Thursday and Saturday Class Week 7

Hard to believe we are already in week 7.  I think the biggest difference is that we feel more comfortable with the tools and working with wood.  Before when we had a very easy task, say cut a peice of wood to a specific dimension it was difficult for us to visualize the steps to get there and choose the right tools.  Of course there are a lot of different ways to approach a single problem, we are coming up with them instead of having to constantly ask a resource.

This week was dedicated to the creation and installation of the bracing.  Then "voicing" the top.  This voicing takes a lot of patience and detail work.  The basic theory is that if you have a stiff top the tone will not have the resonance nor the low tones available to it.  By removing wood from the bracing you are allowing the top to be much more flexible, increasing resonance and projection and higher tones.  This requires a good ear to hear these sounds as you are removing the wood.

Typically as you remove wood and approach the 'sweet spot', the trick is knowing when to stop since once you go beyond this point you are structurally at risk and your tone could get muddy very quickly.  None of us had the experience or developed ear at this point so we were very dependent on Robbie's guidance.  But going through this experience has definately increased my "library" of tones as well starting to learn what a guitar top should sound like.


This is a picture of the bacing on the back of the top being adjusted.  Using a chisel we begin to remove wood being carefull to keep the same general shape.  The brace Cian is working on has two humps.  The first one on the inside needs to be about 2.5 inches from the X Brace it is connected to.  The outside hump needs to be about 3 inches from the edge of the guitar.  This positioning gives you optimal spacing for both tone and support.

This is a closeup of the brace being worked on.  It is a slow process where you carve a little, tap the guitar, listen and begin removing more wood.  Now is a good time to mention that your chisel is an important tool in this process.  The ones at school were very dull.  We did not really comprehend the issue until I purchased a set and sharpened them.  WHAT A DIFFERENCE.

The main issue with reducing the bracing is that you are absolutely effecting the structure and support of the guitar.  You must also be careful because a slip and the chisel will go through the top.  This is also a good time to identify any gaps or issue with the bracing and repair if appropriate.  We were pretty good to go but had to take quite a bit of wood off.

Once we were satisfied with the tone we started our sanding process.  Event through no one would really ever see the bracing unless they used a mirror or took the top off, Robbie has installed a sense of pride in us.  We are not simply building a guitar, we are learning a craft.  As with every craft it is important to know how it will be judged.  As I have heard many times before, the difference between a good guitar and a great guitar is attention to subtleties.  We will always know what the inside looks so we want to have that "positive image".  It took us a good hour or more to sand it.  We started with 120 grit to reduce and blend some of the joints together than sanded the entire bracing and inside of the top with 240 grit.  All that sanding in turn reduces the amount of wood and effects tone, so you need to be careful with that as well.

]Here's a picture of Cian taking a well deserved break.  It was nice that we had two people so that we could switch off.  Although once you get going you do get into a rhythm and feel for the particular brace you are working with.  Since braces are quarter sawn they can be obnoxious at times, splintering or developing runs.  You just need to be patient working in one direction than switching to another.  All in all though it does teach you a lot about the properties of wood.

Here is a picture of the back of the top with all the carving and sanding complete.  This is more or less what it will look like when it is glued on.  What we should have is a strong top but flexible.

This picture show the bracing around the sound hole.  Obviously when you cut a hole into the middle of the top this produces some structural weakness in a top where the strings are pulling at it with approximately 180lbs of pressure.  Notice at the top we have our access hole to the truss rod when we put our neck on.  Also the Indian rosewood reinforcement piece for the bridge.

Close up of the bracing now fully carved and sanded.  You can see some of pencil circles which indicate where the brace should be.  We taper the ends off to blend in with the top.

A last check for the tone and we are good to go.  Next Thursday we will start to attach the front to the back, then route for your channel bindings and install them.

And finally we did have time for a little fun and a group picture of everyone there on Saturday.

Week 6 - Thursday and Saturday Class

This week, and probably next week, will be spent mainly on constructing and finishing the front braces.  The theory behind it is fairly complicated but really revolves around two main points. 

1. Support: The strings will exert about 180lbs of force on the middle of a spruce top which is 2.4mm thick.  To give you some perspective, I could easily snap the guitar top with my two hands and minimal force.  The entire top weighs perhaps a couple of ounces.
2. Sound: The top basically operates as an air pump.  As the strings are picked or strummed, the energy will be transferred to the bridge and then to the bracing which in turn will transfer the energy to the top of the guitar.

