Official Luthiers Forum!

Sometime within the past few months I lost the battery for my camera. It's a good thing though. I needed the excuse to plan on replacing the digital SLR I had to sell to keep going during my second senior year of college

However, if I knew where it was, I'd love to show you my new set of Tiger Myrtle from Tim at Australian Tonewoods! Or the redwood top from Hank Mauel I'm joining up today

I've been waiting to start a new acoustic with all of the nice tools I've been able to acquire in the last six months. Last week a rosewood/redwood Goodall I played in Sylvan Music (Santa Cruz, CA) convinced me the time for one of the awesome redwood tops I got from Hank had come.

This one's going to be an east indian rosewood/redwood OM'esq steel string with carbon fiber reinforced back and sides, and a top braced and voiced for strumming with a medium hand. The low tap tone and unending resonance of this top is going to be awesome for this guitar.

Took a course on spraying HVLP finish this morning, too.

What's going on in your neck of the woods?

Today I am CLEANING!

I spent the last four weeks intensely working on my Miami/Montreal guitars. They are now at
Tony's getting finished. SO I am going to use this time to totally clean out my shop and get ready
for another round, which will consist of two OMFS, a 12 fret Dread and an E2, all slated to be
started in July. The OMFS' though are well under way.
I do have one more that is close, I may be able to get it done in the next two weeks, if I do, it will go with
me to the Montreal show, I think were to close to the Miami show to consider it. Who knows.

That's what has been happening in my shop.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I'm with Lance. It's time to clean up the shop. I've had trouble finishing my last guitar, literally. Some pores in the wenge binding showed up in the final finish coat and I've been chasing them back in their holes. I think I have the upper hand and will be done this week. So it's clean up time!

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

Talk about never ending pores, That's wenge for ya. Good luck Ken.

I just finished spraying a batch of sunbursts and have another about ready to start spraying. Also just finished doing the top of this style 42 ladder. This is the first request I've had for this, I think it looks nice.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

That looks great John.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

A while ago I bought some plywood from Shane and he used the Lutz in the picture to pack the goods. I thought i could try to build smth out of it though, and it's really a pest. Riddled with so much silking it looks like curly maple, trying to plane the poo away and it's not working. Oh and theres NO runout

I am also massacring this wonderful mazurka called Marieta. Tarrega must be turning in his grave. It was poetic to hear that birdie through the open window.

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Build log

John, that is a gross understatement!

I'm doing top bracing today on my first dread, a D-28 lookalike. Working out the last details of an A-brace under the fb extension.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Me? working on my first solo build , doing more tooling than building .. finished my radius sanding blocks last week , then sanded all my top braces to 28' last night after work .. next thing to do is cut a template for the top brace layout.. since all the lines will go away when I finish sand it before glueing ......I will be so happy to get this guitar finished .. mostly because of the fact that I will be able to concentrate more on building, having gone through the tedious ( although enjoyable)regimen of tooling . Jody

I've got a set of Brazilian rw twins, one a 6 string and the other 12, that I am inlaying with pearl. It is a D-45 pattern, pearl just everywhere. It looks nasty now but I think it will clean up nicely. I'll post pics then.

I've been working on a neck for a L-00 I'm building.Solid mahogany w/ brw fretboard.

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Nothing.......

Well very little - I took a couple week break but I did just join a German top a few minutes ago for the OM, Charo, that I am building....... Nothing interesting to post pics of though.

I've been pretty productive. Just closed the boxes on a short scale Mahogany OM that will have Rosewood binding and mitered purfling, and a plain old Rosewood OM (POROM)



I've got another POROM ready to ship for finish, and a 12 fret parlor slothead that I finished myself with USL on the body and Tru-Oil on the neck and is in cure. First guitar I've done with a Tru-Oil neck.



And lastly I just got a Rosewood OM and a short scale Mahogany OM with a burst back from finish. I'll be setting them up next week.
Life is good right now.



John I love your guitar.

Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Wow! Nice workbench Fillipo!

I've been spending time cleaning and getting ready to tear apart one of my workbenches...specifically the one that previously held my vacuum press, but has been holding sets of wood to sell for the last year or so. I'm going to be making it roughly twice the size it was in order to hold my cnc when I build it. I finally have ordered all the parts I need to build the thing, sans a few miscellaneous things like switches and wire. It's been over a year and a half since I've even thought about building something, so once the cnc project is under way and I can get some more serious cleaning done, hopefully I can get back at doing something. I'd like to build something with mahogany and redwood...maybe similar to a Lowden O model perhaps.

