today asking about those pickups, I didn't see this post. Let me know when you think you will have it up and running again I'm slowing down the build process on that 8 string until I get those pickups. Downside is all three current builds need to be done within 4 weeks.

Ok so this guitar had a nice run in with something in the spray booth. Not sure what happened but it got bumped so I had to sand off the sealer and spray the top again. I'm starting to think this guitar just wants me to smash it Either way I got the top sprayed again today and then got the amber sprayed as well. Tomorrow I'll get the burst sprayed hopefully and then I'll be well on the way of finally finishing this guitar. I didn't have enough pictures to put up to make it worth while so I'll try and put some up tomorrow once the burst is done.

Finding a flamed claro walnut cap for this was impossible unless I bought a big block of it for a lot of money so I went with a sheet of black walnut. I figured I'd give the CNC a go for these inlays. I think I will do it all by hand from now on. I'm getting tired of setting up tool paths and watching a machine do everything hoping it doesn't decide to cut a line I didn't want to. The inlays are gold and white MOP

Cutting the tennon. This is done with a table saw and the miter gauge. Once you get your neck extension height angle you transfer that to the neck heel and set the miter gauge to that angle on the table saw. The difference with a mortise and tennon neck joint over a dovetail is that you have basically no wood touching where as with a dovetail everything is tight so set the table saw blade slightly deeper than than the thickness of your tennon (5/8" in my case) Here's how it should look. This was a little excessive but it will still work. I would have liked the gap to be a little smaller but it's an oak center strip so it will be plenty strong.

Neck extension height. I'll edit this post later and add the equation I use to figure this out. You need to find the extension height then sand a flat spot onto the top that matches the angle then take the angle you sanded and find the angle of the neck in relation to the body that will work with the extension height. A lot easier than it sounds. The shim taped to the top is the exention height. One thing I didn't think about was my rossette was so thin to begin with (around .070"-.075") and I used a smaller radius with the top that I almost sanded through the rossette. There was maybe .010" left of height where I was sanding. Even if I went through though it would have been covered by the fingerboard. Glued in the spacer for the truss rod.

Long time no update. I'v been busy with classes, building 3 guitars and getting ready to move again in may so it's time to start crunching down on some projects. So here's where it's at currently. Getting set up to cut the fingerboard on the CNC. I almost messed this up in a way. When I drew the fan fret in my CAD program I just made a 4" wide rectangle and then lined up the two scale lengths and connected the dots, well the problem with that is that only works if I had a 4" wide fingerboard that had no taper or anything in it so when I was measuring everything while setting up the tool path I noticed they were off so I had to draw them again by matching the scale length to the taper of the board. That time it worked out fine. In reality I could have just altered my bridge location and it would have worked but the high e strings bridge pin hole is so close to the x-brace as it is that I was afraid I would drill into the brace if I had to move it up. I ended up having to redesign the bridge placement anyways and make it a 15 fret to the body instead of 16 to make it work since I changed the x-brace angle from 98 degrees like Martin does to a 96 degree angle when I glued the braces to try and make more highs come out since this will be tuned lower than normal I'm hoping that the higher end angle will make notes not so muddy with the low F# and cedar top. It works in theory but we all know how that goes. The jig for the fingerboard is a vaccum press with plexi glass on teh sides to hold it straight. The problem I was running into was the FB is so wide at the last few frets that the snakewood wasn't actually wide enough so I had to add binding to gain the right thickness I needed which also gave me absolutelly no room for eror in setting this up unless I wanted a nice little gap at the end. I also had to change it from a 24 fret neck to 23 but mainly because there would have been too much hanging over the sound hole with the bridge relocation. The fret slots were cut with a .022" spiral cutter. First time I saw that bit I laughed a bit, I'd never seen a cutter that small and I thought it was a joke. Mitering the binding. Some people don't realize how easy this is. Sharpen your chisel until it's really shiny on the back and then you can use the reflection of the board to match the angle. I'm not sure how to explain it so hopefully the pictures make it self explanitory. I also got the truss rod in. I don't understand stewmacs hot rod truss rods. You buy a special bit that fits the brass ends of the rod but the adjustment nut is wider. Usually I just chisel out the extra space but I had a 1/4" bit sitting on the side of the router table to I popped that in to see what it did and just like that I figured out how to make the adjustment nut fit perfect.

So I learned a good lesson this week. I got pretty sick last week and was working on final sanding out this guitar. I thought it was good after I was getting impatient from my headache and whatever I was sick with and figured if there was any scratches left it would be on the edges and get covered with the burst so I went and sprayed sealer well when I went and checked on it I noticed a bunch of scratches that were not going to be covered by the burst, if anything they would have sucked in the color so I spent the day basically sanding off the sealer in a bunch of places and re-sanding it... awesome... Lesson learned, don't work on guitars when sick. Either way here's some pictures of the body with sealer. I'm really happy that the back didn't get scrapped after that mishap with the CNC because it looks great with a finish on it.

