Quick update

Just a quick update.  With the help of the climate control now possible, I've been joining tops and inlaying rosettes..I now have three candidates, one as yet without a rosette, but a nice top.  If the rosette goes in nice, it is likely to be THE top because I believe it has the best sound characteristics.  Got together with Kevin to discuss finish and provided him with a sample of the rosewood to work with.  Take a look at the pics in the previous post and those below to get a glimpse of just how awesome this rosewood is.  The neck and fretboard (no frets yet) are almost ready to go to the joining process.  The sides are almost ready to be bent and the back is awesome.  See the latest photos below.



Routing the rosette channel.  Note the
relative humidity on the meter



Scraping down the rosette after inlay



The head overlay (Braz. RW) with the head design



The awesome back...look closely at the grain

Side ready to bend

Laura's photos and HOT, HOT, HOT

Because of the difficulty of manipulating a large number of photos in this blog environment, I've placed the whole batch of pictures of the making of Laura's guitar on Facebook.  I will continue to inform everyone of the progress on C's guitar here in the blog.

Well, as I said, hot hot, hot.  With the temperature and humidity as it is here in the soggy midwest, joinery is pretty much precluded.  So progress on C's guitar is, for the near future restricted to making parts and returning the wood to the dry cabinet.  On the near horizon, however a solution looms.  A major addition to the inventory of tools, gadgets and useful stuff in a brand new portable air conditioner/heater.  This should be a major improvement and the unit is capable of controlling the humidity as well as cooling and heating.  I'm psyched!

In the meantime, parts accumulate and here are some, which with the right climate (artificial or otherwise) will be joined into the magnificent guitar we've planned.  The top and back were joined a while ago when we had a drier period.  The inlays on the fret board are still under consideration and may be omitted.  More about this in the future.  The two globes on the bridge will probably be used, but the earth-rise on the fretboard may be a bit much.  To be decided.

I attended a chip carving class on Saturday to gain some insight into the possibility of the fan motif on the back of the head.  I'll be practicing these methods and if I feel confident that I can do a very professional job,, I'll proceed with it.

That's all for today.  bye.

Fretboard, bridge and a prototype  

Back, sides and a set of east indian sides

 

The Back, partially thinned

The parts... may or may not use the top shown here

Laura's Log

I had previously provided Laura with the history and specifications of her '51 Marcelo Barbero flamenco guitar.  From the posts below, I'll try to create a scenario of the progression from start to finish.  Not sure how to do this, but here goes:

Not sitting on my thumbs (ouch!)

OK, to start with, do any of you blogging folks out there know how to arrange pictures in a blog post so they don't take up so much space and they stay where you put them?  I make them small and add a caption, and mark them left, right, or center.  But I can't make them stay where I put them.  Any help would be appreciated.



Ideas for earth inlays



A bit o' finish on side plate





Now concentrating on C's guitar:  The neck and fretboard are finished to the rough stage that will be finished upon assembly,  I'm testing tops that I already have joined, but do not want to join any more until the humidity drops some.  Joining or assembly in high humidity is risky business and since I don't have A/C or humidity control in my shop  (that I can afford to run, anyway), I'm at the mercy of the global warming elements.  I came up with an idea for the fretboard, but after completing a mock-up, I'm not sure it's the way to go.  If you look at the photo on the left, the lower piece is a spare fretboard I inlaid with what I'm calling an "earthrise" motif.  Starting with a sliver and progressing up to a "full earth" at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 12th frets.  On the upper image, the earths are just stuck on with 2 sided tape, and here, I show another possibility and that is full earths on each of the positions.  I'm almost thinking that the whole idea is just too much.

In the center of the left photo is a bridge with the earth dots inlaid.  This I like and will probably do.

In the right hand photo is a side plate, which I'm thinning in prep for bending.  To show how the wood will look under finish, I french polished a bit of the end.  I doesn't show up too well in the photo, but it's gonna look wonderful.  I'll continue to do everything except assembly until I get a break in the weather or some other alternative for climate control.

Next trick: to assemble a chronicle of building Laura's guitar.  Not sure how this will work, but stay tuned.

TTFN

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

I delivered Laura's guitar to her on the weekend and she was very happy with it.  See the attached photos.  Next step will be to extract the whole story of it's making from previous posts on this blog.

C's guitar:  continued the production of bridges, the best of which will be used.  Began the process of thinning the side plates in preparation for bending them.  Even using the Grizzly sander, it's a slow process because each pass only removes a few 1/1000 ths of an inch of wood...very expensive sanding dust I might add.  The parts are adding up.  See  photos below.  Don't worry that the pics are a bit scattered.  I haven't figured out how to arrange them in neat sequence.  They seem to interfere with each other.



Laura receives her guitar





 

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Laura playing her guitar..happy camper






Bridge under construction





Parts beginning to look like..
A Guitar!



Hot, Hot, Hot, Humid Too

L's Guitar:  Kevin Kinder, owner of IndyCraft, completed the finish on L's guitar and it looks terrific!  Some pics below.  I also completed the fretwork, leveling and polishing the frets, installed the tuning pegs and strung it up.  I cannot tell you how it sounds, because some allergy problems have my hearing so bollixed up that I can't even tell if it is in tune, let alone hear it's sound properties.  I'm trying to get an acquaintance from the Classical Guitar group to play so I can record the sound for future listening.

 I'll extract the biography of this guitar and put it into an album along with the background recording.  This will complete the process, which if I'm not too far off, started when we lived in Arnold.  That's when I bent the sides and I'll figure out what year that was.  I know it was several years and three moves ago.  I'll post a timeline when I figure it out.

C's guitar:  I'm continuing to make parts like the fretboard, neck, bridge and other parts not requiring glue-up.  Joining wood at these temperatures and humidity levels can be fatal to a guitar if it is then moved to a dryer climate.  I'm waiting out the weather for a while.  I'm able to store the wood at a humidity level near the ideal, but my workshop does not have climate control (at least that I can afford to operate).  Clyde, (Intuitive Iron), who occupies the rear part of the space my shop is in, tells me that it could cost $200 or more a month to run the AC.  So we'll be safe and wait for a bit cooler, dryer weather.  All of this has to be done anyway, so I'll just pick the best weather windows for each operation.





Almost done





Kevin Kinder, IndyCraft, at work on L's guitar







Bz Rosewood bridge in progress. 
Accent strip matches the purfling on the
earth rosette.



Parts is Parts

Several accomplishments in the last few days.  One top inlaid with the earth rosette, fretboard thinned to final thickness, fret slots cut and bindings glued on; two Brz Rosewood bridges started.  So parts are accumulating for C's guitar.  Tje back is joined and the sides are cut to dimension and need to be thinned to .080" approximately along with the back.  Another top will be joined in the next few days.

Why, you might ask, bind the fretboard?  First, I like the clean look of the neck without the ends of the fretwires showing and it is much easier to dress the fret ends with the bindings.  The fret tangs are clipped back about the width of the binding and when they are tapped into place the ends of the frets are rounded and smoothed much easier than frets on a board with no binding.  I like the look and feel.

L's guitar is in the final stages of being finished (again) after the flaws that occurred with the first finish were corrected.  I saw the back, sides and neck, but couldn't see the top yet.  The fret work has to be finished after the re-fret and the action will be a lot lower and more playable....no buzzes, ihopeihopeihope.  Here are some photos of the parts I've made in the last few days.

Parts

A closer look at the fretboard.

A look at the peghead design.  This is a template.
Maybe you can see the binding on the fretboard, but it's
supposed to be almost invisible.