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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 spent part of today recovering from a mistake.

A guitar that I had let out the door last summer developed some buzzing on the open strings, and, horror of horrors, I discovered that the fretboard had come loose from the neck from the nut up to about the 5th fret.

I think the cause was probably an overclamped and hence starved joint. I'm not about to blame it on the glue - Home Depot 60 minute epoxy, because I've never had it fail on anything else.

Luckily I had ordered a small neck heating blanket from John Hall a while back.
I placed it on the fretboard, covered it with my usual clamping caul just to hold it in place, and cooked at the low end of high heat until I noticed the joint between fretboard and neck starting to get a little bubbly looking further up the neck than where it had failed. A couple of quick passes with painting knives and the fretboard popped right off with no damage to anything. 10 minute job. The joint did indeed look pretty dry from nut to 5th fret or so - almost no residue there to speak of.

Both surfaces are now cleaned up and ready for regluing. I pulled the 1st and 11th frets so I can re-drill my usual locating pins, and slotted the clamping caul for clearance over the rest of the frets.
Although I don't think it was the Borg glue's fault, I'm going to use System III T-88 this time, just because I have some.

While I was at it, I filled a few fretboard divots with ebony dust and CA.

Does this feel as good as building? No. But it's good repair experience, and I learned the object lesson of not overclamping epoxy joints.

Other than that, I've been resawing some odds and ends and trying to organize the zootpile.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I have spent the last week puttin in the new dust collection system. It is ready to go and I spent the time cleaning up the shop some too.

3 of the guitars for the Miami show are boxed up and ready to send to Joe White in the morning. Hopefully I'll get these back in plenty of time to get used to playing them before the show. I know in advance that I am going to like the finishes that Joe will put on them for me.

I am still working on 2 other guitars, one of which is an EIR that will end up in Alaska, and another of my "DM" models that is some beautiful curly koa. The koa guitar is also for the Miami show.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Filippo,
couple final touches, I put a metal handle on top at the center of gravity (near the front)
I put a pin through the lazy susan bases for storeage/transport so it wouldn't rotate, and pinned the top drawer glide frame also so that it wouldn't slide out during transport. And lastly, I printed the following from stew mac's free info on binding section, and pasted a copy on each side of the fixture:

Ken, that's cool design work. Are those champagne flutes?
John (How), I love that guitar too! Are your labels printed on blue denim?
Alex, nice creative rosette. I'll take all that junk Lutz off your hands, by the way.
Bro, you didn't say those would be 45 models. Wowser! We will need pix for sure.
Dave, what kind of sanding jig is that?
Terry, great stuff there. I love that mahog OM w/ the burst!
Who did the finish? And, can you dictate to said finisher the size/ shape of the burst pattern?

Thanks for posting guys,

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Steve,
Addam Stark did that burst for me. It had a great top but I sanded into a sap pocket or something in the upper bout when finish sanding and there was about a 1/2" dark spot. Leave it and call it as Sam Price said "a birthmark on the Mona Lisa" or do a burst.
Addam and I talked about it and decided to do a burst. He decided the style and I love it. I'm sure he'd do whatever you wanted.
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Thanks, Terry.
I've yet to try Addam, but will surely think about doing so.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Steve, those are supposed to be martini glasses, but I guess they look like champagne glasses too. Hope they look good once the frets are in.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

Dave and I have been getting some instruments ready for a show here in a couple of weeks time so we've been flat out like lizards drinking.

Here's a few pics of what we've been working on.

Bob

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

Filippo,
Appears you'll need to alter your base, unless you permanently bolt it. Make the base that contacts the bench larger and square. Then you can just clamp the corners to your work surface. See the pic below. Mine's mounted exactly on the corner of my bench so it's hard to tell which is the bench and which is the base. Sorry for the poor pic.

This:

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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

Hey Bob,
What's the finish on those? Is it that shellac stuff that reminds me of Nazi submarines? U beaut or something like that?

Dave-Wow! Do you need a stand to hold something like that when you play it?
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Steve, Its a simple 2 x 4 jig with a 15* wedge for sanding the neck profile. I had
to glue and screw on a piece to raise it up from the vice.I have more room to sand now.

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755