Learn to build a guitar

The main cross braces of the soundboard have a curve sanded  along their length, so when they are glued on, you will have to use a flexible gluing caul on the opposite side of the board. If you make a soundboard with flat braces, when you string it up, the top will look like it is concave. I use a 5m radius  ’railway’ curve. It is used in a drawing office where the draftsman has to draw railway lines. You can make your own curve template using a length of string with a pencil at the end of it. Draw the arc onto a piece of wood and bandsaw along the curve and sand up on the disc sander.

Trace the curve onto the blank bracewood, take to the disc sander and sand down to the lines. Alternatively, put two blank braces in the vice and use a small palm plane to take away the excess wood. Work slowly, as the wood comes off fast. Finish sand by hand. The half lap join at the center of the braces is done before the braces are glued down.Take one brace and place it onto the soundboard in its intended position, draw a short line either side of the brace at the top centerline. Take it away and add the other brace and draw the short lines either side of the brace at the centerline. You are now able to mark the direction of the brace across the other brace, and do the half lap cutouts.Be careful to mark the section to be removed with an ‘x’, and check 2 or 3 times before you make any sawcuts. A small paring chisel will remove the wood between the sawcuts. Place the joined braces in place on the soundboard to make sure there is 100% contact at the join area. Only glue down one brace at a time, but have the 2nd one in place to make sure everything is in alignment. It’s good that the bridge plate helps you keep things where they should be. Leave to dry several hours.

Technorati Tags: acoustic, build, clamps, custom, guitar, guitarmaker, luthier, soundboard, spruce, wood

This is the first time that I am building a guitar with the truss rod adjustable from within the soundhole. It is a little tricky, so watch your step. While you learn to build a guitar, it is one of those variables that keep cropping up. There are pluses for both styles of truss rod insertion. The advantage of having the adjustment at the soundhole end of the neck, is that the neck/head area will be stronger.Unfortunately, a small section of the soundboard has to be removed to accomodate the truss rod.

                                    I am mentioning this now, because we will need a hole through the first cross brace that we will glue on. This cross brace is 1/2″ x 1/2″, and depending on the size of the truss rod adjusting nut, this will determine the size of the hole.It should be in the middle of the brace, and when the brace is glued on, the hole should line up with the soundboard centerline.

                                    I use a curved template to mark a 15ft radius on the gluing side of the brace. Go to the disc sander and fashion this curve. Place a thin flexible gluing caul under the soundboard, and clamp the brace down. Look at the photo to see this in action.Use at least 5 clamps to secure the brace. Leave to dry at least 2 hours if you live in a warm climate. While this is drying, you can be cutting the other main ‘x’ braces to length, and mark and sand the curve to the underside. If you have one of the 20ft dishes that the luthier supply places sell, then you would use the dish to fashion your bracing curve. I use a single 15ft template to draw my curve. I use the measurements at the end of the braces to help with the curve drawing. The longest brace will subtend the biggest vertical distance (about 3/16″) at its end. When drawing the curves on the back braces, you will see these vertical end measurements of the 4 braces will vary according to their length.

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                         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

Using a pattern to mark the outline

It can be quite a task making your first guitar. I found that the more books I read, the easier it became to get my head around all the different processes. To this day, I still run out of time because I forget some of the processes that have to be done, and I run overtime. I will now begin to show the process of building an acoustic dreadnaught guitar.

The first is wood selection, so you have to first decide which woods you will use. Not only will the type of wood be a factor, but the colour scheme of the woods also comes into play. To see a selection of back/side wood and top wood, go to www.desanthony.com/workshop and woods.These are the main timbers that I use, and I try to use wood that is available within Queensland. Soundboard woods( Spruce and Western red cedar), are not available in Qld., but other woods like King Billy pine, Bunya pine, Hoop pine are available in Qld. Importing spruce is not all that expensive if you are prepared to use a lower grade. Soundboards are available from www.stewmac.com and www.alliedluthierie.com and The Luthiers Mercantile. You will be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the lower grade board.These pre-sized boards (thicknessed to 3mm) certainly save you a lot of work. Otherwise you will have to bandsaw the soundboard from a block of spruce, if you were able to buy it like that.

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