ADFinlayson

The red one has been levelled with 600 grit and I've since sprayed 4 coats of proper nitro, it's had.3 days to cure so far. I think I'll give it another day or 2 before levelling with 1200, then I'll leave it as long as my patience will allow before buffing. I'm assuming it's not going to need 4 weeks given that it's only a top coat.

On to the new one. I wasn't very happy with the joint on the top binding, where the two pieces butt up to each other is ok but the right hand piece had a hairline gap between the binding and the maple end graft I did. so I made a new piece to inlay with maple and some leftover purfling. It's not a perfect inlay, but I think it looks cooler than what was there before.  

I've been working on a rosewood fretboard with maple binding too. Here is a heartfelt tribute to the pain au chocolate I had for breakfast this morning. It was a bit fiddly to line all the pieces up together so I stuck them all together with some rosewood veneer between to keep the lines of separation. the inaly is 1.8mm thick and I'm putting a 12" radius on the board so I am undecided whether or not to inlay first or radius first - might be easier to cut the channel while the board is flat and finness after radius, I'm sure the wood will conform a little bit to the radius to help prevent me sanding through it. 

That's is plenty long enough IMO, particularly if it's a junior - no pesky pickup cavity to rob you of glueing surface. 

It's not upside down, it's just shite. I'll take a better picture when I'm out in the shop next. 

I spent the morning on front binding, that was a high stress operation towards the end. I cut my channels and they seemed to come out pretty well. The binding channel was easy, the perfling channel was scary but seemed to manage it without hickup or noticable tearout.

tested both pieces

You can see the inperfection in the channel I mentioned before, although it was only a couple of patches that was like this, most areas came out clean

So I had a go with my gramil, but it was fairly useless so I just went back to a sharp chisel 

Another test fit all round after tidying up the channels

And a couple of hours and some swearing later 

Touch wood it seams to have gone quite well though the oversized purfling does cast a bit of a shadow so it's difficult to see gaps.

I spent some time hand bending the binding prior to installing even though it was machine bent, that made the fit a lot better and not as much clamping force was needed. Will see what it looks like in a few hours. 

1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

That looks good. 

I think I've mentioned in some of my build threads that after bending to shape, I use a hot iron to  actually glue the bindings.  I do it like I do my veneering - I apply a decent PVA to all relevant surfaces, let it dry and then use the iron to melt the joint progressively round, holding in position with a leather-gloved hand as it cools.  The advantage is that I know it's spot on before I move to the next inch or so and therefore don't suffer from accumulated positional error.  And it's quick...

I remember you talking about that technique, but tbh that idea scared me a bit for binding. 

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Have you tried epoxy as a pore filler yet? Pacer Z-Poxy Finishing Resin is pretty amazing.

Actually I ordered some z-poxy PT-40 last week. I was contemplating grain filling the other day - I don't want to do a coloured fill on this and the only clear stuff I've got is aqua coat which I don't like. I was also thinking about when I would do grainfillng, might make my life easier to do prior to routing the mortise

Had a go with the iron, worked pretty well to soften the glue and I was able to push the binding into place, so I wrapped it up again and left it for a few hours. 

Got it all scraped flush and it came out pretty good, I've still got a couple of hair lines which I've filled with blacklimba + titebond as woodfiller. I'm especially happy with the joint on the back. 

Will have a go at the front binding channels tomorrow. 

Yeah I guess you could never really CNC cut a binding channel on an acoustic anyway because no matter how good you or your machines are at side bending, the sides will never be identical to what is in the CNCs path. A gramil is a good idea, I don't know why I didn't think of using that to tidy up, would have been a lot easier than a chisel, even with my gramil being made of chocolate metal - I could really do with getting a decent one. 

I was keen to see what it looked like so I got the tape off first thing this morn

It's not bad, probably my best effort at binding but I've chosen a pair of quite unforgiving woods - Gaps I was able to just fill on the mahogany one could do with some improvement. We're zoomed right in here so these gaps aren't anywhere near as bad to the naked eye but I can see them now and they're annoying me. I think I'll see if I can press them in a bit more with a hot iron before attempting to scape anything flush.

if I was using a darker wood here I would absolutely be filling with dust and glue instead.

