ADFinlayson

That is a cool idea, I'd have to shim a router or something to get the taper right or I'd just be repeating the same angle. although I suppose if it's inset, it doesn't actually need to be that tidy as long as the shape is bang on what the neck heel is. I'll see how I get on with my bolts first and if I can get it to line up

If I had gone with a mortise and tenon joint (which I was really close to doing), the mortice route would have been square with the front of the guitar and not square with the centre line and I don't think I would be able to correct the x axis. I think there is a way back from this with the butt joint providing my bolts will allow it to go on square, but they may not.

That isn't far off what I've been thinking Scott, I might try taking a bit off the body (not much because the sides are 2.2mm) and a bit off the tenon to reduce the amount I need to take off both parts. I'm hoping that when the bolts arrive, I'll be able to at least bolt it on straight and then scribe then tenon to give me the right shape. If it doesn't bolt on straight then I'm shit out of luck. I've learnt a couple of things the hard way regarding ordering of tasks on this kind of build. 1. I won't rout truss rod, shape headstock or stick headstock veneers on prior to getting the neck set right 2. I'll pre drill the holes for the bolts in the heel block prior to gluing in the block so I can be sure the holes are plumb with the block Fortunately I didn't rush in to routing binding channels.

I understand what you're saying re neck angle and bridge height, from my calculations and meddling, I currently have 11.5mm clearance at the bridge saddle calculation, but I issues on the X to sort out before I get to Y. I think the next few pictures are worth 1000 swear words... Any ideas how to correct this? Essentially the reason the sides didn't go back into the mould comfortably (I now know) is because they became slightly offset, the bottom half is further ahead of the top half.

Another thing I forgot to mention. I wanted to glue it upside down again but I didn't want to press the gobars in the soft spruce, even with my cork clamping cauls, I suspect it would probably dent it so so I was cleaning up the glue thoroughly once it was clamped one really nice thing about the gobar deck is you can clean up the sides easily without a 100 clamps in the way!

Shaped the top and back braces Then drilled a couple of hols into the heel block 8.5mm to take M8 screws, I figured a little bit of play might not be a bad thing if I have to tweak neck angles, but that is a guess. Now came the most difficult bit of the build I found so far which was to notch out the sides where the braces go. I tried to put the sides back in the mould but I struggled to get them to go back in nicely, I guess there may have been a bit of movement over the last year, they have possibly got a hair off square and although I could get them in, they seemed under tension and If I notched the brace locations in the mould, that tension would stay in the guitar forever and it seemed better to locate the notches in it's relaxed state. So I sat the top on top of the sides locating centre (awkward to get it not to move around), marked the notches with pencil, then used my measure gauge to mark the heigh of the braces so I knew how deep to notch, fret saw to cut to depth then small chisel to carefully remove the material from both sides, outside in and finessed with a jewellers file. had a little bit of slop left to right but figured the important part of the joint was probably top and bottom. x brace notches were by far the most awkward. I had it sat on the dish when I did this which helped to keep it still. Next was the biggy! glued on the top in the gobar deck, I had the radius dish with 28' radius facing up and glued it top side down to help prevent squeeze out making a mess of the sides. Did a dry run first then glued it and left it in the deck overnight. I noted that the back of the bottle of titebond says clamp for 30 mins but leave 24 hours before stressing the joint - I'm bending the spruce over the radius of the sides which I considered to be "Stressing the joint" You may notice I only notched for one of the braces on the back. I decided to stop notching the back just in case anything changed dimensionally with the glue up. glue up was a roaring success, band sawed off the excess then used my trim router with a new flush trim bit to flush the spruce with the sides. I did it hand held because I wanted to climb cut to prevent this insanely soft wood tearing out and doing it on the table would no doubt throw it across the room. I want to reserve that privilege for myself if it implodes. Close up of some notches, not perfect but I reckon acceptable At this point I'm considering neck break angle, you can see it's bang on 1.5º but the very front is just a hair off square. I figured I would get the back on then true this up with some sanding and take another measurement as it's bound to affect the neck angle slightly. I also did some more tapping now that the top was attached to the sides. Holding it with the sound hole balance on my thumb, listening to the front around the tone bars and tapping the back at the bridge plate there is a definite bong sound which seems like it might be alright but I noticed there doesn't appear to be a huge amount of flex if I push against the top. I've got a couple of guitars here to compare, a cheap washburn nylon which has no flex whatever, a taylor gs mini which has no flex and a Camps nylon which has a bit of flex. So I'm still none the wiser so after shaving a bit more off those mini braces on the bass side, I'm going with it. Notched out the back braces and got her glued up. Used all 28 gobars as it needed a little more persuasion to get round the tighter dome of the back. Left in the deck overnight and will see how it went in the morning. Oh 2 things I forgot to mention. 1. I made 2 vertical braces on each side to braces the sides, I don't know if that's enough, they're 1.5mm thick ebony. 2. I made a bit of a chamfer on the top and the bottom of the end block to create a smaller glueing surface to hopefully enable less stiffness in the top and back. I don't know if that will help tonally or not.

