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The top is made from a bookmatched
set of Sitka Spruce from Bob Tibbetts, who sells guitar tonewoods
on Ebay and from his web site, www.guitarwoods.net.
This top set has some really nice Bearclaw figure, so named because
it kind of looks like a bear scratched the surface of the wood
with his claws. This picture shows the Bearclaw figure really
well--and the rosette too!
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Another picture of the
top. Unfortunately I didn't start taking pictures until after
the rosette had been installed in the top, the sound hole had
been cut, and the top rough-cut to shape.
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Here is the template I'm using
for the top of this instrument, with the brace wood pieces I've
cut to make the top braces. These are made from a piece of Sitka
spruce I got from Bob Tibbetts (www.guitarwoods.net).
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The neck is cut from a piece
of Honduran Mahogany--this is the same piece that I bought almost
two years ago for Gary's Thumb-style neck-through 5-string bass.
The headstock has been shaped,
the slot cut for the truss rod, and a 1/8" black walnut
headplate has been laminated to the headstock. Notice that the
truss rod will adjust at the headstock. |
This is the back of the headstock:
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Some of the carving of the
heel of the neck has been done. I won't finish carving the neck
until after the fingerboard has been glued on.
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This instrument will use the
bolt-on method of attaching the neck to the body. This picture
shown the Tenion part of the neck joint. There will be a corresponding
mortise in the neck head block, which I haven't made yet. The
neck head block will be made from a piece of the mahogany that
was cut off the neck block.
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Over the weekend I made up
all of the braces for the top from some blocks of sitka spruce
I got from www.guitarwoods.net, and from LMII. Then I glued them
to the top, and shown in the next few pictures:
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Another shot of the top
with the braces being glued in place. The layout and shapes of
all these braces are based on the ones I used in the acoustic
guitar I've been working on, with slight modifications to adjust
for the different shape of this body.
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The underside of the top after
the go-bar clamps have been removed:
Since this body is a single
cutaway, I had to improvise on the brace at the top of the picture
to the left, which in a non-cutaway body would go all the way
across the upper bout of the guitar. I just truncated it and
put a short scallop in the brace at that end. |
Those two braces in the upper
bout have the primary function of supporting the fretboard extension--the
part of the fretboard that is actually glued to the body.
I used the same 28-foot radius
dish that I used for the acoustic guitar project to form this
top in the following manner:
- I attached 150-grit sandpaper
to the 28-ft dish with double-sided tape and used that to shape
the gluing surface of each brace to a 28-ft radius
- I placed the 28-ft dish under
the top in the go-bar deck as a form, so that the top would conform
to the 28-ft radius as the braces were glued to it.
There are two things that still
need to be glued to the underside of the top:
- Three 3/32" x 7/16"
Sitka spruce strips that go around the sound hole to provide
support to that top around the sound hole
- A 3/32" thick rosewood
plate that goes underneath the area where the guitar's bridge
will be mounted to reinforce the top in that area and provide
an anchor for the strings.
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This is the top again after
the gluing is completed and the go-bar clamps have been removed.
Note the small circle of wood that was cut from the sound hole
of this top. In the DIYNET television series "Handmade Music,"
Luthier Lynn Dudenbostel describes how he keeps a record of each
guitar he builds by keeping the sound hole cutout, and writing
a description of the guitar on it. This sounded like a good idea
to me, so I'll use this sound hole cutout for that purpose.
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This is the fingerboard that
will be used on this instrument. It's Indian Rosewood, and this
particular one was purchased from Warpdrive Music, an Ebay merchant
who sells (among other things), parts purchased from the C. F.
Martin Factory. This fingerboard came with the 16" radius
already cut, and the fret slots cut as well, but the surface
of the fingerboard looked like it had been beat up some--I had
to to a lot of sanding to get past the various dings and scratches
it had.
In addition, I used a 1/4"
Forstner bit to cut the round holes for the Paua Abalone position
markers, then glued them in place before doing the sanding I
mentioned.
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The last of the sound board
braces are being glued in place around the sound hole in this
picture. These are the braces that reinforce the sound hole.
The only thing left is the reinforcement plate for the bridge,
which will be made from a 1/8" thick piece of hard rock
maple.
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The final step is to glue in
the reinforcement plate that goes under the bridge. This is made
from a piece of hard rock maple that I sliced off of a 2-inch
thick piece of maple, using the band saw. This bridge plate is
1/8" thick, and it distributes the load from string tension
so that the guitar's top won't deform, and provides a solid surface
for the strings' ball ends to bear against.