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Stratocaster Project Part II

Please see part I for a detailed description of what I have done so far.  This is part two.  Part I composed of stripping the guitar down to the wood and doing an inlay on the body.  Part II will be making a custom neck with inlay, Part III will be painting the body and Part IV will be the electronics and putting it all together.

The plan for Part II will to purchase an ebony fingerboard and do the inlay.  Then separate the rosewood fingerboard from the existing neck and glue the new ebony finger board to the existing neck. Obviously the first step was to decide on the inlay for the fretboard.  This was not an easy decision.  I had to way my minimal (but steadily increasing) skillset with what I "really" wanted.  I feel for this project I have decided on a good compromise.

I have decided on the open hexagon.  This design was actually part of a Martin Limited Edition.  Since the guitar body will be black and the fingerboard ebony (I am considering painting the actual neck black also) I wanted to stay with white Mother of Pearl (MOP).  I thought the design simple but elegant.  The routing should not be an issue which will leave me to focus on all the other things that need to happen.  I ordered the fingerboard yesterday from Stewart - MacDonald and should receive by the end of the week. 

They come preslotted, radiused and cut.  I can then do the inlay and sand them down.  On the existing neck, I will have to steam and pry the old fingerboard off of the neck which I have never done before.  Once the old fingerboard is removed I can then glue the new one on.  I will then sand down the neck.  I want to try sanding the back of the neck to an elliptical shape to custom fit my hand.  Then the plan is to either paint or finish the neck and then attach to the body once I have painted it.  As I go through the steps of the neck I will post them here...

Sunday October 18th

OK, this is going to be a process.  I ordered the material from Stewart McDonald.

I ordered some painting supplies which came with a book "Guitar Finishing".  The ebony fretboard looks nice, it has a lot of light brown streaks to it.  I also received some black dye in case I decide to dye the fretboard.  I also bought some unrelated items, chisels, potentiators etc...

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 As with any inlay project, time to get a visual on the end result.  I laid out the inlay on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 21st and 13rd frets for a total of 10 pieces. 

 

I decided on centered hexagons for the inlay design.  I then numbered the frets that I was using.  I then measured the Width and Height of each fret to be used to center the inlay on the fretboard.  

I then convered the area where the inlay was to go with white out.  I then take the measurements and draw a vertical and horizontal line in the white out.  This let's me see the exact center of the fret area.  I then glue the inlay down and let it dry.  I then take my scribe and scribe around the glued inlay piece.  This is probably the most important part of the process, getting an accurate inlay outline on the wood.

Here is a photo of the Inlay glued to the fretboard.  Notice the cross in the middle of the hexagons that lets me know where my center is.  The project would be a failure if the inlay was not lined up correctly.

Here is a close up of the hexagon routed out about 90%.  I leave the perpendicular corners to a chisel although splint out is common in ebony.  

I use a dremel tool with the braces and it works very well.  I usually use a 1-3/32 router bit depending.  Frequent fitting of the Inlay caused me to break about 4 pieces.  Although I consider the Inlay of high quality it is extremely fragile.  But for a good tight fit you need to frequently check.

As always I then glue the inlay in the fretboard usually overnight.  The next day I will sand up to about 220-280 depending on the pores in the grain.  Finer for larger pore and coarser for small pore.

Vertical Pentatonic Soloing

This post assumes that you have some experience with the Pentatonic Scale and it's "normal" usage.  I find Pentatonic Scales are very easy to remember and they sound great when used appropriatley.  I find that when I use a Major Scale (7 note), I am leaving out some of the dissonent tones which kind of puts me back to a pentatonic in the first place.  Any notes that I need that aren't inherently in the pentatonic I add usually by bending the string a half or whole step.  The only disadvantage to the Pentatonic Scale that I have found is that it is easy to feel 'boxed in'.  I feel myself stretching the box in a vertical fashion (including the pattern above or below it) but still feel as if this is an addition and not the way the scale lends itself to be used.

To combat this I have found a book (Fretboard Knowledge for the Contemporary Guitarist) that describes a technique that I have found very useful.  I have renamed this to vertical pentatonic soloing as these 'scales' or repetitive patterns naturally travel vertically rather than horizontally.  The concept is very simple but is based on two things you need to know. 

1) Roots - You need to know where  your roots are.  This is actually quite simple using the W method.

2) The 2-2 rule.  You can find the same name note from any location on the fretboard by travelling two strings up (towards the high E string) and two frets down (towards the twelveth fret).  This holds true EXCEPT when you are crossing from the 3rd String (G) to the 2nd (B) because these are tuned differently then the rest of the guitar.