Thanks Mike, the beauty of still photos is it looks a lot easier than it is, had there have been video, it would be rather sweary. Thank you, I have a few jigs for this - I bought the radius dish and the OM mould, made the gobars and deck, but no special skills. I have been winging it for a few years and after enough builds some of it just becomes muscle memory, This build however is a step or 10 into the unknown and fully back to winging it.

Holy moley that's looking good

that natural binding is delicious

made myself a bridge reinforcement out of a bit of ebony, 2.5mm thick then radiused it on the dish, it's slightly bigger than the one on the plan to give me a it of leeway for bridge placement but it's a bit thinner too, figured it doesn't need to be that thick considering the density Also did a load of brace shaping. I'd like to say I voiced the top but really I just went at them with a chisel until they looked cool. I was testing the sound but resting the top of the sound hold on my thumb, ear up to the front while knocking the bridge plate with my finger. I was definitely noticing changes to the sound after reducing the braces but I have no idea what I'm actually listening for. After all that brace shaping, I glued on the transverse brace and the sound hole brace that was missing, out of the gobar this time because I want the transverse bit to remain flat. I did a bit of research on the google today and found the off forum posts that say mahogany is not a good bracing material due it's weight to stiffness, i.e it's not particularly hard for a hard wood and hard woods are heavy, and that spruce is the best bracing material because although it is a softwood it has the greatest stiffness to weigh ratio. But that being said, mahogany is a still a stiffer wood that spruce, it's just heavier and I think I must have made the right decision making them narrower at 6mm instead of 8mm. I've also taken off quite a lot of material so they aren't that tall anymore yet the spruce is still taking on the shape of the dish. I wonder how much of this is actually relevant in the real world and how much is just purist talk.

Epic, even the nut has a bound throne

Thanks! rest assured I will be asking for tips when it comes to bridge!

Thanks Andy! Next question... My bridge reinforcement strip, I was going to make out of 3mm ebony, should I radius that on the dome before glueing it on or keep if flat? I'm assuming that I will need to sand the underside of the bridge to match the radius of the soundboard anyway.

Thanks for the tip, I was originally planning to put a pickup in this one but I've since changed my mind. I'm not expecting my first acoustic to be world changing so I'm going to save the fancy electrics for the next one. P.S Andy where do you get your bracing materials? When I search all my usual sources, I can't find anyone that sells any spruce.

