New toy

Yeah, its been awhile again. Going back to finish the archtop in 2 weeks, been working on restoring a couple guitars for a friend, and bought an archtop acoustic on ebay last week i'm gonna restore. Picked this up earlier, drill press and sanding drums....

Found a pre inlay pic of the headstock

this was after I glued on my paduak veneer and cut out the shape on my bandsaw.

Been busy

I've been working on the inlaying proccess as well as carving the body more. I'll get the picks of the neck and headstock up later. I think they're on the other camera. Here's some pics from tonight of the body. If you're wondering why its taking me so long, in this first pic, you'll notice a very tiny little planer. Thats what i'm doing the majority of the carving with, and some with small rasps and wood files. So yeah, this labor of love is all being done by hand, no routers, no grinders, sanding discs, etc... Also I took some close up pics so you can see the subtle curve i'm trying to achieve sloping up to the top of the arch.



I'll post the neck pics later when I find em.

Neck carving

So I decided to take a break from carving the body, the planes were killin my hands, and I decided since there was still 2.5 hours left to work on the neck. I'll just post all the pics of the progress since I've already detailed before how I do it.

Carving the top

So sunday I actually got there on time. First thing to do was flush rout the body since the cap was cut out slightly larger.

Now that i look at it, that was the before picture, and there was no after between here and the next step. So after flush routing, the cap got routed down to where the body bindings will sit as a referrence point for the top carving.

After that, I got to carving. Ian had let me use his palm planes so it would go a little faster. Mine is only like 18mm I think, he's got one 2-3x that size. Aftermaking progress around the edge, I used rasps and sanding dowels to smooth it out before starting again. I'll just put up all the pics of the progress in action now.


I'll just post those to keep this less graphic heavy. I'll post the neck pics in a different post in a minute.

Massive progress

So I did the weekend seminar on construction at school. 15 hours of working, although I realistically probably worked half that cuz i kept having to take breaks cuz the tools chew up my hands. I'm not sure if I have pics of every step, but there's a ton.

First thing I did saturday was cut and fine tune the neck tenon, then glue the fretboard on and cut out the neck taper.

While the glue was setting on that, Ian helped me glue my Sequoia cap onto the chambered body. We used a bunch of scraps of wood left over from his Horn speakers so the clamps wouldn't dig into the figured wood.

So while that was setting, after taking the neck off the caul, I glued some ears on the sides of the headstock to accomodate my modified Mosrite shape. I had the good idea to join the edges before cutting em out so that they'd glue on without a lot of sanding.

Since the ears weren't completely precise, I had to do a bit of sanding so when I safety plane the back to uniform thickness, the ears won't go flying off. After that I got the template worked out and transfered and we cut out the headstock shape. I had Ian do that since I'm still getting used to the bandsaw and needed to see how to do it on an angle like that. But here's the shape, a little oversized to accomodate for refinement and routing.

I'll do all the sunday work in another post, since its mostly just arch carving.

Keep an eye out for new posts

I'm in the inlay and engraving workshop now, and doing a few more construction sessions as well so I can finish up my archtop. Can't wait to get that thing done so I can play it.

Got a new toy today

w00t, new bandsaw. Hopefully picking up some more tools next week.

one step closer...

to having a guitar that is slightly less a piece of shit than before.

So I finally got all the frets glued down and began levelling them. about 80% of the way thru the proccess, I discovered that the neck was warped/bowed. No reinforcement/truss rod. I gave up on that, it was close enough anyways.

Crowned them all last night, did the last 3 this morning, and polished em up. Cleaned up the fretboard with some pledge, a toothbrush, and a sock, and then glued in the nut. Here's some pics....

Gonna let the glue dry probably overnight, then put the saddle back in, string it up, and see how awful it feels and sounds.

long time no post

Its been ages since I've posted. School is out til August, and I haven't set up my woodshop yet, so things have been slow the past 2 months. I decided to dig something out of the garage earlier out of boredom and work on it.

So several years ago my sister bought a cheap acoustic guitar on ebay, intending to learn how to play after messing with my gear I'd left around the house. It was pretty unplayable to begin with, unless you're a classical guitarist with huge hands, which neither of us are. So a couple months later when she broke her hand doing gymnastics, it left her completely unable to play so she gave it to me.

Since I didn't much care for the way it played, a couple summers ago I began tinkering with it. When I was still living in Crete, all I had done was pulled out the frets. Once I had moved I began working on reshaping the fretboard and just set it aside to collect dust. Earlier I dug it out and finally finished sanding that down. It was a pain in the balls since I'm pretty sure the neck is fiberboard with some sort of softwood veneer over it.

For some reason it won't let me rotate it... But anyways... After I finished the sanding with my stew mac radius block, I cut new fret slots and cleaned them out with the back of an exacto knife.

