Goodnight Bad Morning

Alright, This post is going to help me re-live the worst weeks and a half stretch of this entire build.

I finally was able to secure a go bar deck to glue my back braces to the piece of wood that will become the back of my guitar. We go ahead and use a template to line all of these pieces into their correct spots so that we can glue them down without them slipping. Well, I used the template, but one of my back braces didn't fit through the slots in the template and was caught up preventing the entire brace from gluing down properly. Fortunately for me, I noticed it before the glue had fully dried, but it still was a pain in the buns to carefully pry it loose and reposition it. except for that after repositioning the brace, it then proceeded to slip out of alignment and was now fully glued down in a slightly non-perpendicular angle...and I had fallen a full day behind the build at this point. It isn't really worth it to fix a minor thing, because you wont really be able to notice it when everything is glued up. It gives it "character"

While the back braces were getting all glued up, I proceed with attaching the kerfing to the ribs (sides). This is a strip of wood with notches cut into it so it becomes fairly flexible that you then use to line the top and bottom edge of the rib to create a larger gluing surface for when you glue the top/back plate to the sides. The best way to provide the clamping pressure is with a bunch of clothespins reinforced with rubber bands to make their pinch stronger.

Which when all is said and done, looks like this:

Along with the side braces, which structurally, don't do anything to strengthen the guitar, but say you should develop a crack that runs along the length of the side, these braces will stop it from running the entire length of the side. From here, you sand the kerfing flush to the side with a radius dish that matches the radius you put into the back and a radius bar for the radius you built into the soundboard. Now you are ready to cut the notches into the sides that your braces will fit in to when you glue the top/back on to. This is a major pain in the buns to do by hand because you need to make absolutely sure the braces will fit before you make your cuts to depth. you also need to keep your depth of cut in mind so that it will eventually be covered up by your binding without showing any gaps. After a long time getting that fit as close as possible, we bust out our fifty feet of bungee cord to glue the top down to the sides.

Typically at this point, you go ahead and glue your back portion on, but unfortunately for me, over the weekend, my top had decided to separate from my sides in the area between those two notches in the above picture due to a combination of not enough glue and the arch that is built into the top. I had to lose another day on the schedule sawing the brace loose from the sides so that I could glue the top back down to the rib, thus removing the gap. You then flush trim the top to the sides with a router (which also slipped a bit on me and trimmed a bit more off than it was supposed to, but fortunately will be trimmed away later for binding). Then we prepped the back for gluing. It is essentially the same procedure as gluing the top on, but because my one back brace had slipped while gluing, I had to cut my notches for that brace by hand, as opposed to using the router and template for the other braces.

Before we close up the back, we are encouraged to sign the inside and put any dedications we deem fit.

Its a really expensive box now. Luckily for me, I learned from my mistake with the top, and used enough glue for the back so that no gaps formed. After flush routing the back and sanding the sides totally flat (another whole day of Cheetos dust) I was able to route the channel for my binding, which hides the seam where the top/back meets the sides along with where the braces will poke through the ribs, along with looking awesome. I also was able to have the dovetail routed for where the neck will meet the body.

With that all ready to go, I could now glue in my binding. I chose tortoise-patterned celluloid which required using a really nasty plastic cement to glue on. The glue actually partially melts the plastic which permanently bonds it to the wood. While this glue set up, we hold the binding in place with hundreds of pieces of strapping tape.

While that was setting up, I went ahead and started to sand my cocobolo fingerboard to its proper radius and condition, as well as determine where my inlays will be placed.

Cocobolo is another nasty wood to use, because the dust is actually toxic. It makes a great fingerboard wood, though, and it looks awesome (it also dyed my hands yellow-orange). Add in the subtle touches of abalone for the position markers, and it will look absolutely amazing.

Speaking of looking amazing, once the glue dried and I removed the tape:

I'll need to do a few touch ups where the glue didn't quite hold things in place how I wanted, but what lies ahead for me is scraping that flush to the top/back and then sanding it flush to the sides. Then I will work on getting the neck shaped out and fit to the body.

Only 2 weeks left.

There's so much time and so little to do! WAIT! Scratch that...reverse it.

Things are Changin'

Oh man, A LOT has happened since my last post...

