Continuum

When we last left our hero, I had finished up my first two guitars (which by some cruel trial of patience, total fluke, callitwhatyoulike, both had things happen that require major/minor repair. More on that to come). Fresh off of this euphoria (and from leaving Red Wing for the summer) I found myself in Des Moines, Iowa being hired muscle for my sister in assisting with her move out of state. It just so happens that there is a repair shop operated in the Des Moines area by a former graduate of the same guitar program I had just completed (It's these guys. Check them out.). It also happens that they were in need of a repair technician. It just so happens that I am now a repair technician with ties in the DSM area.

What a crazy happenstance.

Literally 3 weeks out of guitar school, I found myself needing to move to Des Moines for the summer.

A lot of crazy stuff can happen in a short period of time, and as I soon discovered, a lot of repair work comes in cycles. Many guitars came across my bench in the beginning of the summer that needed new nuts/saddles and set ups, because the summer humidity had thrown everything our of whack. Once these were taken care of, there was a fair amount of wiring in new electronics and repairing damage from when guitars get a case of the dizzies and decide to fall down. Throw in the occasional neck reset and crack repair, and you get my summer in the shop.

One particular guitar that came across my bench for a neck reset also needed a new saddle. Both shown in a side view, the top is a standard sized saddle blank prior to shaping. The  bottom piece was the saddle that I had pulled out of the instrument. Needless to say, I had to do a bit of work to get this guitar back into a proper working order.

pieces of business card on the nut shelf done by the customer to Mcgyver the nut to the proper height

This guy was a cake walk compared to the repair I had to do on this 2001 Ovation. I will say that Ovations are not my particular favorite guitar, but without them, repair techs would have a lot less work/less money. This damage was caused by a lack of humidity, heavy gauge strings, a bridge design where the tension runs parallel to the guitar top as opposed to traditional designs that pull perpendicularly, and finally having the bridge glued to the finish, which isn't as strong as if were glued to the wood.

 To fix it, I took some heavy duty black colored epoxy, worked it under the bridge/finish peel and clamped the ever-loving crap out of it. We chose epoxy because normal glue wasn't necessarily strong enough to guarantee that it would hold up to this strain from the bridge pulling across it. That, and since we were gluing the poly finish down too, wood glue wouldn't hold that, either, so epoxy it is!

Its not an unsightly fix, but the owner said not to worry about making the repair totally disappear, so this is what we left it as. It is certainly stronger now than what came from the factory, and there was no appreciable loss in movement from the top when playing.

Then you get really oddball things that come across your bench:

A 7 string bass with wenge/purpleheart laminated neck and solid purpleheart fingerboard? Heck, I'll fix it...

Derelict

I know, I know....I left you all hanging.

After a whole bunch of stress, sweat and tears, I am finally able to claim that I have two guitars that I can 100% claim as mine, from conception, to raw slabs of wood, to finished, shiny instruments. It was a process, to say the least, and I wouldn't have changed this for anything.

Things have been such a whirlwind from when I had last posted, that looking back on my camera, I have 3 weeks of construction photos, pictures from my internship in Des Moines from over the summer, before I even have nice quality pictures of my finished guitars...and then there's all of the stuff I'm doing for school this time around...It is over 70 pictures.  For those of you that follow me on the Faceplace, a lot of this stuff has come across my news feed already.

You have been warned.

Right, so...I will try and categorize this stuff the best I can. For starters, these are examples of finishing class projects I was required to complete so that I would become familiar with the process of spraying a finish onto my (as of this point in the first year class) unfinished guitars.

We start with sunbursts, which is a fancy term for applying a finish in a gradient from one color to the other, most typically seen below as a lighter color in the middle towards a darker edge. This isn't always the style or color (silverburst, reverse burst, redburst, etc.) but there are two techniques:

Sprayed sunburst

hand applied sunburst

Hand applied sunbursts are done with a cloth saturated with dye and carefully blended until you arrive are the desired result. Sprayed sunbursts use an aerosol dye to achieve the transition effect (they also look better in my opinion).

We also practiced various buffing techniques on practice boards. This is a gloss buffed out using automotive foam pads you chuck into a hand drill.

 

 

This is a board buffed out using a professional buffing wheel set up.

 This is an example of a touch up technique called a burn in. You use a heated iron to melt colored lacquer into the damaged area, to which you then level to the surrounding area, paint in any necessary grain lines, and then polish out so that the repair is theoretically invisible when you are done. It is a tricky thing to get down.

burn in station

Alrighty, now that that stuff is out of the way, I can now walk you through the final stages of my guitar builds. I'll tackle the electric guitar first, then the acoustic, and then I promise I will show you the super glossy final pictures.

The slab with frets. Before I routed anything.

Everything routed out and ready for carving.

Laying out the contour curves.

One horn carved out. There was a lot of geometry that went into this.

Body contours. I definitely bit off a bit more than I could chew for my first real wood carving task.

Vulture inlay installed on the headstock. For whatever reason, I drop and break every inlay piece I do.

Prep sanded and ready for finish.

After 6 hours of sanding off pore filler, I went ahead and sprayed my take on the Gibson cherry red. My instructor wanted my recipe very badly.

Acoustic:

Due to how the schedule laid out/how thick I sprayed my build coats of finish, I didn't have the time to do a complete level sand and spray reduced lacquer coats. So for the end of year guitar show, my guitar had the finish texture of an orange peel. Bummer. However, I had signed up to do an extra finishing lab (where I was able to do my Gibson red), wherein I had the time to level sand and spray those extra coats on my acoustic...everything worked itself out.

