SwedishLuthier

Bind the access panel with a binding the same thickness as the router bit. That way it will also be possible to do a square access panel. Mitre the bindings likely at the corners. It will give you an elegant look and the router bit has better odds to last.

Mine is really simple. It's a sjöbergs http://www.brsjoberg.se/eng/hyvelframe.asp 1550S with the added cabinet and drawers for all the heavy work like planning, sanding, routing and so on. It is very traditional in Europe. And then like 4 meters of a simple chipboard bench I made myself for assembly, electronics work and so on. My shop is small but I might be able to expand soon.

I try to use open jacks all the time. You know the type were you actually see the contacts. I appreciate the fact that you can simply just bend the contacts slightly to adjust them if they start to make bad contact (can’t find the right word right now…). That is impossible with those enclosed jacks. And keep the XT Live.. Can’t see that the rack would add much except for a lot of weight to lug around. I’m sooo in love with my XT Live. I use it with an old Kitty Hawk German stereo 2x80W tube amp (talking about much weight…) and that is killer.

All of the access panels I have seen, including the one on my resent build, need a support frame that has to be in place before the body is assembled.

Yeah, I know. I just thought that I would mention this idea that I read somewhere a long time ago. Acoustic guitar builders are sometime bad at thinking outside of the box (pun intended). Most of the acoustic bass guitars I have ever seen are simply slightly oversized guitars and I would like to see some genuine new ideas that derive from that. Removing one string on a bass is one great idea that might help acoustic basses deliver more/better sound. Hmmm, wait a minute. Geodesic box, multiple sound boards…muuuust draaaww, muuuust build

A quick thought on acoustic bass guitars. The responsiveness and “loudness” of a guitar is directly coupled to the stiffness of the top. To be able to counter the massive pull of four bass strings the top is going to be VERY stiff. This makes the volume suffer. One way to remedy this is to build a (yes I know that this might sound like a strange suggestion) 3-string bass. The sting pull on a 3-string bass is much less. This will make it possible to make a much more lightly braces top and possible a much more responsive instrument. I think that there used to be a very interesting article about this over at (yea I read that you don’t like it but anyway…) MIMF. Couldn’t find it right now but maybe you can find it.

Robban Sahrling at Ares Guitars uses all sorts of wood for fretboards (and necka ans bodies too). Send him a mail from his page http://www.aresguitar.se/ He is very frendly and have answered some questions i have asked about odd woods.

I agree. They have moved away from that a long time ago and cut away the tang like everybody else

Robban Sahrling from Ares Guitars www.aresguitar.se, a fellow Swedish Luthier, uses Oak as a fretboard wood a lot with good results. He’s opinion is that it is somewhere between Ebony and Rosewood sound wise. It has the attack from the ebony and the warmth of rosewood.

I don’t intend to be rude but after the first couple of feet or so you should maybe considered the tool faulty and stopped. I have that tool and it is possible to get the wire into the nipper a little wrong, and that will take too much off. But that only happens when I am in a hurry and need to slow myself down. Otherwise the fret tang nipper is a wounderful tool that works like magic. If you have the problem all the time, call StewMac and tell them that they need to replace your. I don’t think that they will argue with you about that. But they will not replace 12’ of wire that you have destroyed. The only shows that the most important tool you have as a Luthier is patience. The Gibson way of doing things is was to cut the wire flush to the actual fret board and let the plastic binding stick up over the surface of the fretboard. Then the binding were scraped flush with the fretboard AND the frets, if you get the picture. A binding with bumps were the frets are. So it was actually the binding that was the end of the fret! So for refrets the fret ere removed, the binding scraped / sanded flush and the frets were installed as on modern guitars.

A front AND back cap would strengthen the body considerable.

It’s all because Leo Fender designed the Telecaster (and later the Strat an the other models) to be easy and cheap to manufacture. He started with a 1 by 3 or something like that that was readily available. Then he thicknessed the head part to what his first customers found to be a comfortable thickness at the head. The taper just happened because Leo didn’t wanted (his workers) to spend time on thicknessing the rest of the neck. A lot of design decisions that were made on the Tele and then have followed the electric guitar throughout history are a result of this type of thinking. Quick, easy to manufacture and ready available parts or blanks.

Tutorial: http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/A-NUTS.html

OK, some more info is needed. Are you going to use plastic bindings or wood bindings? Do you mean stain the wood or apply a tinted, semi opaque finish? I’m guessing the first but its better to be sure. I do plastic bindings this way: - bind - scrape flush - sand the whole body with at least 400 grit - stain the wood - use a rag to wipe of the dried stain on the bindings - IF there are any dye left, use a razorblade to scrape of the rest using a light touch and your thumb as a edge guide - one to three coats of clear depending of how thick you go - apply tinted finish (opaque or for a sunburst) over the first couple of layer - when the finish is still slightly soft scrape the bindings once again. If you wait longer it wil chip. - spray clear to desired thickness - sand and buff For wood bindings I imagine that you will have to do it this way: - bind - scrape flush - sand the whole body with at least 400 grit - one to three coats of clear depending of how thick you go - apply tinted finish over the first couple of layer - continue as above