Tonights antics was all about top bracing. I cut all my braces out of quartersawn mahogany to 13mm x 6mm. I made them narrower on purpose than the plans, rationale being that it's a harder wood so braces can be thinner - I may or may not regret that later. Then I flipped the dish over to the 28' side and radiused them all apart from the transverse brace (I think that's what it's called). I cut the half lap joint with a fret saw and chisel, it was fairly tight but there was still a little bit of play so I clamped them to my mdf template to make sure they stayed at the correct angle. Then once that had set, I glued a 2mm strip of ebony over the top of the joint for some reinforcement Then I radiused the x brace on the dish - Next time I do this I think I'll rough in the radius on the braces before I glue them up because this was time consuming Next I used a scalpel to cut a load of holes out of another copy of the plan so I can draw the locations of the braces on the underside of the soundboard. You may notice that the plan is slightly forward on the soundboard in the below pic, the reason for that is that I decided to make the guitar scale 25" instead of the traditional 25.4" for no other reason than I have a fret scale ruler for 25" and I don't to go down the road of manually measuring for my fret slots, so I moved the sound hole and the brace patter forward by 10mm. Another thing I may or may not regret later. I still need to make the bridge reinforcement strip and glue in the transverse brace, I will do that brace seperately off the dish because I want to keep that section flat so the fretboard has a flat service to stick to, I'll need to flatten that area of the sides to match. I was using a razor blade to clean up glue squeeze out which worked really well, but once it started getting busy it was impossible to reach all areas so I chiseled a point into a piece of dowel which worked nicely to get to all the hard to reach areas. Lastly I wasn't too sure about those little braces around the sound hole, I figured they were just slight reinforcement for that area so I thicknessed them down to 2mm before glueing them down. I still need to do the one just above the x brace but I couldn't reach to mark out the mitres so it'll have to wait until the weekend. Really enjoying getting back to this build, it's both exciting and calming all at the same time. Remind me I said that when it comes to making and locating the bridge.

Thanks, mahogany braces it is. You were totally right about back thickness, once it was down to 2mm I could really feel it start to flex and wobble. Glued it up and went down just under 2mm, My caliper was measure between 1.7-1.85mm (I think the drum sander needs some tuning up). Got it glued up over lunch and made some serious progress this evening. Cut out and shaped my back braces on the dish - 15x6mm. I couldn't find anything suitable with the grain going in the other direction so I just used the offcut from when I cut the back out and it was just long enough with a few mm to spare, actually I think it looks pretty cool! Dug the gobar deck out of the shed. Decided to stop before the last brace, it was starting to look like spaghetti and I only had 3 gobars left and I don't want to rush the clamping Also finished shaping the headstock, the veneer on the back came out pretty well though there is a bit of a split at the bottom I think I'm going to have to dust and glue if I don't carve through it.

Thanks Andy, do you know of any reason why I can't use mahogany to the brace the top? I don't have any soft wood that would be suitable without buying something.

Bit of neck progress. I made a 13º scarf joint first by bandsawing along the line then thicknessed the headstock piece down to 13.5mm, then double sticked the two pieces together and got the joint finalised with my no5 plane. So far so good, but then I used cocktail sticks as locator pins while glueing and clamping, the cocktail sticks snapped and the headstock slid down hill, so I hurriedly tried screws and the headstock part of the joint split and I threw it across the room and did it all again. Second time around I used some 2.5mm aluminium rod that I was using for side dots which was successful. Sticking with offucts and cheap timbers (the neck is made from offcuts from previous neck builds) I'm using cheap ebony faceplates I got from Maderas Barber a while back, I think these faceplates were £8 for pieces long enough to get two face plates out of. I thinknessed one half to 1.5mm to make the front and thicknessed the other half to .5mm for a veneer to go on to the back, figured it would look cool, mask the ears I glued on and add some strength... Absolutely nothing to do with my scarf joint being a touch lopsided I decided to have headstock access for the truss rod because it would make life easier not having to drill a perfectly aligned hole in the transverse bar and I was thinking about doing a butt joint and bolt on contruction but the shorted truss rod I could find at a reasonable price was 360mm about 1/2" too long (the line in the centre of the next pic denotes the 14th fret) so I think I'll have to either make a small recess in the neck block to house the end of the truss rod, or make the neck a heel a mortice and tenon joint - Option 1 sounds easier. I got some threaded steel bushings to get into the neck joint, M8 on the inside so some m8 hex bolts or similar should do to bolt it on. I've got the headstock rouged out and I just need to glue the heel block on then I think I'll leave the neck until I've got the top braced and glued on so I can determine what angle I need to cut the heel to. It's funny, when building electric guitars I always find it's easier to build the neck in it's entirety and build the body to suit, acoustics seem to be the opposite way round.

@Andyjr1515 looks like you've diagnosed my issue successfully. My back was > 2.5mm and the bottom two braces were wide and short, the other error I made was to have the centre reinforcement strip grain running in the same direction as the back grain. Lastly I used curly maple for the back bracing which may or may not have contributed to warpage. So looking back now, everything I did to that back was working against me. I've got a drum sander so I can be fairly accurate with thickness, I'll go thinner on the next one and use something else for bracing. I've got a load of African mahogany offcuts from previous necks so I think I'll try that and keep them all 6mm wide x 15mm tall. Thanks for the advice, really helpful!