Starting the prep sanding process. BONUS: feet.

Prep sanding: COMPLETE

Vinyl sealer/ drop fill any missed areas

At this point in the process, we smear on an oil based pore filler (essentially fancy mud) which we pack down into the pores of the wood and sand away the excess, leaving a smooth flat surface, conducive to achieving those ulta-shiny guitars we are all accustomed to seeing. It is a very messy and time sensitive process, so I don't have any pictures of those steps.

 After a bunch of clear coats of lacquer (and that level sand/reduced coats process) we prepared our guitars to receive our bridges that we designed and shaped from slabs of wood (Madagascar rosewood in my case). This involves very careful planning and some lacquer scraping so that when we glue the bridges in place, They are in the right spot and don't go anywhere.

Awaiting the final setup, nut, saddle and strings.

And here she is. My first Silver Fern Guitar ("Amelia" to me) 

• Adriondack Spruce top
• Padauk Back/sides
• Honduran Mahogany Neck
• Mexican Cocobolo fingerboard
• Madagasgar Rosewood Bridge/headcap
• Larson Brothers style bracing
• gold hardware, bone nut/saddle/bridge pins
• Abalone fern headstock inlay

BONUS VIDEO/AUDIO OF THE ACOUSTIC (its filmed vertically, I know, I was trying to be inconspicuous while filming, and please excuse my dust lung coughing)

AND THE ELECTRIC (SORRY NO A/V) I don't have a good method of recording it:
It is my take on the Derek Trucks Signature Gibson SG. It is a simply killer blues machine that can do other genres really well, too.

• solid 1pc/2pc (had to cut one piece in half and re-glue it because the jointer is too narrow) African Mahogany body
• Honduran Mahogany neck
• Ebony Headcap with M.O.P. Vulture inlay
• bound fingerboard
• Gotoh turnkey tuners
• Gibson '57 Classic Pickups
• 2 volume (500k linear) / 2 tone (500k audio)
• 3 way toggle
• Tonepros Locking classic tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece
• Vibrola cover

That will be it for now; I still have to cover my summer in an actual repair shop, as well as all of the crap I've done thus far in my first month as a 2nd year Guitar Program student. STAY TUNED. I promise it won't be as long between posts.

Just the Time of the Year

Yeah, I know, I haven't posted in about a month. Things have been busy, and I've been too lazy to post on here, so expect another large picture post this time with explanations interspersed.

It's hard to see, but it is my completed blueprint of the '61 Gibson SG that I am attempting to copy.

A couple of weeks back, we put on a musical instrument swap meet. I traded for/bought some sweet items and essentially have all of the raw supplies for an electric guitar (minus the hardware) to build next year in class.

In electric construction class, I had cut, jointed, planed,and glued my piece of ribbon mahogany into a slab big enough to make my guitar out of.

Then, using this template created from my blueprint...

and this one for the neck profile and taper

along with this half template for my headstock

(and these boring control cavity templates)

I traced, rough cut, flush routed the shape out of that piece of mahogany

and cut the rough stock for my neck.

Here, I am gluing on the cream colored binding to the fingerboard.

And here I am getting a rough idea of where the truss rod will sit and how deep it needs to be routed to fit.

the binding with the tape removed

and again....I think it looks really nice.

the neck (with the routed truss rod)

 

the head stock with ebony wood veneer and routed down to nearly final shape

gluing on the fingerboard

while that is drying up, we work on finishing projects. These are two pieces of spruce that we sanded down and use to practice spraying toners out of aerosol cans. The goal is to get a consistent even color.

This board is our practice in spraying solid colored paints out of a spray gun. It is a "seafoam green" on top of a white primer. Personally, I think it is more robin's egg blue, but tomato/potato. this will eventually be buffed out to a high gloss.

we also had some practice making a color sample board brushing on water thin dyes and spraying gloss coats to cover them.

and this is a board using a dyed pore filler. this is probably my worst looking one as I accidentally sanded through the color and had to do a touch up that came out really blotchy.

things drying outside of the spray booth.

the color sample area.

Well, I took the clamps off of the now glued fingerboard and went about installing my pearl position markers.

looking snazzy

The "final" neck with frets installed. I still need to fit it to the guitar body, shape the neck, install the tuners, install the inlay, make the nut, etc...

Back to finishing! working on doing color matching.

sample swatches with ratios written in

I also get to do some repairs for a grade, so as a favor to a buddy, I'm giving him an overhaul on his Gibson Custom SG. This thing was being finicky after years of hard playing and I found a few things wrong with it. For example, the string spacing on the saddles were very off, causing tuning problems and strange buzzes. I slotted new slots in the proper locations.

The original nut was worn out from using the guitar's vibrato system, so I popped it out and made a new one out of a plastic/graphite composite, which will lubricate the string as it is de-tuned and re-tuned from using the vibrato arm.

I also decided to level out all of the worn spots in the frets

and dressed them up to be basically brand new frets

I gave this baby a good set up, and now it plays like a dream. Now, This weekend I need to finish up doing some work on my own guitar (it also needed a fret level and dress, as well as a set up).

I'm also planning on cutting out this inlay design of a vulture out of mother of pearl for my electric guitar build.

Its only going to be about 1.5 inches big and it will be going on my headstock

getting a sense of how it will look.

soon I should have my own version of this.

There's only 3 weeks left and I still have so much to do...yikes.