Andyjr1515

Excellent! Watching with great interest. Very ambitious but you clearly know what you are doing. Great choices of timbers

No, not necessary. As I say, the bouzouki neck is tangibly deeper than a guitar (or bass) neck and, as such, headstock breaks really aren't a risk. Also, apart from the helpful grain direction of the maple, the walnut centre splice has a grain direction pretty much parallel with the headstock and so gives much more strength than needed for all normal and even rough handling.

Well, having a hard maple neck will make this sing when it's finished. But in the meantime it's pushing my bandsaw to the limit! It's a thick blank and there are a lot of full depth, full length cuts! First was getting the blank all squared up, the trussrod slot in, the mortice positioned and rough-cut and the headstock angled: And then the side profile cut. Because the neck is going to be quite a bit deeper than a guitar, there isn't a functional need for a volute, but I've left the provision for one if P wants one or if the aesthetics say there should be one: From the offcuts, I will be cutting a grain-matched heel extension which will itself eventually have an end cap of wood taken from the back and sides offcut. There might even be a swift on that eventually.

And to the fret slotting. Another good buy from G&W that has done a decent number of fretboards over the last few years: The red on the bench isn't blood - it's some red stain from Rog's recent veneer job The unit is screwed down to the bench and the top dog clamps on my bench are a bit of a godsend to stop movement during the fairly tough and vigorous sawing. Note also the packing pieces, again to stop the fretboard/template assembly from moving at all. And don't fret (yes, I know ) about the 25.000" etch - it's a two way template. The side I'm using is 25.500" And this is where the fretboard will join the body - at the 16th fret: The next task is working out what the next task is

Fretboard next. A lovely piece of macassar ebony from David Dyke: I tend to agonise over buying commercial tools and jigs - because they are specialist they tend to be eye-wateringly expensive. But, having used a home-made one for a couple of years, I have no regrets whatsoever buying the G&W radius jig last year. Sanding ebony by hand is a quick way - no, correction, a very slow way - to insanity! There doesn't seem to be a common consensus for fretboard radius on a Guitar Bouzouki but, looking at photos and reading some of the blurb of some of the 'better' builders, 12" seems to be a reasonable rad: Here is the blank on the jig: It then just takes 10 minutes or so of a radius sanding block to take off any router stripes: And there we have it - all ready for the next steps, cutting the fret slots :

You will probably find that what you are seeing here is a plain veneer over the underlying wood. It will be only 0.6mm thick and so can be sanded off to reveal the underlying body wood, which could be basswood, alder or other species. The body will have a number of parts - probably three or more - and I think the veneer is put on to provide a good base for painting, removing issues of the paint sinking into any joins, knots or other issues that could lead to quality rejects or other manufacturing wastage. If you are repainting, then I would leave it on. If you are planning staining or leaving as natural, then you could sand it off - but that is surprisingly hard work and you can't guess what is underneath until it's off. I'm pretty sure I have some shots somewhere of the back of a Squier sanded off and finished in natural. I'll try and find it.

And the neck has officially begun Two pieces of bookmatched maple (look at that grain at the end!) for stability and walnut centre-splice:

This is how the figuring of the back will wrap round to the sides @Maude. The lighter wood will come out more yellow and the darker areas will darken more: The top glue job looks OK: Now - the traditional way of doing this is to glue the back on, do the corner bindings top and back and then do everything else (like bridge clamping, fitting pickups, etc, etc) reaching blind through the soundhole. For Matt's Dreadnought, I proved to myself that you can do the top binding, rout the neck mortice slot, trial fit the neck, fit the internal pickup transducers and everything and THEN glue the back on. And that is a lot, lot easier. So that's also what I will do here. I might do the top binding soonish, but the focus now will be neck and fretboard

Thanks! Once the finish has been put on, the bottom half of the sides from the middle stripe to the back will tone nicely with the back (it's cut from the same piece of timber as the back) and - as you say - it will be the same colour both of the rosette and of the headstock plate which have both used offcut from the same part of the timber.

Unfortunately not. But all being well, I'll have my own Dreadnought acoustic back by then (that Matt Marriott STILL has, even though I built him his own! )

Looks and sounds good @Sidlanir

OK - back in the cellar! I was going to start on the neck, but decided there were still some necessary things to do with the body before doing that. The reason is that, with an acoustic instrument, the neck angle is pretty much fixed at the initial build - and it has to be right. And to do it you need the actual neck. But you also need the mortised body. And so you need (at least) the top on. So back out came the 25 foot radius dish - and this time with some emery cloth double-side-taped to it. This meant that I could sand the slightly proud linings (yes, @Si600 - being made out of fine worsted wool they would be proud ) to a gapless fit with the spherical top: Then a double check inside and out that there is a good, tight and glue-able fit: Then likewise with the back - MUCH easier to do this before the top is glued on: Note above the notches in the linings where the main X-brace and cross-brace will tie into the side/top joint. And finally, after double and triple checking, the top is glued, using as many spindle clamps as I possess and clamping cauls to spread the load: For reasons I will explain later, I will be breaking convention and NOT glue the back on at the moment. Breaking this convention is something I tried on Matt's Dreadnought build last time and it gives distinct advantages. So the back won't be glued for a while yet

Fascinating. Real blue-sky thinking

There's some nice figuring in that body wood. Looking good

Czech Republic to be specific I didn't think it would be so difficult to get hold of 7mm ebony dots!