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This picture shows the neck
with the fingerboard glued in place. The next step is to decide
whether this thing is going to be fretted or fretless--I can
go either way at this point, but I'm leaning toward frets.
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This picture shows the back
braces being glued to the mahogany back, which I planed to about
.110" yesterday, then edge glued and sanded smooth with
150-grit sandpaper.
Today I made up the back braces
and glued them in place as shown above. Note the five pieces
of center-seam reinforcement that have been cut and are ready
to glue in place as soon as the back braces are dry. |
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All the braces have been glued
onto the back, including the center-seam reinforcing strips.
Then the back was cut to shape, but about 1/8" oversize.
On the dreadnaught, I glued the center seam first, then cut notches
in the the braces. This time I glued the braces first, then cut
pieces of center seam to fit between them.
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Next step: make the body form
for this guitar shape. Then I can begin assembling the body form
the parts: The end blocks, the pre-bent sides, and the top and
bottom shown in the pictures above. Here's the body form:
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Back to the neck. This is the
neck after the frets have been installed. I used medium jumbo
fretwire--it's .103" wide by .036" high. Note the side
marker dots are in place too. They're made from 3/32" plastic
rod stock that is super-glued into holes drilled in the edge
of the fretboard.
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I got a lot done
over the last three days--I was really on a roll, but unfortunately
did not take any pictures until now. The guitar rim has been
glued up, then the back glued to that. In order to do this, I
had to build the body for (shown above) and the clamps that were
used to keep the body rim expanded out against the inside of
the form. These are the clamps:
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Once the form and
clamps were made, I was able to glue up the body rim, then glue
the back to that:
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Another picture:
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Yet another:
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This picture shows
the body with the clamps in place to show what they're used for:
I'm considering
putting some cork on the surfaces that make contact with the
inside of the rim so they'll grip better, and so there'll be
less risk of damage to the wood. |
These items were
ordered from Andy DePaule of LuthierSupply.com -- a pair of mother-of-pearl
and paua abalone inlays that he made up for the two acoustic
instruments I'm working on:
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I've been doing
some work on the body in preparation for gluing the top on--the
kerfed lining has been glued in place:
Notice the rectangular
hole in the side -- this is where the battery-powered preamp
will be installed. |
I've also been working
on fitting the neck to the body. The neck block was prepared
with a 3/4" wide by 5/8" deep slot (the mortise) for
the neck's tenion to fit into. After the rim & back were
glued in place, I cut away the part of the rim that covered this
mortise slot, then spent some time sanding the mating surfaces
of the neck heel and the body so that the neck aligns properly.
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Part of the preparation required
the drilling of two holes through the neck block for the bolts
that will hold the neck in place on the body:
Instead of relying on glue
and a dovetail joint to hold the neck in place, this instrument
will use 2 bolts to hold the neck in place. The only part of
the neck that will be glued is the underside of the fingerboard
extension to the top of the body. |
These two holes line up with
the two threaded brass inserts I had previously installed in
the tenion portion of the neck:
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The top was glued to the body
today. I also used the Dremel with the router base to trim the
top around the edges so that it's flush with the body.
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Next I temporarily mounted
the neck to the body to check the fit. You can see the Bearclaw
figure in the top really well in this picture:
Note the strips of kerfed lining
around the hole in the side. They are mounted with double-sided
tape--their purpose is to provide a base for the Dremel-with-router-base
to ride on so that I can cut a channel for a binding around the
hole. |
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This is the whole guitar with
the neck in place. It's beginning to look like a real guitar
now:
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I've been working on the bindings
and purflings for the body. My original intention was to use
a tortoise shell binding, but when I got ready to work on it
I couldn't find the tortoise bindings. They seem to have disappeared.
So I used the Maple bindings I had with the black/white purfling
built in--the same type I used on the Acoustic Guitar. This picture
shows top half of the body--notice that the binding & herringbone
purfling has been installed on the left side, but not the right.
You can see the rabbet cuts that I made for the right side, however.
I put the neck back on to check
the fit after I scraped and sanded the bindings down flush with
the side and top.