These two concepts alone will give you a much better picture of the fretboard.  Now we will take the Pentatonic Minor Scale and break it into 5 smaller boxes (4 notes a piece).  If you know one box, by applying the 2-2 rule this box now moves (vertically) up the fretboard.  This does two things.  Provides a fertile ground for repetition of the note patterns and it naturally moves you up and down the fretboard rather than horizontally.

So as you learn your pentatonics horizontally, take the time to learn them vertically as well.  This will automatically add a dramatic element to your soloing...  You can stay within the pentatonic scale pattern and travel horizontally then using the patterns shown above move up and down the fret board at will!

Week 5 - Saturday Morning Class

First of all, I apologize for not posting sooner.  Thought I lost the camera, travel for work and nasty cold virus has made it an interesting 2 weeks.  We have completed the back of the guitar, joining, gluing and putting the bracing together.  We then fitted that onto the back of the guitar, cut the sides with a router to allow for the back bracing to come through.  We have now focused our attention to the front.  But before I go there, a couple of pictures of what we have completed.

Here's the inside of the guitar as it stands now.  Notice the mahogany kerfing on the bottom, spruce on top.  The center strip is a very thin piece of spruce, the cross bracing is mahogany also. 

Just a birds eye view.  We were very lucky with our wood.  It had extremely nice coloring to the Indian Rosewood.  We got our kit from Luthiers Mercentile Incorporated  (LMI).  I would highly recommend them, they have been a pleasure to deal with.

Here's a picture of the joined back.  The shape is cut roughly to size.  We will trim it to the guitar once we have our top completed.  The coloring is really magnificent.  I have not seen much rosewood with this amount and hue of reds.  I think once polished up it will look magnificant.  It is a feeling of joy to walk around the shop and watch everyones project start to look like a guitar.

And this is where we started this morning!  You will notice the white looking wood in front of Cian is actually the joined top of the guitar.  The top, like the back, came in two pieces.  We planed the sides until they matched exactly and then glued the together.  The first thing we need to do is install the Rosette.  The Rosette is the decorative trim around the sound hole of the guitar.  There are actually two 'accompaniments', perfing, which we will be two cirlces, one inside the rosetter and one outside.  In order to do this we use the measurements from the plans and plot out the center of the sound hole.  From this we draw a circle which forms the outline for the soundhole, then we measure and mark the rosette, and the accompanying rings.

We then drill a hole in the center and sink a post which will anchor our circle routing jig.  We then set the diameter to the diameter of the rosetter and off we go.  The outer rings we did in one pass with an 1/8 inch bit which was exactly the width of the perfing.  The rosette took three.  The last one we did was because the rosette could almost fit.  We probably should have tried working it in by running a steel ruler inside to compress the wood.  So ours actually was not a really tight fit, but it was snug.

Cutting into Spruce is very interesting.  It is a very soft and fibered wood, rather that a grain.  It tends to splinter and fuzz.  So after each route we needed to recompress the fibers or remove them so the channel is clear. 

Heres a close up.  You can see the pencil outline of the guitar to the sides.  Notice alos that the top of the Rosette is separated.  This allows some flexibility when fitting it in.  It won't matter because the fretboard from the neck will be on top of this when it is finished.

Here Cian is fitting in the outer ring.

Here it is with two rings placed around the rosette.  Now we need to glue them in place.  We simply took tight bond white glue and spead them in the routed channel, place wax paper over it and a block of wood on top.  Then it was placed in the go-bar apparatus to apply pressure while it dried.  I dried for thirty minutes and then it was removed.

We installed the rosette and rings just a "skosh" proud.  In other words a little above the top of the guitar.  Now using a cabinet scraper we scrapped the front until it was smooth and flush.  We will then run the top through the drum sander once all the glue is removed.

The final sept was cutting the soundhole which was really just routing another circle.  We made sure the router bit would pass through the entire top of the guitar.  Above is the result.

Here is where it stands presently :-)  Next week we will begin work on the bracing for the top.

Notice the inlaid tail piece...

