idmicheal

So after a while of handling it and looking at pictures of other archtops, I came to the conclusion that my arch is too steep in two ways: I went off of Benedetto's specifications of a 1" thick starting blank, but his guitars are 17", while mine is 16", so on the next guitar I planed the blanks to 7/8" before starting to carve. The arch is also much too steep and abrupt in the cutaway. It is hard to explain, but I should've carved the upper bout much more shallowly and gradually, and less of a "hump". But I made this pin to fit onto my drill press table. When used in conjunction with the depth stop, it allows one to to get a uniform depth (in this case 1/4") while still conforming to the outside arch. At first it was just a bare dowel, but it did this, so I added the eraser, but it ended up just squishing into oblivion and denting everything up anyway Guess I should've waited to drill before scraping... So this is what I ended up with.

Alright, it's been a few months, but I had to take a break because there was a suspicious correlation between working on the guitar and my grades lowering. But once the fall semester was over I really got back to work, and as it stands build #1 is just waiting to be finish sanded and sprayed, and build #2 is underway (new thread to come). I'm about to post all of my pictures since September, so hopefully I'll get it done either today or tomorrow! So after carving away at the top for a while, I took the edge down to ~1/4" with the Safe-T-Planer. And then finished the hand carving and scraped it clean.

I agree, Blackdog's stuff is always amazingly precise and clean. Someday I hope to actually "know what I'm doing" like he does

Woooah, I just looked at that last picture and it took me forever to realize that you were just holding the neck up to the body. I was thinking "Man, that neck is set waaayyyy to highup over the body! I wonder what he's doing!". But it's alright now, I'm not freaking out anymore. Don't worry This is looking really good. I love reading about how you solve your problems; it gives me good ideas and inspiration. You keep pointing out all of the little things that go wrong, but I bet you anything that you're the ONLY person that can see those. I like the screw-less selector. And I really have a thing for white guitars. My go-to guitar is a white '86 Kramer shredding guitar that I put a neck pickup in, and that is what got me into lutherie. So I saw that you have no inlays, not even side dots You must be one of those people that never even looks at their fingers

So in that last picture it looks like you braced the top pretty much exactly parallel to avoid the pickup cavities. will the height screws go into the braces, or do the avoid them altogether? I actually think I'll try x-bracing and see if I can situate them around pickups.

Nice save! The great thing about harder woods is that they tend to break cleanly. Yeah, if you put a top on it it should be structurally fine... I think

It is actually going to be fully hollow with a floating ebony bridge, so I have to wait until the top is completely lacquered and finished so I can fit the base of the bridge precisely to the curvature. I'll be doing the pickup holes and f-holes with a coping saw, which shouldn't be too hard due to the finished thickness being only 1/4"-3/16". Yeah, after gluing the torn-out piece back in (which still has a lot of excess wood on it), I just set the neck down for a while. Doing the top is definitely giving me a better outlook so that I'll have patience to deal with the headstock when I'm through. But I haven't taken the excess off of the torn- out piece, so I'm not sure how well it worked. I'll post pictures when I get back to it though. That darned school and work has all of my time tied up

When I was gluing the fingerboard on, I had just gotten all of my clamps in place, when I noticed that one of them had pulled the fingerboard off center, even though I had clamped some pieces of wood on either side to keep the fingerboard on the centerline. Luckily I saw it and was able to pop it off and re-center it. Gluing the headstock face veneer. I had a small dilemma with this; on the back I used a standard ebony veneer, but when I went to do the same on the front, I saw that the thinness of the veneer would make it impossible to have a smooth transition in the binding from the neck to the headstock. Benedetto accounts for this by placing the nut end of the fingerboard about 3/8" away from where the headstock angle begins and using the fingerboard stop to continue the headstock angle onto the neck, thereby facilitating a clean binding line. But I didn't really understand that until I'd already gone too far to do anything about it. It was kinda one of those things you don't completely understand on paper, only to have it seem quite obvious in real life. But luckily for me I had a piece of ebony a bit less that 1/4", so by using that as a veneer, I'll be able to have a good binding transition, with the sacrifice of a thinner, more aesthetically-pleasing headstock. Lesson learned. I had some tearout while I was routing the headstock shape, but I managed to find the piece and glue it back in. I haven't messed with it since then out of frustration, but hopefully it worked. You can also see on the left side of the photo, that there is a place where the bit rode in too far (I don't know how that sort of thing happens when using a template and flush-cut bit, but apparently it does). I'm a bit intimidated by the router at the moment, so I think I'll finish up the shaping with the bandsaw and rasps I started carving the top the other day, which is probably what I was most looking forward to and is proving to be quite fun, if labor intensive. It is pretty slow going with my finger plane; I've put about 9 hours into at this stage, and that is just having gotten the perimeter to approximately 1/4", without doing much in the way of accurate profiling. I got a pretty nasty blister on my thumb, and by the time I'm through I think my hands will be strong enough to crush a man's skull, but I think I'll hold off buying a palm plane to hog off more wood until later. We'll see if I still feel that way after I start on the hard maple back I recently made a trip out to use my friend's jointer, and got the maple back joined and glued. It had some inclusions on both edges, so I had to cut off about 1" from both sides and add on two pieces from farther up the blank where the upper bout would be located to accommodate the width of the lower bout. So it ended up being a four-piece back. I'm swamped with homework again, but I'd like to have this done before the end of the month so I can spray lacquer before it starts to freeze.

