Finished Pics! Psilos Phoenix Dreadnought Acoustic

[SpondonBassed]

11 minutes ago, Geek99 said:

You sound like Jeremy f ucking Corbyn 

You mean as if Corbyn was bent over in front of Clarkson?  That's gross.  Take it back immediately.

[Andyjr1515]

The overnight job was gluing the fretboard to the neck.  I use radius sanding blocks as my cauls - you can put a huge amount of clamping force on them and they apply the pressure to the sides as well as the middle.

Ready for neck carve

 

 

The neck is bolted on with stainless machine screws and some decent threaded inserts.  Once It is all set up, I may well be gluing the tenon too - bolts alone work well, but I do find that the heel blocks can relax a touch over time and therefore can have a tendency to slacken off a touch.  Easy to re-tighten but not ideal.  In that the neck should never have to come off, I've come to the conclusion that using the bolts to ease getting all of the angles and fit right - and then glue and bolt - might be the best of both worlds.

I did do a dovetail once.  But my GP told me that I must never do that again because the emergency services are just too stretched to cope with another self-inflicted heart attack... 

Here are the inserts:

 

Got a few household things to do over the next day or two but the next big jobs are the binding on the top and the neck carve.

 

[Si600]

I'm a little confused here, not an uncommon condition it has to be said, but I'm not sure I understand how the neck bolts on. Are the bolt heads inside the body so you do them up from the sound hole? 

[Andyjr1515]

2 hours ago, Si600 said:

I'm a little confused here, not an uncommon condition it has to be said, but I'm not sure I understand how the neck bolts on. Are the bolt heads inside the body so you do them up from the sound hole? 

Yes - exactly that.  I'll take a photo when I get a moment...

[Andyjr1515]

On ‎10‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 17:14, Si600 said:

I'm a little confused here, not an uncommon condition it has to be said, but I'm not sure I understand how the neck bolts on. Are the bolt heads inside the body so you do them up from the sound hole? 

Like this, @Si600

 

[Andyjr1515]

There's a lot of fitting and fettling with an acoustic.

With the fretboard now glued on and the neck bolts & inserts in place, it was time to check the neck alignment and angle again.

 

The fit of the heel is pretty good - and any adjustment is much more fiddly now the fretboard so fingers crossed

 

Bummer! 

 

The straight edge is supposed to be in line with the top of the bridge.  Oh well, a few hours fettling, then 

 

 

[Andyjr1515]

Before starting with the heel fettle, I made a start with the top binding.  It will have an inner feature line of black/white/black purfling and then some Rocklite ebanol outer binding.

I have to say, I HATE routing for binding.  With a spheroidal top, it's really tricky - especially as you are working with 0.25mm tolerances.  I use a Stewmac Dremel attachment, but I wouldn't recommend it - there are just too many times where tiny adjustments in angle or tilt of the Dremel (difficult to avoid with it being top-heavy) you can gouge up to mm too deep!  But, so far, I haven't found anything affordable as an alternative

Anyway - after HUGE amounts of care and re-runs and tidying up with a very sharp chisel, it is as good as it's going to get.  And some of it is OK - 

 

The next bit - gluing the purfling and binding - I also used to hate.  I tried all the traditional methods, from fibreglass reinforced tape to bicycle inner tubes, to ripped sheets and tourniquets.  And - with everything now completely hidden, you could never see how well it was positioned and clamped. I never took all that stuff off the next day to find a tight-fitting, in-place binding... 

So I had a brain wave - and, honestly folks, I think I'm the only person in the world who does it this way - why not IRON it on like I iron on veneer?????

And that's what I've done the last two builds and I can't see any reason not to do this for all of my future builds.

For those who haven't seen my veneering threads, basically I use decent quality PVA wood glue, paint both surfaces with it, let it dry and then iron it on.  The heat of the iron melts the PVA between the two parts, the two parts float a touch so can be positioned precisely, you hold it there10 seconds or so for the glue to re-solidify and that's it!

You get instant confirmation that the joint is good or not and - if it isn't, it is fully repeatable...you just heat it up again and it re-floats, you re-position it and let it cool and it's fixed.

This is my kit.  You can just a well use a household iron...I just use the smaller one for ease of use:

You can see at the bottom of the photo the length of purfling with the PVA drying (takes about 15 minutes).  I've already painted the slot with the same glue.

Then I just iron it on:

I do about an inch at a time, hold it in place for 10 secs and then move on to the next inch.

To do the full top, using two purfling strips, took about 20 minutes.  Bit of sanding showed me this:

And even now - if I saw a gap I didn't notice (there wasn't one), I could have just repeated the iron at that point and fixed it.

The outer binding will need pre-bending - but I will be ironing that on too:

 

I'm sure there are lots of reasons why this is a really bum method - but it certainly works for me...

 

[SpondonBassed]

Spellbinding mate.

[Si600]

1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

Spellbinding mate.

Spellbound surely? 😉

[SpondonBassed]

11 minutes ago, Si600 said:

Spellbound surely? 😉

It is now.

[Andyjr1515]

The Rocklite Ebanol bindings were pretty easy to bend over the bending iron - much, much easier than real ebony!