I probably could have avoided this if I had done more wraps but alas I ran out of rope. Time to invest in something more suitable than tow rope

Well I didn't enjoy that much, fortunately I had some rope and wedges hanging around for a bit of reinforcement. I think 2.3mm for flame maple binding must be a bit too chunky - Even though I bent it in the bending machine, it still didn't really want to conform without some manhandling. Luckily I used titebond instead of superglue this time so I had time to mess with it. 

I have mixed feelings about this machine. I'll start by saying it's at least 10x better than my previous method. It does cut a perfectly parallel with sides channel and it does feel quite natural to use after a bit of playing around. It doesn't use traditional bearings but will cut any channel to the thickness of the binding/purflling so binding doens't have to be an exact thickness.

The accuracy of the channel really relies on the guitar side riding on that back bearing farthest away from the cutter. The trouble with it is that once the first channel has been cut, the side is too thin by the neck block to ride on the back bearing, so I had to bind the back before I can route the channel for the front.

Elevate do a an upgrade with a bigger bearing surface for thinner instruments so I might get that, pretty annoying it doesn't come with it as standard though.

My other gripe is that although the channel is perfectly square with the sides, the channel seams to be imperfect with a little ridge in the bottom, Here's a little diagram of the profile so you can see what I mean.  

So I had to spend an age with a small file and chisel to carefully remove that little ledge all the way round, then I sanded a small bevel into the underside of the back of the binding to help it sit flush. I'm sure this is probably down to how I've set the binding jig up, or perhaps I just need some more practice to get the knack, but it is annoying.

I want to have a go at purfling along with maple binding on the front to tie in with the rosette, but I had such a pain in the butt getting the binding in on the back so I'm not sure if I want to add the extra complexity. I suppose I'm going to have to dive in and try purfling at some point.

Got it out of the clamps and trimmed up this eve. Wiped some thinned down lacquer around the edge first to help protect the end grain from the router

Then I had a play with one of my new toys

This thing is a real time saver, had the sides sanded flat in no time at all with 120g on the bobbin. Definitely a mask on kind of job though!

I also got some curly maple strips through the drum sander and down to 6.5mm x 2.3mm, they're ready to go in the bender, then it's on to the scary bit.

15 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Good tip.  Consider it stolen! 

I've stolen a fair few of your ideas so, seams fair!

Thanks @Andyjr1515

Had another go with the labels, tweaked the design a bit. I stained some parchment paper to yellow it up a bit with a wet tea bag, dried it with the mrs hair dryer and printed out the design. I wasn't expecting much from this, especially with my £30 HP printer but I think it came out ok. Stuck it down with some Titebond brushed on very sparingly. Installing the label on the mahogany one will not be quite so enjoyable, I expect.

and finally I closed the box tonight. Glued the back down first in the gobar deck, then after an hour I took the spreader out, flipped the dish and the guitar over and glued the top down. The cool thing about the dish is it makes the perfect caul for the back which remains under clamping pressure while the top is getting glued down, so it will stay like this over night.

Got the 8th coat of lacquer on the mahgoany one at the weekend. Hopefully that is enough to start levelling it properly in a couple of days. 

The lacquer has really popped the tortoise shell

Made a good bit of progress on the next one. Thought a splash of colour inside would look cool so I stuck a maple veneer on the end block, dyed it red and gave it a coat of sealer. I made a special effort to get the linings glued in neatly this time with no gaps, particularly on the back linings as they're visible through the sound hole. I used small clamps to do a lot of it rather than relying on the rubber band reinforced clothing pegs.

The top and the back of the sides have been sanded on the dish, I just need to notch out the sides before I can close the box, but I might just plane down the neck block a bit, it's a bit chunky. 

Wow that thing is small, is that a 2mm modelling chisel you used to cut the mortice?

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

It never occurred to me that the hotpipe can be used horizontally!

Every time I've seen an electric hotpipe it has been upright. Yet I've also seen torch heated tubes and they're always more or less horizontal.

yes helps to keep things square with a bit of gravity, helps prevent bending a twist into it.  I stole that method from Andy, he must have pinched it back.

15 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

My only gripe is that they take a surprisingly long time from order to receipt.

Yes I had that same gripe, took a good couple of weeks to get my latest order after a bit of nagging. 

