Andyjr1515

No scratches! (and temporarily distracted)

And so to the shape of the sides blank. Normal warning as with all my threads - I describe what I do and why...but never assume this is how or the best way it should be done I start off with a rectangular sheet of cartridge paper taped so that it follows the outer shape of one of the sides in the mould. The bottom edge represents where the top will be and the top edge where the bouzouki back will be: So eyeballed edge on, this is how it looks: In broad terms (there are foibles I'll cover in later posts), edge on like this, we will want the back to go from 105mm (plus the top and back at 5mm total will give a final tail end depth of 110mm) to 85mm at the heel (total heel depth ending at 90mm) in roughly a straight line. So what I do is mark the 105 at the back and 85 at the front, and pack up a straight edge to that angle: I then run a metal ruler at 90 degrees to and along the top of the beam and mark spots on the paper all the way from the tail to the heel: So I then end up with a series of dots all the way along the paper which I join up and then cut out with scissors. And, although this is not perfect, it is close enough to be able to use as the basis of fitting the back at the appropriate time: And stretched out, you can seen that this is a million miles away from a straight line between the two points: And - although it is very subtle, I can see the concave curve at the heel end, changing to a convex curve at just under halfway - which makes me think that my attempt is at least in the right ball-park So next job is thicknessing the sides to 1.9mm and then cutting them to this shape - and then the scary bending can begin

Thanks, folks This morning, I cut out the top, around 10mm oversize all round at this stage. I know it's small beginnings, but this - to me at least - is very pleasing: So next jobs, while I'm sourcing the bracing woods, is preparing to bend the sides. But first, I have to cut them to shape (a LOT easier than trying to cut them once they have been bent - and don't ask me how I know!). Basically, the sides themselves will reduce from around 95mm deep at the heel to around 80mm at the neck. But - that's not a straight line. Because of the waist, the back side of the side piece does a double elongates s-curve - and where and how much that is depends on the waist shape. Now, I'm sure a decent CAD package (or a cheap one with a decent operator) could sort it out in minutes. But I use CAD so infrequently, it would take me as long to work out how to do it than just cut a cartridge-paper template, put it into the mould and eyeball it (you look at the mould from the side and mark a straight line in dots from one end of the paper to the other and, when you stretch it out again and join up the dots, it will be - miraculously - the correct stretched out S you want. Pictures will make that easier to explain. I'll photograph it as I do it

And the mould is done! Or is it mold? Anyway, it's done: And what is this for? It will act as a bit of a multi-functional jig. The first thing I will use it for is to help in bending the sides. I will be using a bending iron to hand bend the sides and will use this initially as a guide for me to check where and how much to bend, and then once each is basically bent, I will clamp the side in this while it dries and cools and this will help it to retain its shape. But I will also use it to hold the sides when the tail block and heel block are being glued and also the kerfing around the two edges - again helping to keep the shape accurate while all sorts of things are being done to the woods within...

You know no one's going to admit they know what one of those is Oh....BLAST!!!! So all needs tidying up, but we have a soundhole And to the body mould. Trying to keep all of this upright and square, you have to admire those Stonehenge dudes! : Top on and inner uprights ready to fit:

And so to the inlay. Normal stuff - MoP cut out with a jewellers saw, then the outline of the inlay penciled onto the wood and routed out with the Dremel and precision router base and 1mm bit: Glued in with some epoxy mixed with the same wood sawdust to create a colour matched glue: And once that has dried, a quick sand and we have a swift There's a bit of tidying up around the purfling to do, but I will do that prior to the final sanding once the braces are all fitted. Tomorrow, I will cut out the sound hole and the outer shape, including a few mm oversize and then it's just waiting the dishing, bracing and tap tuning (oh, and the sides, and the back and the back dishing and bracing and the binding and outer purfling and the neck and the bridge and the...… )

And the purfling is in: Bit of domestic duty stuff to do today, but later on should be able to get the swift inlay done and then the sound hole can be cut out using the same Dremel radius tool from the same centre holes to get nice concentric curves. Also today, I'll be ordering the woods for the bracing, kerfed strip (don't worry @Si600 - I'll explain ) and so on.