 

So same MO as the purfling:

  Only difference is that each couple of inches takes a minute of two rather than 30 seconds.  It is essential that both layers of glue melt together and the extra thickness and width of the binding takes more heat.  Also, they take longer to cool and re-solidify the glue...more like 30-45 secs.

Again, though, this is a fully repeatable process.  So for a gap like this - while you are doing it or after you've finished - it can be simply reheated, then pressed in place and held to cool with the gap closed:

As a matter of fact, that is what I do.  First time round I concentrate on getting the sides attached and the shape held, seating the binding but not worrying too much about small gaps, and then I go round the whole thing a second time, this time reheating JUST to seat it properly - because either side is still solidly glued, there is no danger of each couple of inches pulling out of shape.

And after a satisfyingly short period of time, I've got the first half of the top done  : 

 

 

[Christine]

Wow, you make that look easy, I never knew you could remelt PVA what a useful bit of information. Next time I do some binding I'm going to do it this way. Out of interest, what type of iron are you using? Household ones are a bit unwieldy sometimes like in cutouts

[Dov65]

Thought you would know about irons 😁

[Christine]

2 hours ago, Dov65 said:

Thought you would know about irons 😁

Go buy red paint!!!!

Edited August 14, 2019 by Christine
Spelling

[Dov65]

😄

[Andyjr1515]

7 hours ago, Christine said:

Wow, you make that look easy, I never knew you could remelt PVA what a useful bit of information. Next time I do some binding I'm going to do it this way. Out of interest, what type of iron are you using? Household ones are a bit unwieldy sometimes like in cutouts

It's an old heat shrink iron from my r/c planes days.  I must see if you can still get them because this will give up the ghost at some stage!

Standard irons are fine for veneering but a bit unwieldy for binding.  Hmmm...travel iron might be a thought.

If you do have a go, shout before you start and I'll check through whether there are any tips or tricks I've missed above

[honza992]

What a great technique.  I love the way you come up with your own solutions, it really shows a creative mind.  Bravo!

Any chance I can get you to develop a similar technique for plastic binding?  'Aint no way I bend wood round the tiny lower horn of a Les Paul.....

 

Is this the sort of thing:

https://wheelspinmodels.co.uk/i/293658/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4s7qBRCzARIsAImcAxZhpbFX0V4uRy44IL2HgQlIz022NzrqVxaxEh6Tk25hMk7RiAh--lcaAvpnEALw_wcB

Edited August 14, 2019 by honza992

[Andyjr1515]

37 minutes ago, honza992 said:

What a great technique.  I love the way you come up with your own solutions, it really shows a creative mind.  Bravo!

Any chance I can get you to develop a similar technique for plastic binding?  'Aint no way I bend wood round the tiny lower horn of a Les Paul.....

 

Is this the sort of thing:

https://wheelspinmodels.co.uk/i/293658/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4s7qBRCzARIsAImcAxZhpbFX0V4uRy44IL2HgQlIz022NzrqVxaxEh6Tk25hMk7RiAh--lcaAvpnEALw_wcB

Yes - exactly that!  Well found

Must get one.  You never know what shortages there will be once our jokers have finished with Brexit

 

[Andyjr1515]

Second side of the top binding done - again ironed on:

 

While I was doing a swift inlay on one of @wwcringe 's basses yesterday, I did a couple for the headstock of this while I had all the tools out and set up.  Standard stuff:

 

 

Glued with z-poxy mixed with wood shavings:

 

And tidied up with a sanding block:

 

Next thread is today's task.  Taken me pretty much all day...resetting the neck angle.

 

[Andyjr1515]

As I said in the earlier thread, resetting the neck angle (which was putting the predicted action a bit high) once the fretboard has been fitted is fiddly in the extreme.  It's when you realise just how rock-hard rock maple is! 

But, although it has taken me all day - early morning until late afternoon - have finally got there.

I still have the side -to- side in the right place (it was before, but it is too easy to get it out of alignment once you start tweaking):

 

And - at long last, the beam is sitting where it should be - just at the level of the top of the bridge:

 

And time for a quick mock up:

[Si600]

I do love your eccentric soundhole inlays.

[SpondonBassed]

2 hours ago, Si600 said:

I do love your eccentric soundhole inlays.

I wasn't sure until I saw the fretboard in place but they really do look special.

[BassTool]

Awesome work as usual, love the binding technique 😎

[Andyjr1515]

Thanks, folks

And so to the bit of a build I enjoy the most.  The neck carve

This is my neck carve kit:

...and of the above, the humble card scraper is the one I use the most.

I had previously taken some profile measurements of Matt's favourite guitar and transferred those onto a plasticard template for the 1st, 7th and 10th frets.  I had also taken neck depth measurements and had thicknessed the neck to those dimensions.  I scribbled a pencil line down the spine of the neck to make sure I didn't cut into that depth at all.

For shaping necks I prefer to hold the guitar or bass a bit like a back-to-front cello and draw the cutting tools up from the heel towards the nut.

First to use was the spokeshave (strictly a two handed job but I was holding the cameral here)

 

I use the templates to guide how close I'm getting :

 

Once I've taken the corners off, I quite quickly move to the card scraper (again, two-handed):

 

Getting there...

 

And quite quickly it's at the sanding to final fit stage:

 

[BassTool]

Great skill Andy, you make that look a doddle 😲 and I see you are another builder keeping a smile on the face of @SpondonBassed

🤣