Cats Paw Project

This project started because I wanted to do an Inlay where I manually did every step. I purchased some White Mother of Pearl blanks from Stewart McDonald along with a jewlers saw. As every project starts, I started with a cat's paw design, printed it out, then cut it out and glued it to the blank. I just use TiteBond White Glue and everything comes off very easily with a little sanding. Then using the jewlers saw I cut each of the shapes out. I was not exact with the blade but was able to sand them to the approximate shapes I needed with my Dremel. I then wrote on them in pencil (RP, R1, R2 etc) so that I knew which piece was which. I then super glued each of the pieces to the board. Once they were secure I then took my scribe and outlined the shapes.

I then pried the pieces of using a chisel. Then using my Dremel I routed out the appropriate areas. There is a relationship you will start to learn between how close you route to your scribe lines. Mine is just starting to develop after probably a couple of dozen routing projects. For this project I routed only half of the depth of the MOP. I used the 1/32 blade for the entire project, although I could have switched between a larger one for the paws and back to the smaller for the toes. Once I was done and could almost fit the pieces in I increased the depth to a little over the thickness of the MOP.

Then I took my sanding bit and sanded the sides in the block of wood until the piece slips in with a little pressure. This also has a distinct feel to it that I am starting to learn. Once your at that stage, I mix my epoxy, ebony shavings up and apply liberally, then push all the pieces in and clamp.

After clamping and drying this is what it looks like in the morning :-)

After sanding with 80-100 grit sandpaper.  This is where I still have a hard time.  As you can see several of the parts of inlay look black or like they are starting to wear off.  In reality it is the epoxy with the ebony mixed into it that is obscuring the inlay.  I always get nervous at this point wondering if I should sand some more or did I sand too much?  However with this one I know my routes were fairly deep and I probably have quite a bit to go before I sanded it off.  But be careful, 80-100 will take off quite a bit of wood if aren't careful.  I will switch off to 150 grit very shortly.

Here it is after sanding with 150 grit for awhile.  Notice I still have some black ebony around the outer toes and the left heel.  I think these actually went in just a little crooked so it is either the high side and it is being sanded off or the low side and still needs to be sanded :-)  So I sand a little more but selectively over these spots.  I am just about to switch to 220 once I can get those areas relatively clear.

Here it is after sanding with 220 for a while.  I also added a little Danish Oil to it which really brings out the color of the ebony.  The ebony has ended up being a very good wood to work with.  You can notice some disfigurement on the top toes, this is due more to the sanding with the dremel.  I was not getting an even sanding motion on the sides after cutting.  So as I sanded down, some of this can be seen.  I can probably fix this in the future so that I sand the shell down to 220 - 360 to really smooth it out.

Just a finaly shot showing off some of the color of the shell.  All in all a sucessful project.  I really enjoyed having control over all the elements and doing everything by hand.  I learned quite a bit to be used in the next seesion.

Week 3 - Saturday Morning Class

This morning we retrieved our clamped guitar body and removed the clamps.  It was pointed out to us (by our teacher) that the kerfin was raised in about a 5-6 inch section.  When I asked him if he would leave it that way he replied "Not if it were my guitar".  We debated the risk in trying to repair it vs. possible back problems later on.  We decided since we were taking the class we needed to repair it.

So we began the process of replacing the section with new kerfing.  First step was to remove the kerfing from the section with a chisel.  This was not try and knock the kerfing down to a manageable size.  Gently the chisel is placed in the groove and struck with the other hand.  Eventurally Cian got very good at this and was able to get it down pretty close to the rosewood.

From there we took a scraper and scraped what was left of the kerging.  Then with 150 grit sandpaper we sanded down until the rosewood. 

This was rather nerve wracking as you can imagine and we escaped without doing too much harm to the body. New kerfing was applied, glued and clamped and looking much better.

OK, time to clean up any glue squeeze out.  We took a razor blade and ran it in the space where the kerfing meets the rosewood.  In some spots we sanded with 150 grit sandpaper until smooth.  Robbie is a real stickler for leaving everything spotless on the guitar.  It is a great motivator and the guitar is starting to take shape...

Time to add more tone to the sphincter.  We are going to add an end piece to the guitar.  First we cut out the tailpiece according to specifications then we trace it onto the back of the guitar.  We clamp a piece of wood parallel to the line and cut and repeat on the other side.  Once we have two cuts we then chisel the glued rosewood off of the Mahogany block.

We then apply back to the section and slide the Maple inlay into it getting a very tight seal, then clamp and let dry.  Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of when it was finished.  Thats one thing that is difficulty, remembering to take pictures when you are involved in a step :-)
 

Now came time to prepare the back.  The first step was using the safety planer to bring the back down to a width of a little under 3mm.  The picture above is of Cian and Jim running it through the planer...