Official Luthiers Forum!

Is there anything in the course regarding the making the workboard (solera?) and do you use molds for the sides, or build "in the air"?

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Colin,

I use a modern day approach to the solera. I use an outside mold to actually build the guitar in but glue on the top and back and set the neck angle on my version of a solera. In my opinion it is much easier than making the traditional solera. For those that are familiar with my method and have used the traditional solera, perhaps you could offer an opinion.

My experience with a solera has been much like Filippo's. Multi use platform, including gluing braces, doming lower bout, mounting sides, indexing neck, base for go-bar deck, etc. Mine is mounted on air hammer quick release that I mount in a vise, and it allows the rotation of the solera to any position, and gets it up to chest level which is a good working level for me. Less bending and stooping! I really like the solera method, through 7 guitars.

I haven't watched your construction sequences yet, so I can't really compare directly.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Looks like some of you have taken advantage of the super discounted limited time pricing on my online classical guitar building course. Thanks!
As a reminder, The following videos below are also included as a bonus if you decide to get the full course. That is over 90 minutes of videos for free in addition to the over 25 hours of video lessons in the full course! You can also just purchase those videos seperately.
Happy Building!

Side Bending by Hand

Binding the Soundhole

How to Select Wood for the Soundboards

The Soundport

The Tornavoz

There is more information in these lessons than in a 2 week 'boot camp'.
Very well done, and a great value.
I hope Robbie does this for steel string guitar building.

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

Thank you Chris. I am currently working on the steel string course but it will take me a while to complete. The online classical course took me one year to complete. In the meantime there is so much info in the classical course that it should take you a while to absorb it all.