Does the neck properly and snugly fit in the pocket? Is it just the screw holes in the wrong place? And are they both Fender-size necks? If so, removing material could give you two problems - the heel and pocket are tapered, so moving it would result in a gap between the pocket and heel sides - assuming the necks are identical in scale and position of the heel end from the last fret, then moving it would mean that your saddles would need to also move back - there may or may not be enough adjustment in the bridge. The right solution, but only assuming the necks and scales are identical in other respects, would be to plug and drill new screw holes.

So first thing was to take a thumbnail impression of the shape: From which I could choose a suitable piece of bookmatched back/side wood. Next was to rout out between the two purfling lines: And then - carefully, because it is very, very brittle at those sharp ends - sand 'fit' the inset to the chamber: Once that was sanded it to fit, it was glue and clamp: When this is fully dry, I will plane / sand it level and then re-cut the purfling strips. In the meantime, I made a start on the body mould. It will be a simple affair - two matching plywood shapes that will be separated by a series of wooden blocks for each side and held together with steel screw joiners. First task was to cut the four plywood sides: It's not fragile - it's plywood. Just in these times of lockdown, I've run out of my normal packing tape to hold the pieces together!

And that's quite a good picture to use - so P's rosette will be (assuming I don't c**k it up!) like a triangular version of this: So my revised method (unless I have another after-thought) will be : - Rout the area that the back wood and swift logo is going to go in - cut the back wood, slightly oversize - re-route the purfling slots at the join between the top and back wood. It'll make more sense when I do it... … I promise

I are confuddled too - because I've just thought of a MUCH better sequence of inset wood in between said purfling Purfling's this: You can use it as a feature line by itself, like the outer ring, or as a boundary, like the inner rings: Or you can use purfling as an inner addition to binding which is on the outside of the side corners:

So - rosette time. This is the design that P and I have settled on - the outers will be black/white/black purfling, the inner will be back/side offcut wood, the swift will be MoP It's always a risk to show how I'm going about it before it's done...because this, of course, may not work But this is Andyjr1515! As one of my fellow band members once said (about my playing, but my building is much the same) "what I like, is that you're always on the very edge of disaster!" He then, of course, went through all the stuff he didn't like So I had a ponder and, although on the face of it, this makes no sense, I think it might work. This is my main kit (plus a Dremel): After using the compasses to pencil out the shape and verify the centre points, I drilled those centers for the spike of the Dremel radius tool to go into. Then routed the curves for the purfling up to the tangent points: Happy monkey! Then used a straight edge to join the curves up: And eventually ended up with this: The slightly Andyjr1515 thing is that I'm going to put the purfling in and then rout out the area between it. And I'm then going to cut some back wood and fit it as I would a control cover. We'll soon see if that is a decent idea or a really, really, really bad idea Anyway, this is broadly how the top is going to look: And this is how the now-joined-but-not-yet-thicknessed back is looking: Tomorrow, I'll bend and fit the purfling and then see if I can rout the bit in between

Lovely job. Looks beautiful.

Excellent!

Yes. I'll go into the black art of tap tuning when the braces have been put on, but yes - you do just that. If it just goes "donk" and it is tight-grained quarter-sawn spruce, then is usually means it's too thick. If it just goes "donk" and is tight grained, quarter sawn but not spruce or cedar or mahogany, then it probably isn't the right wood. I'll go into more detail later, but basically, you need the top (which is where most of the tone comes from) to resonate somewhere to every note that will be played. So once it is braced, you are trying to hear - either at the base pitch (like tuning a drum skin) or as a harmonic - every note when the top is held from different edges and tapped in different places. It bodes well when the unbraced wood is already giving out a distinct set of base drum notes but also multiple ringing harmonics at every tap. When we get to the tap tuning, I'll post a fantastic video of a top builder doing and demonstrating this to an audience before their (and our) very eyes. It makes you a much more discerning buyer of acoustic guitars!

I think it's the cast iron cylinder/screw unit that the handle goes in @Si600 ?

The Schecter, I am sure, will be dual rod.

