kiwigeo

Nate, A few comments: 1. I wouldnt use highest grade wood for your first instruments but at the same time dont use a grade of wood that is going to be hard to work and will give poor results. When I started off I used mainly "AA" grade tops. I think I wrote off two Sitka tops in the early days but written off tops will always get used for patching and making grafts for other tops. They can also get hung on your workshop wall to remind you not to make the same mistake again!!!! 2. Tools..get the best you can afford. Working an "AA" top with a chisel that wont hold an edge or a plane that chatters is going to get you very p***d off and quickly dull any enthusiasm for buiding guitars. If youre on a limited budget aim for a basic set of good tools than a workshop full of poor quality ones. A decent smoothing plane might require a high intial outlay but the thing is going to last you all your life. 3. If and when you can afford it...buy yourself a router. Its the most versatile and useful tool you can have in a luthiers workshop. Cheers Martin How thin are you taking that top? Be careful with those knots. The wood is rift sawn with a good portion really flat sawn. Hopefully that runout does not seperate with wood that thin and carved. I sure hope for the best. Your work is looking pretty nice. In the future you might want to look for quartersawn wood that is free of knots. It will be a much better platform for your hard work. It would be cool to see more pics as you make progress. P.S. Don't even worry about baking the top. It is just a quirky little option, and by no means a requirement. I would never subject a glue joint to that anyway. Peace,Rich I agree with Rich, those knots are going to cause you grief. You've gone to alot of effort and it looks good but you'll get alot more pleasure out of a piece of quarter sawn spruce. If you have a hard on for using ply then Id go for top quality marine ply....alot more stable and less knotty than construction grade. Cheers Olven, Is that piece of spruce solid or is it ply? I was assuming it was ply in my last post. Cheers Martin

Greg, I use alot of mahogany on my acoustic necks. Its a difficult wood to work mainly because the grain direction can change several times through the blank youre working on. First thing I do is establish where the grain is going on the piece of wood Im working on and mark up direction with a pencil. After a while you can do away with the pencil mark as you get to know the piece of wood. If planing or chiseling the stuff keep your planes and chisels scarey sharp. I will generally give my tools a quick touch up on the water stones and a leather strop every half an hour or so. If things are getting really bad I resort to a scraper plane or cabinet scraper......hard work but you get less tear out than with cutting tools. Cheers Martin

Agree with you Greg. Interesting comments about tempered pianos. I recently attended a Pat Methany concert and sat there convinced that his baritone guitar was either seriously out of tune or the intonation was way out. After about 10 minutes (good thing alot of Pat's numbers are very lengthy!) I found I had got used to the instrument and it no longer sounded "strange". I still think the intonation on the thing was a bit out but once I got used to it I no longer noticed it. Cheers Martin

Taylor use them on their acoustics. Quite an old idea actually and a few people have used them over the years. The whole subject of compensation is a fascinating one but IMO alot of people are obsessed with reaching a level on intonation that the human ear isnt capable of detecting. Cheers Martin

Hughes, Next time you do a fretboard glue up try using temporary location pins to stop fretboard moving laterally while its clamped up. I set up unglued fretboard on the neck and check its all lined up and then I drill 1.5mm hole through fretboard at 1st and 11th frets and about 4mm into the neck underneath. Drill the holes through the fret slot...theyll get hidden by frets when they go in. Next bang in some 1.5 x 25mm brads with the heads nipped off. Release the clamps and carefully lift the fretboard off leaving the brads still in the neck. Spread the glue on your fretboard and then carefully lower the fretboard onto the neck guiding the holes over the brads. Clamp up using a 25mm caul the same length as your fretboard and with holes drilled to clear ends of location brads. Tighten all clamps finger tight before tightening them up fully. Leave clamped up for at least 3 hours cleaning up glue squeeze out after one hour. Remove clamps and caul and gently pull out location pins with pilers being careful not to damege the fretbpard with same. Another tip....after youve smeared the glue on the fretboard scrape glue off from sides of fretboard to about 3mm in.....this will reduce amount of squeeze out when clamps go on. I use a piece of cardboard with corner notched for this. Cheers Martin

Check out Courtnall's "Making Master Guitars". He marks up fret slot cuts using a bevel. I dont like the method as there appears to be a bit of fiddling around getting the bevel set so its square to centre line of fretboard and this has to be done for every fret. He also cuts frets after the fretboard is glued onto the neck. Cheers Martin

Yes those pre shaped blanks are a pain....squared up blanks are much easier to work with. Im currently working through a batch of them. When doing up fretboards for my classicals heres what I do. 1. Plane both sides of blank to remove saw marks. 2. Select non show (glue) side and plane roughly flat. 3. Plane show face untill flat and then plane final thickness profile (7mm at nut end to about 5mm at soundhole end for my classicals). I also plane bass string side a bit low from 12th to 19th frets. Then cut blank squre to centreline at nut end. 4. Mark halfway pint at nut and sound hole end of blank and join with a line....this is your centreline. carry centre line on to both ends of the blank. 5. On a length of squared up melamine faced 19mm MDF I run a line along the middle of same. 6. Fix blank to MDF using double sided tape making sure centre line of blank lines up with centreline on MDF. 7. Fix a wooden stop to nut end of blank. temporarily tape a steel rule to the blank making sure it rests shug against the stop at the nut end. 8. mark slot positions with small nicks across centreline with Xacto knife or similar. 9. With set square running along edge of piece of MDF cut lines across fretboard at fret slots with Xacto. 10. Cut fret slots using square resting against edge of MDF as above. You can also rest a squared up piece of wood against the square blade to help keep the fret saw vertical to the fretboard face. Cheers Martin