Setting dovetail joints I think is kind of fun, setting them on an archtop has an extra step where you have to fit a portion of the neck to the recurve and this has to be constantly adjusted as you fit the dovetail so you don't take off too much or too little and if the recurve section isn't at the right height it hangs the neck basically on a shelf so you don't know how tight the dovetail actually is. I much prefer setting dovetails on flat top acoustics over archtops but it's not that much worse. It took me about 5 or 6 hours to do this one so hopefully the next archtop I do doesn't take me that long. It was also nice that you only need to set about an inch and a half into the recurve and the rest is just free floating. I start with an undercut. For those who don't know, when you glue a dovetail you don't need a huge glueing surface, all you need is glue on the joint and on the edge of the heel. Most old acoustics like Martins and Gibsons do this as well. I just take a chisel and cut away wood. This also makes fitting the neck to the body easier. Normally I would do this before glueing the heel cap on but I wanted to try it differently this time. I tried a bunch of different ways to fit the neck extension to the recurve. I found that pulling sandpaper like you would when setting a neck to the body worked good for roughing but I gave up on that idea and just switched to some curved scrapers which worked better for me. You could use chalk to see the high points but I don't like this because it doesn't always transfer to the wood and the chalk is a pain to get off spruce. Another way would be to use carbon paper but it's the same thing as chalk minus the clean up. I think it's easier to just set the neck in the pocket and see where the high points are. It's faster this way too and if you put a light on the other side you can see where it shines through. I believe it's up to a thousandth of an inch that the human eye can see a gap in things and when you add light it's plain as day where high and low points are.

Here's the long overdue update on this build. I forgot to take many pictures because I was working on this around my baritone build and an 8 string electric... I'm getting to busy and they all three have to be done by May. Couple things I had to finish before the neck set. Like glue on the heel cap and glue down some loose fret ends.

Glueing in the end graft and binding. I forgot to take pictures of cutting the end graft slot but I just do that with a japanese saw and chisels.

I completely forgot about the end graft area and got a nice little bump in the binding channels so I had to patch that. I'm glad I hadn't gotten rid of my left over cedar yet. I fit it by just sanding it and checking its fit. I couldn't clamp it so when I glued it I had to hold it and push it in place for about 10-15 mins or so until the glue had set up enough to hold. After the glue dried I used a chisel to clean up the slots and get everything set again.

Setting up for routing the binding channels. The jig I used is made off two drawer sliders that let the router slide up and down, I think it's the one LMI sells. I don't like the idea of using a dremel because the bit can flex some and the channels won't be squared to the side, they will be squared to the top radius. Here's the craddle the guitar sits it to keep it square. Setting up to bend the binding. I was a little worried about the snakewood because it's supposed to be brittle but I had no problems bending it. It bent just as easy as any other wood. I use the same method to bend the binding as I do the sides.

Time to update, this last month had been busy with class and everything going on. I decided to do some inlays. I wasn't sure if I wanted too or not with a snakewood board but I figured since I already have an expensive board and need to sit back and watch a machine cut the fan fret sots hoping I didn't forget something in the CAM program and have a very expensive piece of firewood I might as well cut some more hopes in it right? Here's the print off. The woods I am using is Bocote, Padauk, Maple and Mahogany. The leaf stems are made out of Walnut.

Ouch that's not fun. I had a similar issue the other day. I was sick and final sanding my archtop and thought I was good so I went and sprayed. Needless to say I looked at it the other day and noticed scratches all over the so I got to sand off a lot of the sealer to re-finish sand. I learned not to work on stuff like that when you are sick and have no patience. By the way this build is looking good.

I wouldn't worry about it unless you want to add them. I don't think the ebony cap will warp the headstock but it's up too you. If you do I'd add another ebony cap instead of a black dyed one but that's just me.

I still don't buy this myth.I set all my necks as dead flat as I can...IMO "neck relief" is nothing more than urban legend based on half thought out theoretical principles that I have personally never seen proved in practice.Fret buzz is something you get when you don't do proper fretwork and "relief" just sometimes gives a convenient excuse for imperfect action.I feel the same way about "ramping" the last few frets.... Of course,I only discarded these notions after doing my own legwork...meaning I tried all methods and did all of the testing myself with no bias...and that is how I reached my current biased stance.I recommend everyone does the same for themselves. The immobilizing part was a joke (notice the face thing). He asked why not immobilize it then use the rod to adjust it so I made the smart ass comment that you can't adjust something that's immobilzed As to the fret buzz the reason I did was because I didn't route an angle into my neck pockets. My frets were level, I checked them with straightedges and feeler gauges but since I was using no neck angle I was getting fret buzz or at least that's what I came up with because when I put in a neck angle I never got fret buzz. You could push down the strings and a .002" feeler gauge would fit but would be a tight fit on the next fret up so the strings was hitting the fret when it vibrated, for some reason the neck angle fixed it but I still put in a bit of neck relief but only a couple thousandths at the 7th fret when fretting the 1st and 15th fret so there's basically barelly any. Adding the fallaway to the end of a fretboard makes sense for acoustics because there is no support for the fingerboard from the neck after it meets the body so since the neck and body move differently it makes sense to add fallaway. Most of the acoustics you see at guitar store don't have it and that's why they get that bump where it meets the body. But it if works for you go ahead and do it, everyone builds different and someones view of a low action could be a lot higher than someone else.

