Learn to build a guitar

                         Once I have cut out the soundhole , I quickly grab the template and place it on the soundboard and trace around the outline. Flip it over and do the opposite side. Now it is time to mark out the braces and the bridge plate. You need to mark where the bridge and saddle sit on the other side of the board. It is not necessary to draw a great big full size plan of the guitar, but just a single line on a long piece of cardboard. Measure along from where the nut would be at one end the scale length of the guitar. If your scale length is 25.25″, then place a mark at that point. Measure the halfway point and that will be the 12th fret position. As we are building a 14 fret to the body guitar, then we need to know the distance from the 12th fret to the 14th fret. A little bit of maths is required here. If you divide the scale length of 25.25″ by 17.817, then your answer will be the first fret measurement. Take the first fret measurement away from 25.25″ to get the new distance that you have to divide by 17.817. Your distances will keep getting smaller and you will keep going until you get 21 or 22 fret spacings. You really only need to mark out frets 12,13,14, so that you can determine where the body join is. A little bit of string compensation will be required to get the saddle in the right place, so add 3mm to the string length on the single line drawing you are doing. When you have a fret template at your disposal, it is easy to mark out the 14th fret position in one go on your single line drawing. Take your single line drawing and place the 14th fret position over the body join area, and then mark off where the saddle position falls on your soundboard. Transfer this point to the opposite side of the board (the bracing side). Now you can see where the bridge plate will sit, and how the 2 main soundboard braces will sit. A really nice bracing template can be bought from Stewmac, where it is a piece of cake to transfer all these bracing locations to your blank. Well, I’m still dreaming about the day I will get one. You have the chance here in your design to play with the angle that the main braces subtend at the X intersection. You don’t want the braces to be too close to the soundhole edge or too far from the soundhole edge. When you learn to build a guitar, these are factors that will keep cropping up.

Technorati Tags: acoustic, custom, guitar, learn build, luthier, spruce, supplies, tools, wood

Tags: acoustic, custom, guitar, learn build, luthier, spruce, supplies, tools, wood