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Walnut or mahogany are my only choices. I think mahogany will look better against rosewood. Before I build another guitar, I'll have to invest in some wood for bindings and kerfed linings. I think the walnut kerfed linings look pretty good though. I finished gluing those in this morning so It's time to start the back. I'm waiting on delivery of the back strip and other things.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I like maple for binding against rosewood. If you can cut and thickness wood with accuracy, you can use a 3 foot maple board from Menards.

I have maple but it's kind of boring, not much figure. I'll go see what they have at Lowes today. You never know. I have a nice thickness sander so making bindings is a breeze.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Getting read to glue up the top and back. I have an old window that someone was throwing away and it's perfect for checking the seams. As hard as I try, I can never get them perfect off the plane so I stuck some 240 grit on the glass and got it perfect. I'll keep trying with the hand planes on future guitars.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I plane one half of the plate at a time. If you plane both, any inaccuracy in the cut is doubled in the finished joint.

First those plane shavings look too thick. You need to just take whiskers off.

Barry a well known technique from general woodworking is to reverse one of the boards, ie have them face to face, then any slight angle in the planing is reversed on the other edge so they go together fine.

Cheers Dave

https://brfinewoodworking.com/edge-join ... ng-method/

This is a good description of the technique. Dave

I came up with a new idea for clamping the top and back halves. I was going to make board to do this when I spotted the tablesaw. Bingo, this works great and zero extra fixtures cluttering the shop. I may save the shims.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Somehow, yesterday's glue up of the top went awry so I cut it apart and re glued the way that worked in the past. No shims, just enough space between stops to make a tent and forced down and taped and weighted. I also got the joint perfect off the plane, a #3 instead of the 5 worked much better.

The back I did in sections taping the strip to one half and waiting 20 minutes and added th we other half. It was a bit of a pain gluing these potato chips but not to bad using tape and clamping the ends.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I have often wondered why we don't do this and intentionally angle the plane to make a scarphed lap joint to give the center seam a greater gluing surface.

Yeah they were much heavier than the wispy tissue paper ones I set #3 for. It made all the difference. I liked the feel of the small plane for this job.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Glad you managed to plane the edges. People who know about these things insist that freshly planed surfaces make a much stronger glue joint - like around 10 minutes or so. The roughness of sanded surface impedes the glueing.

In theory the longer the plane the easier it is to get a flat surface. However you've got the issues of how to hold it sideways on the shooting board and control it. I personally like my 5 1/2 but I have practised it quite a lot. I will drop down to a shorter one to correct minor problems.

Clay I guess to get a significant increase in glueing area would require a pretty severe angle and we would then get problems of the boards trying to slide past each other...

Cheers Dave

I didn't bother with shooting board. I put them in my vise. Because they don't need to be perfectly square, there's no need for the board. As long it's perfectly flat I'm good to go. I would like to find a good straight edge for testing that
One that won't break the bank.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Second try at gluing this up. My first attempt failed and was easily snapped apart s9 I needed to come up with a way of keeping the boards flat and adding pressure. We'll see if this is any better tomorrow.

Kids, don't leave your records in the sun, or let your rosewood dry into a potato chip.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I won this battle.



Onward with bracing and rosette. I'll start that tomorrow. I need to give my knee another day of recovery.



I need to mark my boards better, I got the wrong orientation on them. I don't think it will be too bad though.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I didn't accomplish much this morning, I overslept. I did locate my circle cutters. The one on the left I found at a yard-sale. I don't know if it's better or worse than the one I built. Neither one has a fine adjustment on them. Anyway, the rosette install is somewhat in process now.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I spent a lot of time setting up the jig on the left, I kind of like it. I also spend a ridiculous amount of time drawing circles this morning only to erase them to try again tomorrow. 1 and 1/2 hours later, not much done.

One lesson learned this morning is, when using calipers to scribe the circles, if the center mark is more than a pin prick, the lines will be off. I think tomorrow I won't even bother with lines and just start cutting on scrap and see where it takes me. I've done this before but can't remember the exact steps but I know it wasn't this difficult.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Hutch--

Here is what I do to avoid the imprecision of pencil lines and scribed circles. If I know that my center pin is 1/4" in diameter, and if I know that my cutting bit is 1/8" in diameter, then if I use a dial caliper to measure the distance between the closest edges of those two round pieces of metal, and employ some math, then I have a very precise way to cut channels exactly where I want them to be. For instance: To cut a 1/8" wide channel with a 1/8" diameter bit, and have that channel be 1/8" away from the edge of the 4" diameter soundhole, I can compute my way to the precise setting for my circle cutting jig as follows. The inner edge of that channel is 2.125" from the center point, and the outer edge is 2.25" from the center point. The inner edge of that channel will be defined by the inside edge of the cutting bit. I subtract half of the diameter of the center pin (0.25" diameter center pin, so 0.125" subtracted) from the 2.125" figure I just mentioned. That is 2". I set the dial caliper for that measurement. I then adjust the circle cutting jig to where the center pin and cutting bit are exactly that amount away from each other, as determined by the dial caliper. As long as my math is correct (that's always the thing to worry about), the channel will be exactly where it is supposed to be. It is a good idea to put some "sanity check" lines on the top where the fingerboard extension will go, just to make sure your math is not off. But don't adjust the jig to the lines; use the math to set the jig. Anyway, that's how I do it. I hope that is helpful.

I do it the same way. Making fine adjustments is a snap with a Wells-Karol type jig - I highly recommend that everyone make one. A single turn on the 1/4-20 adjustment screw is 0.050" which makes it easy to dial in the exact width you need on your rosette channels.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Not having an adjuster is a huge PIA. Before the next one I'll make an adjuster for mine or I may have a CNC by then. Do you have a picture of your Well-Karol jig?

I got it done the hard way, tapping it into submission with a hammer. I just need to do a little clean up and glue it in tomorrow morning.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Here's one - http://wellsguitars.com/Available_Instruments/Luthier_Tools.html

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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.

Thanks. I think I can make one of those. I'd be very happy to toss the Dremel and use my Dewalt.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Sylvan's price ($125) is not too bad although they are pretty easy to make.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I agree the price is good but, if I can make it myself, that's more money left for materials for the next instrument.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Here is a thread where I showed pics of the one I made and a link to the video from Chris showing how to make it. His video (3 parts total I believe) takes you step by step.

viewtopic.php?t=55775


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