I won’t be able to chip in much info on the topic of mass/volume/weight as this is my first acoustic. I also got my top braces glued on before someone brought my attention to measuring the weight of the braces… Rich, when you say “cross drilling” do you mean drilling holes in the main core of the brace? I’m pretty sure that it is to remove weight not for adjusting strength. For a thought experiment we can compare the brace to one of those steel beams that are used in construction. The web is thin and only has one purpose. To hold the upper and lower parts (have no idea what that is called) together and not allowing them to move in relativity to each other. Back to the braces. The web is the centre part of the brace and if you drill reasonably sized holes it them you can do the same thing as with the steel beams, save a lot of weight. But if it is right as you said (and I have NO reason to doubt that) there is much more weight in the top itself compared to the braces. Over at the MIMF forum I started a discussion about an alternative way of tuning the tops that I had read about, and some results that I tried to learn from that. I think that it actually made some people confused and some down right upset. I think that I found out that the practice of tap-tuning tops is not wrong but it is very much incomplete. You have to stress the top as you would in real life because the stress of the strings change the way a top sound radically. Try this link to the discussion: http://www.mimf.com/cgi-bin/WebX?14@90.MV0....41@.1dcf7c81/0 Don’t know if you must be logged in to see the thread, but if so it is well worth the time to register. MIMF has a lot of info about acoustics. Love to hear your guitar when it is finished, Rich. Looking very good this far.

Do I get you right when I thinking that you will chamber an existing LP? Until that talk about the stripping of the colour I thought it was a scratch-build. If that's your idea I have seen id done somewhere on the net. The builder had made a guitar that was way too heavy. She planned off some wood equivalent to the thickness of the new back and then she routed out chambers from behind and glued on the new back. Size: Yes it matter. The bigger you go the more impact on the sound they will have. Remember that a control rout is roughly the size of a small chamber. And you don't really consider that to contribute very much to the sound. So if you just need to save weight, let the total weight be your guide. If you want a semi-semi-acoustic sound, go big on the chambers and leave as little as possible for top and back thickness.

Vaudeville, it can be done. Have a look here: http://peternaglitschluthier.com/T_thinlin...en_thinline.htm I used regular wood stain directly on bare wood and then clear coated. If you examine the picture you will see that the finish has flaked of some on the neck. That has nothing to do with the staining. It was my poor finishing job. I think that the green maple neck looks all right together with the green body but that is a matter of taste…

What are your neck wood? How many coats? It is partly a question of taste. Some people spray two or three coats on a mahogany neck without grain filling because they like the raw feeling of the textured finish. If you are doing maple no filling is needed and you can get away with 5 to 10 coats depending on how heavy coats you can get away with without drippings or curtains. If you go for only a few coats you must be very careful while wet-sanding. Normally I shoot between 10 and 15 coats for a maple neck and I go up to 20 or sometimes even 25 for a mahogany neck even when I use grain filler. It gives me a little more insurance against sanding through.

If you plan to lay the body flat it might help to have this thing that I *think* is called a “Lazy Susanne”. Put some dowels or nails (head up please) on the spinning plate and lay the body there. This way you can do the front and the sides. Wait till the Poly has cured. I don’t know if 20 min is enough if doing it this way. Check the recommendations. Turn the thing over and shoot the back and the sides again. What, two coats on the sides? Yeas! The most likely place for a sand-through later on is on the sides and especially on the edges. It is good to have some extra finish for the first couple of guitars. Me, I hang both bodies and necks.

Mine cut very accurate surfaces. I think I know what you see in the picture. Maybe there was some accident on the top maple (?) piece. I think that the router bit must some how lowered itself for the last pass. Right Phil? But you can trust me, the cuts are very accurate if you put some effort in getting everything square and level.

An Aussie that doesn’t know everything about and around BBQs? Sorry, couldn’t resist that one. I have a friend that moved to Australia and he told me that you were the world champions when it came to barbeques. Found a link:http://www.wosab.se/Irene-sv.htm

Very cool. But if you made you’re in 10 minutes I guess that you are about 50 minutes quicker than me.

For an easy and perfect scarf joint: http://www.peternaglitschluthier.com/head_...d_joint_jig.htm

I haven’t done it my self, but I have seen it done. I suggest that you do it this way: - Glue the neck lams together - Glue on the fret board (might leave this out, just mark were its going to be) - Cut/plane away the part of the neck blank were the fret board isn’t to make room for the top - Glue the mahogany to the neck. - Glue up the top (if it is to be book matched). - Cut out for the elevated fretboard part - Glue on the top - Continue as you would on a standard guitar

I’m keeping the look really simple. Sitka top, mahogany for back, sides and neck, ebony bridge, fretboard, bindings and a Richard Schneider inspired soundhole rosette that rests “on top” of the top and the back has no back strip at all (OK, and a wine inlay for the fretboard, gotta have something pretty to look at…). Only those three colours, Sitka, mahogany and ebony. That keeps the amount of decisions down. I’m doing an X-braced back and that was glued up yesterday. Why X-braced? I just thought that it would help keeping that domed shape better than the traditional ladder bracing. I decided to copy the Taylor neck attachment for two reasons - I come from electrics. I like the idea of being able to work with thin shims if things don’t really work out like they should, or if the guitar need a neck reset in the future. - I saw the Taylor neck joint at Frank Fords www.fret.com There he stated that it was only good for high tech production builds. So I had to do it to prove to myself that it actually could be done. And I read something Mattia wrote over at MIMF about him not gluing the fretboard overhang to the body. He said that it worked fine. I will start without glue and see what happens.