Designing Tailpiece & Shaping Back Bracing - Day 14

DAY 14 - (HOURS 3.00, TOTAL TIME 36.30HRS)

In keeping with the oceanic theme on the guitar, I decided to shape the tailpiece into a whale instead of the traditional wedge shape.

I had some Walnut left over from the Dulcimer Kit that I'm making:

- getting the width of the sides at the tailblock(3.875inches in my case) tells you how much room you have to work with. Make sure you tailpiece inlay isn't too wide either, as the sides still need to be glued to the tailblock. My tailblock is around 80-84mm wide I believe, and the inlay was around 35-40mm. I'm leaving a small bit of room above and below the Whale too, so it's more of an inlay as I said, rather than a divide between the two side pieces. It's worth noting that if you're taking measurements from a plan, to take the measurement of the side without the binding, as the diagram might show both, and your design will end up being too long for the side.

- here's a look at the tailblock after the clamps came off.

- you can see that even with all the work trying to get it not to 'float' on the glue, it still did a small bit(the top piece there is 1.5mm too far to the left)

This isn't really a big concern, as that side seemed to be a small bit longer anyway, and the plane can level it out no problems. It's the other side there, with the darker grain that the top will be stuck to, and that's the important side to have perfect.

- the bandsaw almost has the Whale down to finished cut. It won' take much to get him into shape when the time comes.

- I had to glue two pieces of Mahogany together to shape the neckblock out of, I scribed the measurements onto the block, and proceeded to plane off the excess.

- the wood was slightly warped, so even the 'flat' surfaces had to be leveled off.

- the dry clamp test. Looks good!

- checking that I've 'squeeze out' all around the blocks, I left them for the auld 24hours.

- while I'm running around with the camera, here's a picture of the crack after the Titebond and Thin Superglue went into it.

- it was a day of doing small bits as well as big bits. I had to fill in the hairline gaps around parts of the rosette. So I used the ol' Dust and glue trick.

- using the handsander didn't work very well, so I placed the tub at the far end of the belt sander, and all the dust went flying back into it! The wood used, was an offcut of the Western Red Cedar used for the top.

- about one third glue there.

- here's a picture off the wood dust glue. It should look wet still, but thicker than toothpaste. Tuna from a Tuna melt comes to mind...

- using my finger, I pressed it down all around. I couldn't see any gaps most of the way around. But while I was there with the glue, I said I may as well go around the whole thing to be safe. Last thing you want is to have it all done and sanded, and see a little gap.

- so using that wee tool that I haven't a clue of the name of(it has a wee nail and a block that's adjustable, to carve the thickness for cutting into a level sided piece of wood) I marked the width for the two thick back braces. You have a total of four back braces. The thicker two sit down under the belly of the guitar, and the thinner ones, above the waist.

- Tony recommended using a pencil to increase the visibility of the line carved by the tool-that-must-not-be-named.

- with a brace blank ready to be carved I was handed a brace template from Tony:

- this is actually off a Jumbo Guitar Tony had made. The angle was sharper than the one I was going to use(The 'swell effect' was 1.5mm originally, but this template was 3mm. i.e. the central line of the guitar would be 3mm proud of the edges in a slowly curving arc) but as it wouldn't affect the sturdiness of the guitar(in fact it may make it stronger) and coupled with the fact that I love the curve of the back of a guitar, I opted for Tony's Template.

- there's a small digit cut out of Tony's template to align the centre mark, a simple, yet ingenious trick-of-the-trade.

- the hand plane. You'd be lost without one. I have researched buying them here, and even on mainland Europe. Prices are high: From €180-€450! I sourced a pair on Amazon.com for $55! There's a brand of tool called Grizzly and they seem to be cheap but popular over there. Stay tuned to see if they're any good. The way I see it is it's the blade that counts, outside of that, once the plane has a flat, even surface and comfortable handle, that's the main thing for me.

So anyway, plane the ends that were marked with the bracing template(or from your plan) Plane down to the line but leave it visible i.e. don't plane it until you've got rid of the pencil mark.

- after the brace was planed on that surface that will be joined to the back, we ran it over and back on the belt sander in a gentle rocking motion. Constantly check your progress with that line you left on the brace, get it so that the line is thinning along the brace. Note, the belt sander is not on!!! If you don't have a belt sander, a strip of sandpaper taped to a flat surface will do, around the 120grit or higher.

- there they are, sitting on my warped Madagascar Rosewood back. The braces will take the warp out of it when they're glued to it. The braces are shaped using a chisel after you glue them on. More on that later.

- back to the Japanese Pullsaw to cut the brace blanks for the remaining two braces. These two braces were of the same measurements as each other, like the previous pair, so that speeds up the process a small bit.

- going through the exact same steps as was done for the other two braces, I was finished for the day.

P.S. I'm going on holidays for a couple of weeks. Chat y'all when I'm back!