I haven't posted for a while, but I've been somewhat productive. I glued the neck extension and made both it and the 1/4" piece that fit into the truss rod channel flush with the neck. Then I cut the abalone for the inlay and inlayed the fretboard. And here is the oversized fingerboard stop.

Do you plan on binding the top? If so, it'll be interesting to see how you cut the rabbet on the upper horn

Great so far! I've actually been wanting to design something mandolin-inspired for a long time now. Can't wait to see more progress!

Yeah, I'm not even halfway done with my first and I'm already planning like three more I keep telling myself to wait until I finish one and can play it for a bit to see what I would do differently etc. But every time I go to the wood store I start daydreaming...

I love what yo did to that pick I bet you could market one of those as a high-speed, low wind resistance pick!

That finish is awesome. GOTM?

I tried wake boarding once; couldn't ever get up though. Skiing was slightly better. Today at my "real" job I was looking forward to being able to work on this tomorrow... but then I realized I have a week's worth of homework to do before Tuesday so... Maybe I'll try to squeeze the homework in while something is gluing

So if you decide to go fully hollow will the top and sides still be one piece due to the thickness of the blank? I've never heard of a pickup mounted into the fretboard I have a Gretsch with a floating pickup bracketed onto the fingerboard extension though. Sound really interesting though. Take lots of pictures!

That is a 1/8th" shim I glued at the first fret for the neck taper. I put it on the fingerboard side, which I know is flat, and then I planed the back of the neck. So by planing the back of the neck and making it flat, that shim makes it thinner toward the nut. Benedetto recommends a 3/32" taper from the first fret to the tenth, because he stopped planing the back of the neck at the tenth fret, so since I'm joining the neck at the seventeenth instead of the fourteenth, I planed farther up the neck, so I just took that same taper and found that it was 1/8" at the thirteenth.

Yeah, I really don't know what the deal is with that maple. The moisture content is down around 6-7%, so I know that it's dry. I'm just going to use my friend's jointer again and clamp it right away. I'm considering buying a long-sole hand plane before I start another build, because the 7 or so inch sole on my block plane just can't keep that long of an edge flat. But I added your website to my favorites You've got some cool stuff there! So today I did the neck taper with a Safe-T-Planer. The taper is 1/8th" from the first to the thirteenth fret. I made up a shim for the taper. I cut the dovetail, which I was more than a bit nervous about, being only my second dovetail (I cut the first as practice just before doing the real thing ). It required a bit of cleanup, but it's pretty accurate. Glued an ear onto the headstock to accommodate my shape. And, finally, I cut the joint for the fingerboard extension. If you look really closely, you can see that it isn't quite square with the dovetail, but it is only slightly off, and in the end it shouldn't matter, due to the fingerboard extension being shaped like the fingerboard anyway. I also cut a Gibson-style truss rod to the length I need and re-threaded it, but that isn't exciting, so I didn't take pictures Well... I'm calling it a day.

I also got my spruce top glued up, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting a good joint on the maple back. I ran it through my friend's jointer and it had a good joint right after, but I didn't get back to it to glue it up until a day or two after, and by then the boards had warped and no longer had a good joint. Top gluing. Gap in the maple joint. In the second photo you can see light through the joint. So I tried this, along with a using a block plane and scrapers, but the sole on my plane is too short to insure uniform flatness across the whole joint. I'll be able to use my friend's jointer again next weekend (if I can find time to do so after dove hunting ), so I think I'll just let it be until then, and work on other things in the meantime. I need to taper the neck and thickness the side, etc. I suppose with those cradles done I could start carving the top, but I'm a bit intimidated But I'm going to try to get some work done today; might make another post tonight.

Yeah, I actually got impatient and did a lot of work on my body mold with a drill press, coping saw and sanding sticks! But I the part I needed for the saw, so that allowed me to finish my body mold and make my carving cradles/clamping cauls. Body mold. Carving cradle gluing up. Both cradles.

I really like your design. I was thinking that it looked a bit familiar, and then you mentioned guitarnut (I can't recall if he ever finished that one). I'm having the same warping problem on some maple I'm trying to join; working on it all day and finally got frustrated and called it a day. For what it's worth, I like the tobacco bust in the mockups.

So, I was tinkering with my bandsaw yesterday, trying to figure out why it wouldn't track properly, and it turns out that this was the problem: Needless to say, I am pretty upset that the wheel hinge support was cast that poorly! What really gets me is that I was cutting under the recommended tension for the blade size I was using! That has significantly slowed down my progress, and I'm waiting to hear back from Rigid about it. But I did cut the truss rod rod channel and slot the fingerboard. It looks like until I get my bandsaw fixed and running so I can finish my body forms, that I'll be working mostly on the neck.

Haven't gotten as much done this week as I'd hoped, due to needing to use a friend's jointer, needing a new belt for my sander, and messing up the tracking on my bandsaw. I did get the neck rough-cut out and started on the body mold, but that is where I noticed the tracking issue on my bandsaw. Hard maple neck blank. I had some burning because the maple is so hard, and the billet is almost 3" thick. I'm hoping to use my friend's jointer on Thursday, and get my bandsaw tracking properly, and then I'll really make some progress! Edit: had some photo trouble.

That is such a beautiful guitar. Workmanship like that is what made me want to start building guitars myself. I wouldn't say $3,999 is too much, but it really depends on your area and the store that you have it in. But if it plays and sounds as good as it looks, then I wouldn't say that your price is too high. Awesome build!

I love that maple back! Is it just flatsawn hard maple?