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That was fun to watch, thanks Ed.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Thanks Ed!
Very cool animations with the setup of the hand tools - like what appears to be a combination plane for routing the truss rod channel - sweet!

It's always interesting to see how other people do things. Thanks for sharing.

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Wait, what? No one told me there was a plane specifically designed for a shooting board!!! Where has that been all my life?

I need info. My TAS has just gone off the charts!


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Lee Valley I believe…shooting plane…

Also at around 32 minutes, fret tang nippers that actually work…

Colin North has one of those planes so you might be able to solicit some feedback. It’s been on my Christmas list for a long time but gets deprioritized over other more pressing things like socks.


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My across the street neighbor has one of those planes, and he's a very very bad influence. I had just sold a few instruments and splurged on one. It's the Veritas shooting plane. I had always used a jack plane for shooting, but this plane does work so much better. The angled blade makes a shearing cut, and the adjustments work great. Nice and heavy too--makes it a pleasure to use.

Not an essential, but now that I've had one, I'd have a very hard time doing without it. Lots of money, but money well spent.

Dave

That Lee Valley shooting plane looks nice, but you can save a bunch of money and get a shearing cut with a regular jack plane you may already have by using a ramped shooting board. I wonder if the shooting plane would improve on that though.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Nice video. I like watching different methods. Started watching a follow-up, and there is another that looks like it goes into varnish. Not sure what he has using there. Water based?
It's in French.
My French from Madame Harris in 1969 isn't helping.

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Why be normal?

I like videos of folks building stuff, guitars and otherwise. Some can be quite educational.

There were a number of instances though where I found myself cringing when sharp tools were used in ops heading towards nearly finished surfaces with some recklessness. Few shots of bringing surfaces to completion. Some times, a scraper or sanding block is way safer than a chisel though not as impressive to watch. I know if I were doing some of that work with a chisel, the grain would change direction and I'd peel up a big splinter somewhere.

Made me wonder if the guy was an actor and the featured shots were set up.

Am I too much of a skeptic?

Youtubes that are shot that well most often I think are made by a crew, camera, editing, production - are actors involved too?

Still fun to watch but I kept feeling like the money shots were lacking and finished parts just perfectly appeared.

One thing for sure, they had a dang good tool sharpener and quality tools.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

I don't think it was an actor but if it was then the guy still knew how to use a plane pretty good (and a chisel and knife too).

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

FWIW, I had the old style (square bodied) shooting plane from Lie-Nielsen before they came out with the current model. I got the newer one and it does work very well... but it cost as much (more?) as my #8 did from them, so you have to be a bit of a hand tool geek (like me) to justify that.

Jack (#5) will work very well for thin long-grain work. I think the best approach depends on how much shooting you do and why. The mass of the dedicated plane is a significant benefit, but if you are only shooting plate joints, I think it's overkill since you don't need much mass for that.

Back to the topic at hand!

Just to say - one can be an actor, and still know how to use hand tools. Shocking, I know.


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Bob

Examples: Nick Offerman and Harrison Ford.

But not Michael Keaton. “220, 221, whatever it takes.” “How about a little trim on that mustache, Ron?”

That was cool, thanks! If I built guitars that way I’d have a rip roarin case of tendonitis in both shoulders, arms, and hands.

Wonder what his finish was?

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

Hopefully you'd be paid well enough to only need to make 3-4 guitars annually and still pass over the caviar as blase…

The guy has this broken down into sections. This is the varnish one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQ_1C1aYlY
It is in French, but a description is in the heading.

Bonjour à tous, pour ce 18ème épisode, découvrez comment je réalise la finition de la guitare, avec un vernis à l'eau passé au pinceau. Cela nécessite plusieurs étapes assez fastidieuses, mais nécessaires pour protéger le bois et magnifier son aspect : On commence par un ponçage aux grains 80,120,180,240,320, puis par 3 couches de bouche-pores à l'eau, un reportage jusqu'au bois, puis environ 20 couches de vernis à l'eau avec égrainage au 320 toutes les 4/5 couches, et enfin après un mois de séchage, le ponçage final à l'eau aux grains 600,800,1000,1200,1500,2000,3000 et 6000, et le polissage avec 3 pâtes à polir ! Il faut être patient et méthodique pour arriver à un beau résultat !

I'll give it a go:

Hello, this it episode 18 covering the finishing of the guitar with varnish and polish. You must be fastidious to make the wood even more beautiful. What you need is sandpaper from 80-320, 3 coats of mouth pores of water (water based sealer?) for something the wood. 20 coats of water varnish with smoothing at 320 between the last 4-5 coats? followed by a final sanding with 600-6000 paper. Finishing with 3 grades of polish?

Or you could just cut and paste in Google translate! I use that and Bing translate every day with Hebrew and Greek. I like to try to guess in those too.

Hello everyone, for this 18th episode, discover how I finish the guitar, with a water-based varnish applied with a brush. This requires several fairly tedious steps, but necessary to protect the wood and enhance its appearance: We start with sanding with 80,120,180,240,320 grains, then with 3 coats of water-based filler, a report to the wood, then about 20 coats of water-based varnish with 320 graining every 4/5 coats, and finally after a month of drying, the final sanding with water with grains 600,800,1000,1200,1500,2000,3000 and 6000, and polishing with 3 polishing compounds! You have to be patient and methodical to achieve a good result!

Sometimes the translators stutter, but this is pretty good.

I don't know what water based varnish he is using. They all seem to be the same sort of container, so it must be a system? It looks milky in the container, but absolutely clear in the glass jar. Does he dilute it? Maybe that was the filler?

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Why be normal?

He has some very expensive and very well sharpened hand tools, and he doesn’t baby them. In fact I cringed too at how he seemed to hack away at some things with them.

I agree there was something odd about watching him work. I don’t think he was faking, but I suspect he had help off camera. The level of refinement in the finished product didn’t seem to match what I saw in the shots of him doing the work.


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rlrhett,

Glad I'm not the only one to notice. Further, I'd think if a film crew went to an actual builders shop to shoot a build, they would somewhere credit the builder. I didn't see credits given in that regard anywhere and I looked.

The video was entertaining and showed some good technique and I enjoyed it, no complaints there.

YouTube is big business and there are more and more professionally done videos there as a result.

Just seemed if a builder was that good and that young we'd be able to find out more about him.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

He says he's been building 10 years, but an amateur. Why lie? Built a 7 string for a challenge.
https://greatguitarbuildoff.com/products/hadrien-houbre

Maybe he's really good at fixing mistakes, and has an eye for detail. I don't have good eyes.

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Why be normal?

I noticed he did an arm bevel. Granted a well done bevel is beautiful but I have never completely understood why one would want to go to all that trouble for something that removes some vibrating real estate from an important area of the top and stiffens the periphery in an area a lot of folks including myself thin as part of the voicing process.

I have no experience with bevels and I know it’s thread drift but have the bevel makers here noticed any tonal differences compared to the same model without? Is there really that much difference in comfort?

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

I’ve only done the Doolin style bevel. No attributable tone change, great uptick in comfort particularly if paired with a wedge…

Best guitar I’ve made (for whatever that’s worth-ha) has an arm bevel. I thin the edges too, I just went inside the bevel.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"