Side Taper & Tail Block - Day 13

DAY 13 - (HOURS 5.00, TOTAL TIME 33.30HRS)

My longest day yet!

It went quite well too. I started by making a template of the side taper, which is basically a piece of paper the length of the unbent side, with a width of 3 7/8" at one end, and 3 1/8" at the other. I traced mine from the plan, but I could easily have made one myself. Keep in mind though, one side of the length must remain straight, as the top will be affixed to it, so you can't be curving it!

Have a look:

- I traced a line around the template, after I had chosen which side to have as the top, keep in mind that the sides are book matched, so try keep the same pattern running around the entire body.

- keeping about 3mm outside of the line, I stuck it under the bandsaw.

- a rough finished shape.
- clamping the side in the vice, I took off the large overhang at the shoulders. You can see the crack still there, but very close to the edge. Sawing had to be done carefully with this crack in such a delicate place, hence the clamp where it is.

- using the tenon saw flat across the crack helped, then the other side cut be cut normally.

- done!

- keeping the side well clamped I started to plane the side down to its final thickness.

- as you can see the first few inches are at the correct width, but I had to keep checking I was keeping it all on the level. I removed one clamp at a time, replacing it when I had past that area. You can see I've a rough 3mm edge before the template starts there, just to make sure everything will be OK!

- one finished side! I never thought I'd see the day.

- with the second side finished shortly after, I began working on the tail block.

- getting a width for the tail, I cut it to size...

- then with the Japanese pullsaw, I took the last lump off.

- planed down to a slight curve, to keep in line with the curve of the sides, I measured up before I did the final shaping.

- One tail block made. As you can see in this picture, my mould wasn't aligned right. I had to make a wee wedge to slot in there.

- I jumped ahead and put the glue on the block and clamped, but it didn't seem to fit right. I couldn't tell if it was the glue making it 'float' or if the block was the wrong size. I took it all apart and wiped the surfaces dry of glue.

- so going back to the step I should have done first, I did a dry run! Putting all clamps on without any glue. Now the time between me wiping the glue and taking off the clamps here was only several minutes, but I had a wee bit of trouble trying to prize the block off the sides. There was obviously some glue permeated into the block, and in the dry clamping, had come and bonded the two! So if you do skip a step, look out for this!! Or better yet, don't skip it ;)

- So the dry clamp told me it was all OK, and I went ahead and glued it and clamped. Tony had come in at this point, which was lucky, as a second pair of hands was almost a requirement to keep everything aligned. It's worth getting a second pair of hands for the parts like this. They don't have to be a skilled luthier (Like Tony!), anyone that can hold something steady will do.

- Last thing I did was repair the crack up at the shoulder. Where the crack could be prized apart (i.e. the first 6" or so) I put wood glue. On the the part of the crack that wasn't really wide enough to squeeze anything in (i.e. down where the crack was running down the side with the grain) I put a thin superglue on the wood. It has almost inviscid properties, so it ran down in through the crack and bonded it. Placing masking tape over the whole thing, the day was over.

Bending The Sides Part 4 - Day 12

DAY 12 - (HOURS 1.00, TOTAL TIME 28.30HRS)

Here's a pic of the 12inch crack running down the grain:

- it should be behind the kerfing hopefully, so that will give it some strength when it's all together.

- the top of side two had warped a small bit, but I'll be cutting most of that bit off at the top, and the small bit of warping left will be glued to the neck block, so it's still a finished side to me!

- finished!

After spending waaaaaaaaay longer than I had planned on the sides (About a third of my time so far on the guitar) I finally packed up the bending iron, and stuck it back on the shelf.

Damn it felt good.

Bending The Sides Part 3 - Day 11

DAY 11 - (HOURS 1.00, TOTAL TIME 27.30HRS)

A very, very short day:

- I got the second side finished! It wasn't perfect, but I don't believe the wood could take anymore torture.

- after spending time getting the ends right, I realised side one had buckled in the middle. I knew I was going to have to start from one end again, so I just went home and had a cuppa.

Bending The Sides Part 2 - Day 10

DAY 10 - (HOURS 2.30, TOTAL TIME 26.30HRS)


So with the sides half-bent, or so I thought, I continued up past the waist to the shoulders:


- the bottom half had warped back a bit so I had to start from the base again. Always start from one end, I started in the middle at one stage and sure the all the other curves went out when I did that.



- finally I have the complete side sitting into the mould! Granted it's not really touching the mould all the way around, but it's in.

- I returned to working on the side I started on, I had been neglecting it since it got a 12inch crack down the grain up near the shoulder. I actually took this photo believing it would be a "look-how-far-I-got-before-I-broke-it" photo. Thankfully, this wasn't the case.

- on the last curve, a second crack, across the grain this time, appeared and had me going very gentle for the last curve, which slowed things down.

- and there you have two sides in a mould!

- hehe, not exactly done yet!

- I ran the bridge under the band saw to do a rough cut around the template, and then headed home.