It might just be easier to post all of the pictures I have and caption them because to try and remember what I've all done is too daunting of a task at the moment. To provide some sort of perspective on what I have gone through these past weeks: I've been getting my butt kicked, but I'm loving every minute of it.

Ok, well first I had gotten my top jointed and glued and thickness sanded. I think I mentioned that last time. From here I drew in my center line and went through the surprisingly difficult choice of which side of the board will be my outside face (aka the side that everyone will see). If you have any imperfections in the board (wavy grain lines, pin-knots) you usually want to hide those on the inside part of the guitar, or not depending on if you like the looks of it or not...It's the builder's choice. From there you draw on your outline of the instrument you are going to build and very carefully proceed to cut it out 1/4 of an inch oversized on the band saw. This is probably one of the most nerve wracking moments I've experienced thus far.

 
Ah, I had forgotten to mention that prior to cutting out the top shape, I went through the process of creating my work board, the surface I will be building my guitar on...

all of the clamps

about halfway finished

 In addition to making this platform out of plywood and gluing and cutting it to shape, I had attached a block of wood to the bottom with lag screw and washers, so that I could clamp it in my bench vise and not have to brace it up against the wall to work upon it.

now back to the cool stuff:

Next came routing out the channel for installing the rosette. That brass pin drilled in the center there is the pivot pin for the circle cutting jig for the router. Once you make your cuts as accurately as you can manage (not all rosettes are perfectly circular, like mine for example, but I forced it into place) you go ahead and glue it in and once dry, scrape the excess material of the rosette down so that it is flush to the top of the wood. From here, you then use that same brass pivot pin to set the router and cut out the sound hole.

Then, we get to cut and glue in our aptly named X Braces using the Go Bar System, or as I like to call it, the guitar torture chamber. The go bar system allows you to apply even pressure on all of the pieces without need a whole ton of clamps, as well as allowing you to press your pieces into a radius via the radius dish that is placed directly underneath the guitar top. Granted, you need to sand your braces into the matching radius prior to gluing them in for this to work.
The X braces are some of the most important braces in making the guitar top structurally sound and so that it wont blow up under string tension.

pictured here are most of the other braces being glued into place

 Once all of those other braces (along with the bridge reinforcement plate) are glued in, we get to go through the process of shaping and voicing our braces so that they will bring out the optimal sound of our guitar tops. Its crazy to think that based on a couple of factors such as the tap tone, stiffness of the board, etc. you can remove material from certain braces, and it will change the sound the top will make. Really, I was shaving miniscule amounts of wood from my braces and I could hear the tonal changes after each pass of the plane. So once I have reached a point where I was satisfied with the tap tones I was getting, I sanded the rough tooling marks out (for when someone snoops the inside) and set the top aside, because it was time to work on the Padauk back and sides.

finally voiced

OBNOXIOUSLY ORANGE!

the part I am most upset about is having to cut the sapwood off the side boards because it wouldn't visually work with my design.

Basic procedure: Thickness sand, lay out shape needed while maintaining the grain pattern on both pieces, cut pieces to size. THEN PREPARE TO BEND!
Ooh man, after wetting the sides and wrapping them up in paper towel, tin foil, an industrial heating blanket, and two pieces of spring steel in to what is perhaps the most awesome "rib sandwich" ever, we SLOOOOWLY bend the warm side pieces over a mold and clamp them into their "final" shape.

From here I proceeded to glue the head and tail blocks in. These add a surface to glue the top on to, as well as hold the bent sides in place.

I also had my Mexican cocobolo fingerboard thickness sanded. This guitar is going to be SO ORANGE.

Once the sides were all bent and had the head and tail blocks installed, I proceeded to work on the back piece. It more or less follows the same procedure as constructing the top, except it isn't braced nearly as intensely

Once that was all complete, I had to clean off my messy workbench:

and prepare to sand out the inside faces of my bright orange padauk (for when someone snoops later).
That ends up looking something like this:

Seriously. Chester Cheetah exploded on my work bench.

that prompted me to warn everyone:

stupid picture keeps uploading upside down. READS: CAUTION ORANGE DUST WILL TRANSFER COLOR!!

And that's as far as I've gotten. In the up coming week I will be gluing all of these pieces together into something that more closely resembles a guitar body.

Man...