I recently did a veneer job for Rog (see Build Diaries) and presumably it was an OK job because he entrusted me with his BEAUTIFUL Bass Collection 4-string to do something really scary! Changing retro-fitted Abalone dots for some ebony ones to get it back to as close to 'dotless' as possible! Here were the dots (the photos are a bit out of sync): This is not a difficult job - but it's not for the faint-hearted. Or for those who don't sharpen their chisels properly I only started taking photos after I'd already got one out - so ignore the missing dot in this shot. First task is getting a dint in the exact centre of the shell. I use a very sharp-pointed punch: Then a 1.5mm drill in the centre dint. (I told you the photos are out of sequence...here you can see the sharpie blackness Rog has been temporarily using on the other abalone dots): Then the slightly scary bit - both for the owner and for the modder...especially if they value their bradpoint drill bits - drilling out the shell! : Which gives you the new chambers: Which you fill with some ebony dots, wood-grain aligned and glued with epoxy mixed with ebony dust: Then trimmed flush with super sharp chisels: Scraped flush with single-sided razor (actually held in both hands): Which takes off all of the previous finish and therefore has to be done for all fret positions for an even finish: Followed by a fine sanding with a piece of scrap maple high-precision mini sanding block: And finished with a whisper of good quality danish oil to reseal it all: And lastly go and buy a new brad point drill

Modest progress this week but next week should be back and steaming There is a fair bit done in terms of neck planning - although nothing to physically show yet - but I have now finally finished all the Go-bar deck stuff with the installation of the soundhole reinforcement. I've gone for a maple triangular strip with the curves filled in with mahogany: When this is all rounded off, there should be a light/dark/light pattern from the players point of view, coordinating with the rosette. Leastways, that's the plan. So the Go-bar deck can now be disassembled and put back in the corner but the radius dishes have one last use - sanding the over-size linings ready for the top and (eventually) back to be glued to. I'm really pleased with the tap-tune result for the top, so last thing to be done on the top itself before gluing the top onto the sides is just to finish sand all of the braces from their present rough-carved state

Both sets of braces are still in the 'rough carve' state but functionally are all now in place. The reinforcement strips that will go round the soundhole are just that - they won't affect the shape or the tone: And - although this is still a huge amount of tasks away - at least it's starting to look like an acoustic body:

And to the back. Again, the braces are shaped to the radius dish - this one being more curved at 15 feet radius - and then pressed into the back in the radius dish while gluing: Then, after initial shaping of the brace ends, a cross-grain backer is glued over the back join line: If you remember, the back had the splits in the grain. Well, so far - and this is the time it will expose itself - there has been no tendency for the splits to lengthen. And that is a very good sign. It indicates that the splits were in the bulk timber before cutting and not a spreading stress crack. I'm happy with that

It was a really nice bass

No - it's a 600mm wide slice off a 25 foot 50 foot sphere and so is a couple of mm deep

And here we are with the braces as fettled as I dare. Certainly there is a pleasing variety of tones across the various points and so I think this is the point to stop: Note that the main cross braces and the horizontal one next to the heel block all will lock into notches that will be cut in the lining but that the ends of the slimmer 'tone bars' fizzle out into nothingness at various places. There will be some thin reinforcement strips around the back of the soundhole but my attention will now be turning to the much more straightforward braces to go on the back. And for that, out comes the 15 foot radius dish. Yes - another radius dish! There are some scary bits with acoustics (and most of them are still to come!) - but there is something deeply satisfying about the above

And the braces are on ready for fine tuning I've roughly profiled the cross sections to a more triangular/parabola shape. Next steps will be to add the maple bridge plate and there is a small strengthener that goes across the X brace centre joint. Both of these make a difference to the flex of the top and so need to be in place before I do the final tap-tuning. Having said that, it already is returning a wide variety of notes and harmonics, which bodes well

Hi Richard Not too difficult. Just some mathematics to work out the depths at a series of radii, a router on a radius bar to rout the contour depths and then a curved cabinet scraper to join up the contour lines. The challenge was the dust. I could not believe how much dust was created - and mdf dust is pretty dangerous stuff...

I'm really not at all sure. The engineer in me says that it creates a tension in the top woods and that increases the harmonic potential (it is the harmonics from the top rather than the basic 'drum' pitch that seems to sort the men from the boys in terms of acoustic guitar quality). But the pragmatist in me says that I'm just going to follow what the majority of the best builders do