Bending the binding material
and the herringbone purfling to fit around that cutaway is gonna
be tough! Getting it to conform to that rather sharp curve at
the waist was quite a challenge, and the cutaway area will be
tougher! |
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Here you can see the binding
channels (in woodworking terms they're called rabbets) around
the cutaway part of the body, and around the neck joint. I've
also installed a short piece of the binding along the edge of
the neck joint:
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Here's a picture of the curling
iron I have been using to bend the bindings and purflings for
this project. The thing puts out a whopping 23 watts of power,
but if I wait about 15 minutes for this thing to heat up, it
does a GREAT job of bending the bindings for me:
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This picture shows the second
half of the top binding & purfling being glued in place,
held by mass quantities of blue masking tape:
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Here's another view showing
the area near the neck joint:
There were a few spots where
(because of the tight bends on this part of the body) the glue
did not hold very well, so I had to dribble tiny amounts of superglue
between the binding & the body in a couple of spots to complete
the job. |
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After many hours of trimming,
scraping, and sanding the bindings, here's a few pictures that
show what the body looks like with the bindings. The first is
the cutaway area and the neck joint area:
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Next the front of the body:
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And the back of the body, showing
the back strip:
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I've been working on the neck
the last few days. First I inlaid the CYR logo into the headstock,
then filled around it with epoxy dyed brown with some "furniture
powder" I bought from Stewart-MacDonald. Next I sanded everything
with 220-grit sandpaper. Then I masked everything I want to keep
unfinished with blue masking taple, and applied some Red mahogany
stain made by Behr (purchased from Ace hardware). Here's the
result:
I also cut the holes for the
tuners (but you could probably tell!). They are 9/16" diameter,
to accommodate the set of gold-finished miniature tuners I ordered
last week. The holes are done by a process I worked out to avoid
chip-outs that have ruined necks in the past:
- Drill a 1/8" diameter
hole at the location of each tuner hole
- Using a 9/16" Forstner
bit in the drill press, cut part way through the headstock from
the back
- Finish by cutting through
from the front of the headstock with the 9/16" Forstner
bit.
This method gives a nice smooth
edge to the hole on both front and back of the headstock. |
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A shot of the back of the headstock:
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OK, this was really tricky!
In order to stain the mahogany of the back without getting stain
on the maple bindings and the herringbone back strip, I carefully
masked these things with blue masking tape. I tworked better
than I could have hoped for. Here's the result:
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This shot of the bottom end
of he back strip and the heel graft shows how well the bindings
and inlays look against the dark mahogany of the body. This thing
is looking really good, don't you think?
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I've made some good progress
this weekend (April 15-17). The body got two wet coats of lacquer,
then I mounted the neck and taped the bridge in place so I could
get these pictures. After these pictures were taken, I put on
a coat of grain sealer (StewMac's ColorTone water-based grain
sealer). Th|is stuff has to dry for 24 hours before I can begin
putting on the nitrocellulose lacquer. With the wet coats of
laquer, the bear-claw figure in the spruce shows up nicely:
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This picture shows the
neck joint part of the bass:
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The neck is finished, and the
hardware mounted on the headstock:
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It's been a while since I took
some pictures of the acoustic bass. Since last time, I experimented
with putting a satin lacquer finish on this one, and decided
against that when I saw the results. So I went back to plan A
andf put the usual many coats of lacquer on the body, sanding
off most of what I put on every three coats or so. Lat night
and today I sanded with 600, then 800 grit sandpaper, then polished
with medium and fine StewMac polishing compound, then with StewMac
swirl remover.
Then a little while ago I bolted
theneck on, with glue under the fingerboard extension, which
you can see clamped below:
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Another shot of the neck being glued in place. Glue goes ONLY
under the fingerboard extension. The neck itself is held in place
by two 1/4-20 x 1" allen-head cap screws with Belleville
washers to maintain tension to hold the neck tightly.
This picture shows the detail of the binding & purfling
in the vacinity of the cutaway and neck joint:
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MAJOR MILESTONE!
My first acoustic instrument
actually made music today!
The acoustic bass got strings
today! I was a nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs
as I put the strings on this baby. But I got them on, and the
tension actually failed to pull the thing apart.
Here's what I did today:
- Made the bridge and glued
it on. Got it a little off-center, but was able to compensate
by filing grooves in the saddle (which is also the piezo-electric
pickup)
- Installed the pickup system
- Installed the strings and
tuned her up
- Put her through acoustic amd
electric tests to see how she sounds and plays. The sound is
good, but the action definitely needed work
- Pulled the strings off, and
made some adjustments in the action:
- Filed the notches in the saddle
and nut deeper
- Routed the saddle slot in
the bridge deeper
- Gave her another road test--the
action is DEFINITELY better.
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Man, that bearclaw top
looks good!
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This is a picture of
the headstock with the strings on:
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Still to be done:
- Adjust the truss rod
- Make further adjustments to
the action:
- Lower the string height at
the nut a little more
- Make the E string's notch
on the sadd;e a little deeper
- Cleam her up--there's some
stuff inside the box that needs to be vacuumed out.
- Make a label to go inside
the box
- Take her to church Wednesday
night for music practice and give her a real road test.
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