Following cleaning that up, I wiped the guitar off and tried to tap as much dust out of the sound hole as possible. I'm most likely going to vaccum it later when i'm done with everything. I concluded that acoustic guitars look stupid with natural wood colored necks unless done right, so I busted out the Dark Walnut stain leftover from my shitar and stained it up. Turned out looking somewhat interesting, I may go one coat darker, not sure yet. I'll have to wait until it dries.

Thats all for now. I'm going to have to seal it and find what the hell I did with the frets. I saved them because I don't feel like spending the time to do a fine job on something that cost a dollar to begin with. I have plans to build a better acoustic later this year when I have the proper tools for cutting and sanding anyways.

new purchases, pics later

So I ordered my headstock decals yesterday and I also scored a piece of flamey maple on ebay for a super good price. Its 5 feet long, 9 inches wide, and an inch thick. I should be able to get at least 2 full sized body caps out of it depending on the size and shape of them, so if anyone wants me to build something, start thinking of a design.

Archtop progress

So far I've gotten quite a bit done in just 3 days of work. I'm not expecting to blow through this one, I'm taking as much time as I can in order not to screw it up, and making sure I have the instructor's assistance on everything I'm not sure about, especially when it comes to working with unfamiliar power tools. But anyways, so far I have my neck profile cut out, and the fretboard tapered. I have to clean it up still and put in my truss rod. After that I can glue down the fretboard and shape the neck and headstock. And eat the rest of my cheddar cheese pretzel Combos.

I forgot to add in earlier, my fretboard isn't really yellow. Its rosewood with a pretty nice looking grain pattern. The way the teacher advised us to do the taper is by coating the top with washable tempera paint and then drawing in the lines for the cuts, in order to not gouge up the wood in places we don't want gouges. It also makes the lines much easier to see when taking it to the bandsaw.

So that was actually last week that I did the neck stuff, but I forgot to take pics until yesterday. I did get my basswood blank glued together last week as well, and yesterday got it cut out on the bandsaw and sanded down to shape. This is actually a pic of the back of it, I forgot to take a pic before chambering, so I just snapped one of the back and reversed it for referrence.

Before I go any further, I'll explain the blue tape. there was a split in the basswood that just barely cut into my body shape. While sanding on the belt sander, a little chip broke off. After talking with Jim, the shop assistant, we decided that even though I'm binding the sides, it will help to have that extra bit of room to work with. So we glued it back in.

After the body was all sanded down, we did the routing. 3 passes, half inch or so at a time to create the sound cavities, making it a semi-hollowbody. I told Ian to remind me not to wear black next week. My clothing got covered in sawdust and wood shavings. It also made my allergies go nuts.

It can use a little cleaning up, and the top needs some sanding as well. Both the basswood and my Sequoia cap set a little funny, so I'm making some adjustments before gluing it together. I did get the cap cut out, but as I said, I'm sanding down the back of it to iron out any inconsistency and then I think we're gonna wet it to bend it down to glue on.

Thats just the rough shape. If you look closely, you'll see my pencil line on there that I'll eventually have to sand or rout down to. Thats all for this week unless i start on another shitar.

In other news

This is what i'm using to cap my archtop I'm working on... I promise to take some pics of the progress of that on saturday.

Super thick flamey Sequoia redwood. I'm lovin it

been awhile

So I pretty much finished what i'm now referring to either as the Shitar, or the Shitbox Git-box. I just need to make a few minor adjustments. I forgot to factor in the neck bow from using such a thin, weak piece of wood, so I gotta lower the action with thinner pieces for the bridge and nut. Here's some of the pics of the staining, tuners, my crap ass string tree i fashioned from a shard of broken pickguard, and everything else. I had tried to create a tobacco burst effect, but this was my first time working with stains and it turned out looking like poop. Hence the name... Oh, I also kinda like the way the back turned out, I just used a straight walnut stain, 2 coats. the way it soaked into the grain looks kinda cool to me.
I kinda forgot to take a full view of it strung up. I'll do that later

I need to read my previous posts before I update

I just realized that I had already posted all the body side crap. oh well, I'll edit that out

Lots to catch up on

So i've been slacking on the posts here. I was out of town thursday and friday skating out in Fort Wayne, and Saturday I had class and began on my archtop. I'll be posting all that jazz (no pun intended) after I finish up this thing, which should be this week.


So I finished gluing on all the sides mid-last week. It was kind of a pain since I only did a couple at a time since i've only got one set of clamps at the moment and can't find my C-Clamps.

So after all that had set and whatnot, I sanded down the tops, and cut out some spots that were too high, and glued on the top section. It took a few tries to get it seated evenly, I ended up having to cut off some overlapping corners, but got it to where I wanted it. Clamped that up and let it sit while I was out of town.



Now today, I finally got around to sanding down the rough spots on the sides and sanding/prepping the top for staining. I just did the same as always, 100/150/220, and then a buffing steel wool pad.





So the last things I did before staining was I drilled the holes for the strings, and I also put in a neck block, to cover my sloppy cutting job.



i'm gonna post the staining in a separate blog, I only began staining a little while ago, so it won't be done til late tonight.