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.
The photo above shows a spruce top that has already had its halves joined to form a bookmatched top. A plywood pattern is sitting on the surface, ready to have its outline drawn onto the spruce. Assuming you have a pre-bought top, you will need to plane and sand the two edges that will be glued together. I use spring clamps at either end to line up the edges, then I put the clamped pieces into the vice and plane and or sand the edge surfaces. After you take the two boards out and line them up facing a bright light, you will see where the light will shine through if your initial sanding wasn’t thorough enough.Repeat the process until no light shines through your join.Careful not to be too gung ho and reduce your overall width of the top, so your pattern overlaps the outer edge.Gluing up these two boards used to be stressful procedure, but for many years now i have used just two lightweight aluminium sash clamps that only cost $15 each, and they sit under the boards at either end.A spring clamp holds the boards together at each end as well at the middle, and a long 500mm klempsia clamp straddles the boards at the mid point.The sash clamps don’t need to exert much pressure, just enough to see the glue squeeze out. Allow to dry overnight before marking out your pattern.