Finally getting back to the OM build after a 13 month hiatus. The back and braces have thoroughly warped so I need to remake that. I bought a new walnut back a few months ago and it's been sat in the workshop with the dehumidifier running ever since so hopefully this one will go better. The sound board hasn't warped so that's a blessing, I put a lot of effort into the rosette. Did a bit of work on the sides this evening. Made an end wedge out of an ebony offcut and got that installed. Chiselling that bit out of the sides was very satisfying. I've been doing some work on the neck too so another update tomorrow.

4 in your first year, caught the bug then Welcome, that walnut is going to look lovely.

Wow your man J did a real number on you looking forward to seeing how this one comes out

Thanks Jay, I liked having done binding a lot more than I liked doing binding. Lately I've been wiping a bit of Danish oil on ebony fretboards which I think works well, I'll probably do that on this one. I don't know whether it will look dirty over time or even if the strings will mar the inlay as aluminium is a fairly soft metal, it's all experimental. The other build is another one I'm working on alongside, they're very similar builds apart from body shape. Build thread here:

Started this for my friend Tom a while ago, it had a bit of a hiatus because changed his mind about 5 times then went quiet on me, then I packed up and moved, in fact he was my 3rd comission so it's been on the cards for about 2 years. Specs to be - European quilt maple top - African mahogany neck and body - African ebony fretboard and peghead - 24.75 scale - 24 frets I'm missing a few pics but here is some of the progress. That was as far as I got on it last year, according to iCloud these were taken in November. I want to get some lacquer on these two before the weather turns cold again so cracking on now. I decided I'd have ago at headstock binding as I haven't done that before. routing was fairly scary and made more difficult having already glued the fretboard on. I got a small amount of tearout but not so much that I couldn't hide with ebony dust and glue later. I used a 1.5mm bearing on the makita trimmer and had that in router table (workmate with a router insert). I made some binding strips from offcuts from a particularly curly maple neck blank I used on another build, ran them through the drum sander until they were a hair over 1.5mm. and had a go at bending them on the iron. Bending the binding was nice and easy with the iron at 280ºC and plenty of water, then I taped them in place until they cool down to hopefully hold their shape, required a lot of patience! The awkward part though was cutting mitres. I spent a long time sharpening a couple of chisels and I think I've got them sharper than they've ever been. you can see the bottom corner of the headstock in the photo below, the aforementioned tearout - I wasn't going to do any climb cutting holding the headstock so it was just the router but turning the wrong way into end grain. I might try wiping some teak oil around the edges before trying this in future, I've heard some classical builders do that before routing their binding channels to protest the soundboard, apparently it works well because it penetrates into the grain deeper than a lot of oils. Worth a try! Anyway, brushed on a modest amount of titebond then taped the strips down with binding tape. Then I trimmed everything flush with the top of the ebony Getting that angle right with the fretboard binding channel was an absolute bastard Then I filled the gaps with ebony dust and thin CA glue After a tidy up on the top, every happy with it. The headstock still isn't thicknessed so I'll tidy up the sides once that is done. On to inlays, used aluminium for the first time. I thought I'd try it for a few reasons, it's not brittle like wood and this design is a quite thin in places, it's much cheaper than shell and this inlay is quite bit, it's hard and shiny when sanded smooth online the plastic pearl like materials. I turned it over and clamped the inlay into a radius beam so it would take on the radius of the fretboard Used the dremel and a couple of router bits to make the channel and glued it in with black superglue, then dropped a load of ebony dust over it. Recut slots and gave it a sand, I'll give it another going over once the binding is on. And the headstock logo I really liked working with ali, I used some 1mm sheet for headstock logo and 2mm sheet for fretboard inlay to account for the radius. It was about £4/sheet on ebay which is enough for about 10 guitars. I also like how it would confirm to the shape of the cavity with a little bit of persuasion I think it will be my goto inlay material for a while unless someone asks for something else. Fretboard binding and fretting next.

lol my 15th build has flaws, get used to flaws!