Yes - he's done the same as me. That is, taken a standard OM body shape and shortened the top by two frets worth. The only difference is that we've gone for straighter sides from the top bend to the waist whereas Nigel has retained the OM's curve. Oh...and the other difference is that Nigel is a fabulous instrument maker... And I wish I'd seen that photo when I was trying to see what a guitar bouzouki was! Luckily, P sent me a few from different makers, including Nigel's Well - the top is a 3.00 - 3.07 mm and that will do. It doesn't look much, but I'm VERY excited by this: Why am I so excited? - because with the long reach calliper, I know, for the first time, that the thickness is even across the whole surface rather than just the edges - because this is the tightest, most even grained top wood I've used so far - because you can already see the chatoyance (the tiny ripple effect in good timbers) - because it rings like a bell! A reminder, also - the knot on the join line is where the sound hole will be cut; the darker wood at the join to the right of that will be under the fretboard. So, as these threads always go, so far so good and plenty of time still to b****r it up

Yes - indeed. The company name is Schroter (with the old double dot over the 'o' ) at www.edelholzhandel.com, but the easiest way nowadays is to use their ebay shop. Excellent supplier - I've used them before. Great range of products, excellent photos of the pieces with any flaws properly marked up and quick shipping (less than a week - even at the moment!) in good packaging. I would happily recommend them. And a little more progress. First of all, P and I have firmed up on the soundhole. It's an opened-out version of the original 'triangle with rounded corners': And I've started thinning the joined top down to near final size. For this, I am using my trusty Stanley No.80 Scraper Plane: It's a slow, careful job - the blanks were 4mm and I'm thinning down to 3mm, leaving 0.1mm for final sanding once the braces are all on and it has been glued to the back and sides. I've got around 0.2mm to go, being careful to reverse the direction of cut for either side so that it is always scraping with the grain and not against it (the fibre angle for bookmatched wood lies in opposite directions - which is why sometimes a guitar top looks one side light, one side dark in certain lights. Scraping with the grain for each side significantly reduces the possibility of tear-out ).

Yes - I suspect that the application of some finish would draw out allsorts of interesting things. Same with the other one too...

I was drawing something along those lines when you posted. Of course, P might have something completely different in mind than either of them In the meantime, we have crystallised the back and sides choice - we're going for this one and see how it goes in terms of whether my judgement's right about the splits : Colour-wise, it will be closer to the supplier shot I showed earlier (stockists of these kinds of products will usually show them dampened which is pretty much the colour they turn to when the finish is applied): I think this is going to look fabulous!

In the meantime, I've been playing around with some thoughts of shaping the soundhole. I'll put some of my various thoughts and scribbles to P but this one, I think, has something going for it, giving a passing nod to the curve and straight of the upper bout: With a shaped soundhole, the rosette probably needs to be simple - maybe just a couple of surrounding purfling strips - but, again, I'll have a play around.

The back and side woods arrived today and, true to a good supplier, exactly as described. It looks a nice wood. These are the two options that P will decide on. Both are very attractive and I will be more than happy to use either on a future acoustic project: The yellow marks on the bottom one are splits that the supplier has highlighted. The only relevant ones are those within the shape boundary and close up they are like this: Splits like this are generally not an issue on a back - and when the back is thinned and pressed into its 15' spheroidal shape these will open out more - as they will fill and not show but also are held in place by the back braces. A split in that centre light section, interestingly, would have been more of a concern as it would have the potential of running up the whole length. But the light wood is sound. Having said that, you don't really know until you get it down to the finished thickness of 1.9mm and start bending sides and spheroiding the back. If P does choose this one and if there is a subsequent issue during bending, we'll just switch to the other set Incidentally, the Black Limba on Matt's dreadnought was worse than the above. The splits on his were indeed lengthways and, originally, worsening - but it's not been a problem despite Matt being a percussive player. And a prize of a big emoji smile to anyone who thinks they can spot where it is : Colour-wise, the timber for P's Bouzouki will finish up similar to his own stock photos up above - more amber and darker figuring than in the dry state, but the finish will bring out all of the secret wonders held in the figuring of both pieces Some plywood is on order to make a bending mould for the new shape and then we can start some planing and bending

No - actually, Fender Bi-flex is a single rod. They block the nut from screwing right out which means that when you 'loosen' beyond the rod being straight, it then starts bending the other way. So yes, you would expect those to also be affected more than other types - but there can be other variables. It may use a different steel for the rod or the necks maybe naturally stiffer (I presume the Fenders are maple - the Sterling?) - and I'm sure there are others! Is the Schecter actually the Fender system or do they just use the term? I would have thought that would have used a two-rod system but I might be wrong. What model is it? Yes, keep us all informed...useful info whatever the outcome

The 'Guitar' bit is fine. It's the 'Bouzouki' bit that might be a bit of a challenge