Dang, thx for sharing that one,definately cheaper! Prostheta, I was already thinking, why fiber to make it immobile and then add a trussrod to move it. pan_kara, what does FTW mean? If you used the carbon fiber to make it immobile you wouldn't be able to move it with the truss rod A bunch of companies use carbon fiber reinforcements but they aren't necessary. Just remember to check out string tensions on existing instruments and compare them to what you are building. D'addario has a list of string tensions for their strings and an equation to figure out others on their website. For a 4 string bass I wouldn't worry about it at all unless you were using super massive strings that would pull a lot. I'd just stick with a truss rod regardless though because you want to be able to adjust the neck (esspecially if it's a flatsawn piece) and you want to be able to maintain a couple thousandths of an inch or so up bow in the neck to help keep fret buzz down. I built my first few electrics and set the neck up stick straight and had fret buzz whenever I tried to set a low action until I put a slight up bow in it, then everything worked. Don't worry about the strings warping and deforming the neck either since that's what the truss rod is for.

Thanks, that's my OCD showing, even if I know no one will ever see whatever mark is bothering me I do my best to hide it. That's what killed me when I glued the top on because I had a couple holes from drilling the depth marks that I wasn't able to get rid of... Reminds me of a joke a friend of mine said where he was trying to decide if it was bad when you started calling OCD "CDO" because it's in alphabetical order

It seems a lot of acoustic builders do this part differently. Some use a radius dish the same way I do for the back and radius the whole top edge, others use a radius bar and just sand a bevel into the edge. I do this because my sides have a flat edge on the tops glueing surface but a curved edge on the back, If I were to sand the top on a radius dish it would curve the top edge and it would throw off measurments. Kind of hard to explain but if you look at the picture of my side template you will see the flat and curved edges I am talking about. Top edge beveled with a 20' radius and then 25' radius at the top edge where the neck goes. I put a little bit of a flatter radius on the upper transverse brace just to make sanding the neck extension height easier so I don't take away toom uch wood. Glueing on the top. Starting to look like a guitar now. Next week I'll be working on the neck more, binding the body and maybe getting the fingerboard made. For a 17" lower bout it's surprisingly comfortable to sit with. I was getting a feel for it and it wasn't much different than the dreadnought I built last spring except my arm was a little high up but oh well, it's a lot better than I thought it would be when I originally drew the design. This design was the result of me drawing a dreadnought shape then basically morphing it into a bigger shape. I think when happened was it was lengthened by an inch or so then the lower bout was widened, the waist stayed the same but was moved up a bit and the upper bout was more rounded if I remember right. The idea was to get a medium jumbo sized guitar that was still comfortable to play.

Here's my process for doing side purfling. I thickness the binding down a little oversized, tape the ends of the binding and the purfling together then wrap it with sewing thread to keep everything tight. Then I use Stewmacs thin super glue that is the viscosity of water to seep inbetween the two woods, after an hour of drying I use a razor blade to scrape off the glue and the thread and I thickness everything to final thickness. An issue you can run into with superglue and figured wood is the glue seeping into the figure and "freezing" it, much like when you put a stain on flamed maple to accent the flame but when you use glue it can cause the figure to not change appearance when you shine the light on it so to try and keep that from happening I keep everything thick and then try my best to sand off as much glue that seeped in as possible. Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't.

Finishing up the top braces here. I left the bridge plate slightly thicker than a 6 string just because of the extra wear it will get from the 2 extra strings, also the hope is that it will help keep the top from getting a bulge behind the bridge like a 12 string does. Working on the top braces. Originally I expected the strings to put out a lot more pressure so I made the braces pretty beefy in every dimension but in the end it ended up stiffening the top way to much so I spent a lot of time shaving off a lot of brace wood just to loosen it up before I could even voice it.

Back on. And of course I forgot to add the x-brace caps so back to the go bar deck.

Here's a shot of the sides before they were notched to fit the back braces. Notching the back brace slots. Glueing the back on. I had to take it to a radius dish first though to radius the block ends and the radius the edge of the sides to match the tops radius.

I had a lot of issues with the cedar center seams. Normally I'd just glue in the strip then cut out slots to fit in the back braces but with a 3 piece back and double x-brace I figured it would work better to fit each piece individually well I had a lot of corners fall off because cedar is so soft so here's fixing them. I fit new corner pieces in and then once the superglue dried I used an xacto knife to cut off the excess and sanded the bevel in to match it. It ended up working pretty well. I also opened up the neck pocket.