Official Luthiers Forum!

It was SCREAMING for those snakeskin side braces.

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Why be normal?

Nice! There are few jobs in life as rewarding as fitting a multi piece rosette into a hole!

Here is the Neck block with title and signature. It gets easier to write as I get out of the corner.



And the box is ready to close.

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Having followed several of your build threads over the years and incorporating many of your techniques (or at least attempting to do so), I would like very much to learn more about this process.


You put the ribbons in after the peone, so they don't continue underneath? I've been affixing the ribbons first. Now that I think about it, I don't really know why I was doing it that way.

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George :-)

You put the ribbons in after the peone, so they don't continue underneath? I've been affixing the ribbons first. Now that I think about it, I don't really know why I was doing it that way. [/quote]

It is arguable that the top of the peone, all in a line, and the bottom of the ribbons, all on the same line, create a stress riser that is a weak point in my system. But in 50 years of building, much of it with this system, I have never seen a crack generated on that line. They tend to be mid side, though actually rare at all in my work. Probably lucky. The ribbons are not much of a reinforcement, they are what I call crack mitigation. Their purpose is to hold the side together in the event of catastrophic abuse, keeping damage as local as possible.

If I put them in before the peone, I imagine they weaken the side to top connection, which is unacceptable to me.

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Yeah, I guess stories of stress riser potential are what prompted me to run the ribbons all the way to the edges. I have always wondered about the indirect bond that this approach creates, though. As a relatively inexperienced builder, it's difficult to gain total confidence in any of the processes I adopt. Thanks for explaining your approach.

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George :-)

I just got done repairing a 1980's Martin D-35 that got dropped to the floor. The side cracked right along the top of the back kerfing from the end block to the waist. Not the first time I have seen this. There is definitely a stress riser there. Sorry I did not take any photos of this.

Thanks for this thread, Bruce. Glad to see you back here.

Last night I closed the Couch Noodler, which mens I glued on the back. The four piece back, which meant I had a lot of extra marriage strips to deal with.

I dip my labels in shellac to encourage longevity and discourage defacement, and it can give the parchment a authentic patina.



Using my dishes as clamping cauls means it doesn't take too many clamps:



This morning!

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Man that's gonna look great under a finish!

Beautiful so far. I can’t wait to see it all done.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Thanks, guys.

How long till I get classified as “Snakewood” ? I wonder if that’s above or below Brazilian Rosewood . . .

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Well, I think i'm funny

My early exposure to Spanish methods through working in the Mediterranean Guitar Shop and subsequent exposure to Michael Dunn left me with a few traditional techniques I expect to die with, if not from. Top up building and peone construction are one, and another is using rope to bind my guitars.This binding will go on in seven discrete sections, of which this is the first:

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Your right Bruce . Now I remember what M. dunn said abt his training in spain. Both my Carlson jumbo 12 string and the selmer maccaferi that he made in 1971 and 1972, have H mahog spanish foot , cheers.1

One of the MedShop crew, Dan Persiko (sp?), discovered me building solid bodies in my hippie haunt bedroom at the age of 20 and invited me to join the shop, a sort of commune at that point. I had been there for a few months when Dun returned from his 3 year apprenticeship at Guitarras de Las Mallorcas, a related shop in Spain. He set up his bench right next to mine, and as they say, the rest is history.

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Hey Bruce, have been admiring/attempting to emulate your work for the past decade. One thing I've been curious is the doming on your work board. I assume its basically identical to the solera I'm using here in Spain but without the neck extension (domed below the sound hole but flat above). I use a 6 meter radius dome on my solera but would imagine it'd be a bit less for steel strings right?

The way I was originally shown to make a solar, the radii are not constant. I call mine a dish as it is a instant radius throughout. My current top dish is a 50' radius, just over 15 meters if my math is right. It's about 3/32" depth of chord in 24". I'll leave that math to you.

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Thanks for sharing all this Bruce. We all love pics of how others tackle different tasks.
If my calculations are correct, your radius is at ~64’. This makes for a very flat top, and indicates to me their really is no one ideal radius. Do we compensate for ambient humidity by adjusting the radius? Or by how we assume the instrument will be treated? I assume that the radius also contributes to top stiffness, so does this also mean that tone can be tailored via the radius? All things for amateurs like myself to consider.

B

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

I made my own dishes by drawing a circle of the desired radius in Autocad. Then I draw a 2’ line and attach its ends to the circle and measure the depth of chord. Then I hand plane that curve into the flat face of 2 x 4. Then I slot that face end to end to guide a router guide bushing. Then that is supported just over a 22” MDF disk with a pivot point in the center. Passing a serious router back and forth while rotating the disk produces that radius of dish. Barely takes more time to do it than to describe it. My earlier 3/32 was a guess, I made my current dish ten years ago.

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

Thanks for the explanation, Bruce! I would assume you keep your upper transverse bar flat though, right?

Seems an odd assumption to me, not least because actually I spring the UTB a bit to increase the arch and the tension in the upper bout. Why would you assume that, if you don’t mind my asking?

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

My wife is using my computer to do the Taxes, and I only get a few minutes here and there with it. so here is the current state of the Snakewood FT-00-C as of yesterday:



Blew the focus on this one:

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com

lovely!

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

What a beauty!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
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Hi Bruce.

Thanks for sharing this build with us.

I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

You said the Carpathian top is very stiff & light. How do you judge or rate your tops when checking long grain & cross grain stiffness? So many people get excited about cross grain but others say long grain is more important or has more tonal impact.

You thinned the back to I think 0.058" which "felt right". How do you assess it: flex, tap, feel the weight, ... ?

If these questions are outside of what you want to discuss here, I respect that.

Thanks again for sharing & please keep posting!

Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Kevin,
I do everything by feel. My goal as a luthier is to achieve mastery, both of the form and of the self. I suspect I am my work, or my work is a part of me, to a possibly unhealthy extreme. What it is!

When I say the Carpathian is light and stiff, I mean it feels feather weight in my hands and when I flex it, it is as stiff as anything, and stiffer along the grain than most. This top is not quite perfectly quartered, perhaps 2 to 3 degrees off, and this set is noticeably less stiff cross grain than I am used to. That is why I am not scalloping the braces on this one. I also slightly increased the height of the finger braces, not that it shows in the pics.

I thin all of my backs until they lose their "lumber-ness", and become "flooffy". Onamatopea (SP?) for losing the ability to resonate clearly when tapped held 1/4 of the way down the length. Snakewood is one helluva timber! Then I pare my braces until I hear the fluffiness approaching, but stop before it arrives.

Possibly you start to suspect insanity? Fortunately, I continue to get at least acceptable results, and business is okay. I have not yet arrived at the deep end.

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Bruce Sexauer, luthier
http://mojoluthier.com