Official Luthiers Forum!

Here's a few pics of a couple of OM's that are starting to take shape.

This is about my favourite part of construction. Seeing the body cleaned up so you can get an idea of what the appointments look like.

BTW I haven't forgotten about the OM twins. I'm just having trouble finding the time to record them.

First one
Lutz, Mahogany, Snakewood, BWB/Blackwood/BWB purfs.











Rock Maple, Englemann, Tortoiseshell, BWB/Blackwood/BWB purfs.









Cheers

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

Looking good Bob

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Dave, the Mahogany one is for the DADGAD guitar that you and Colin kindly gave me advice on a few months back.

It's not parabolic though. The customer decided he like the the sound of scalloped bottom end.

Cheers

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

[QUOTE=bob_connor] The customer decided he like the the sound of scalloped bottom end,

[/QUOTE]

Bob,

Perhaps you could get together with Hesh and see if you can capture the "scalloped bottom end" part of the sound on mp3 I like my scallops pan fried

I bet that will be a great DADGAD guitar!

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Two more notches of the bar at OLF.  They are both going to look great when finished up.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Nice....and I love that "f" port.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I think you convinced me to do snakewood on my mohogany dred I'm ready to bind.

Great work Bob,

Both lovely but ah that mahogany...simply beautiful wood.

Looks like a good year to be in Geelong

Cheers

Kim

Nice work Bob on both!! The "f" port is a very nice touch (quick trademark that). I really like the wide Paua rosette.

Both of those are going to look stunning under finish.

Looks great Bob! The sound port is nice!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Two incredibly  fine looking instruments./  I'll bet that maple was fun to bend?

thanks for sharing.

Thanks everyone.

af_one - I had to take about 1mm thickness off the snakewood through the thickness sander before binding.
It completely wrecked the sandpaper in about 5 passes.
Some serious resin in this stuff.

Rich - the Rock Maple actually bent really easily with no cupping of the sides at all. I seem to remember we got distracted when we were bending them and the temp got too high (about 180C (360F))whereas we try to use 150C as a max temp.

The smell of overheating wood alerted to this but when we took them off the bender they were fine.

Beast of a wood to sand though. Very tough.

cheers

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

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sweat the small stuff.

Very cool! Nice soundport!

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

Bob, beautiful as usual.
I'm delighted you used maple. And in case I haven't said this recently, let me add: I LOVE maple! My experience is like yours, it bends easily, but makes up for it in the sanding. That's where it resists your will for sure.

And for Colin's sake, it should be said: I LOVE mahogany!
Great wood all-around, and you did it proud with that Snakewood.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Very nice Bob. Was that sound port difficult to cut on the curved surface, or did you cut before bending?

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John S.

Very nice pair you got there!
The appontments are very tasty and well executed.

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Christopher C. Cordle
North Muskegon, MI

http://www.yardsaleunderwear.com
http://www.facebook.com/christopher.cordle

Thanks again for all of your positive comments.

Heath - I'll make a concerted effort to get the twins recorded this week and up on the OLF. There is quite a bit of difference in the sound of the two guitars and the reaction of local guitarists who have compared them is interesting to say the least.

That's all I'm saying at this point in time. I'd rather throw the recordings up and let you make up your own minds.

The F hole sound port looks great but in any future ones I think we'd be looking at a different shape as the little pointy bits (that's a technical term) are very fragile. ie stylising it a little to leave out the points.

We put a veneer of Mahogony on the inside of the sides under the F hole to give it more support as I don't think they would have lasted very long as they were.

John - the F hole was cut after the sides were bent but before the top went on.

Steve - this Hard Rock Maple is tough. Put the random orbital on it with 100 grit and it just shouts back - WHAT ELSE YOU GOT !!! Don't have to pore fill it though which is a bonus.

I'm looking forward to hearing the Maple one. It's got an Englemann top to try and diffuse some the Maple fundamental tone, a Maple neck, which should give some nice sustain and it'll have a gidgee bridge weighing in at 36 grams to try and tame the top end and give an impression of enhanced bottom end.

Here endeth the theory lesson!!

All will be revealed when the strings go on.

Cheers

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

im on the edge of my seat...

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sweat the small stuff.

Very nice! I like the 'f' hole and the rock maple.

Very nice Bob! You are really spitting these out quickly. I love the F hole sound port too. I did that on my Bouzouki last year. I get many comments about how much they like the soundport. Here is a pic of mine done in Koa:


I was going to do it on a tenor ukulele too. Thanks for sharing your builds. Love to see what others are up to.
Tracy

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Tracy
http://www.luthiersuppliers.com

Looking really nice Bob!

I've got to find me some snakewood bindings to go with the snakewood fretboard and bridge combo I have found.

Love the look!

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Reguards,

Ken H