I have actually found neck-through designs to be easier to build with no neck pocket to worry about. But as @Crusader put above, you definitely want to draw yourself a 1:1 plan of the side profile to get the headstock and body angles right, that really is the main critical part in a neck-through design IMO. you will probably find you need at least a 3" thick blank for your neck through piece. 

Sounds like a fun project, good luck!

what do you think of the radius dish uk mould? I've had a few bits from him, table saw blade for fret slotting which is fab, a few ziricote fretboards and recently got his fretboard radius jig and a rosewood back and sides set. So far very impressed with everything he's sent me 

how did you find that tape for joining the top? I used the stewmac brown binding tape to glue my top together and when I pulled it off I did notice a tiny bit of tear out in places, fortunately nothing serious

Haven't managed to get any more spraying done, too damn humid. When I sprayed a couple of coats on Saturday I got a bit of blushing around the heel transition which I managed to rectify yesterday with a combination of heat gun and misting a bit of thinners over it. I think the thinners works best - there is a very fine line between getting the lacquer hot enough and making it blister with a heat gun. 

I have done a bit more on OM No4 though. Rough carved the braces and glued in a bridge plate. It looks a bit lop-sided but it's touching 2 x-braces and the top tone bar so I figured that would be a good thing. The bridge plate is made from 3x 0.5mm thick rosewood veneer glued together with a cross grain laminate in the middle. I glued them together on the dish so it takes on the 28' radius, left it clamped for a good 24 hours to make sure it didn't warp, I think epoxy would be better for this job. 

Got the back cut out and works with my locator pins from the other side. I keep thinking it reminds me of Lord of the Rings, looks like an Ent

Got a back strip glued on, used an offcut from the back, I did that on the last one, I like the stealthy look of using the same wood, even though the grain is going the other way, it's not very visible when looking through the sound hole. The offcut wasn't quite long enough so I will just butt another bit up to it, no one will see it all the way down there anyway.

and I got the side I bent last night out of Bender. I kept it quite thick at 2.5mm (I think that's considered very thick for sides) but I thinned down the waste area to 2.1mm so it seamed to bend very easily (touch wood) I think Korina just bends nicely. But I don't want to jinx it because the other side is in Bender now.

I'm bending the sides at 120ºC (at least that is what the dial says), just a mist of water the wood before wrapping it in foil. Getting it up to temp before doing any bending, then leaving the blanket on for 10 mins after bend. Then an hour later when it's cold, turning the bender back on for 10 mines - the idea being that it will help remove any more moister that might still be in there. 

My springs are pitiful so helped it along with a load of elastic bands.

Managed to get the spray booth mack into a serviceable state today and got a couple more coats on. It's had 5 coats in total now. It's very warm in south-east England at the moment, 31º today, 26º in the workshop and very humid so I added a glug of anti bloom thinners in the lacquer, made a huge difference, I'm tempted to use it all the time. This is how it's currently looking, the tortoise shell has really popped.

Happy with how the neck is looking too, although I filled the grain in the rosewood, it clearly needs more lacquer to get the stinger perfectly smooth.

And having fully caught the acoustic bug again, and wanting to play on the my new workbench, I found my next cheapest bit of spruce (German spruce I think) and got it together. Tried out a new technique of clamping, I've always doubted this method, but it clearly does work if the joint is good. 

I'm trying out the method on the Stewmac video for cutting the rosette & channel - In short it's cutting both the rosette and channel at once with a router cutter the same width as the purfling. I cut a couple of slithers off one of my carve top billets that was thicker than it needed to be so I thought I'd do a solid curly maple rosette with the BWB purfling around the edge. It seems to work, I've cut the outside of the rosette and the outer channel so far and test fitted some purfling. It was getting a bit late for dremel so I will finish the cuts tomorrow.

I wiped some lacquer over the spruce before hand to prevent tearout, I tried oil on previous rosette which works too, although I think the lacquer worked better, I will 100% be doing that when it comes to binding too.

lastly one more experiment, I got myself some 8mm steel bar, cut it in half to make heavy duty locator pins that go through the mould. They're offset so it will only work one way which will hopefully prevent me running the risk of putting anything on backwards. Jury is still out on that one!

This is the stuff you want, it's the high build. I thin it by about 30% with their cellulose thinners.

Get Morrells (uk made) pre cat nitro from wood finishes direct, it cures in no time and all and has all the pros of nitro.