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...