Engelmann/Honduran Mahogany Dreadnought build

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Bob, I think we all know how that goes. Stuff like this happens to us all.
Keep going, you are doing great.

Kevin

[naccoachbob]

Yeh, Kevin. That turned out to be a tempest in a teapot - self induced!!

Made some progress this week. I'd gotten the wrong shellac, then ordered and got the right shellac, then read more and more where there were problems with the shellac and Emtech 6000. Of course, I didn't read the right stuff until I'd put some on. But one coat of the shellac, and I started sanding it back. It felt waxy to me, even though it was de-waxed Zinsser sealcoat. I had emailed the guy at Target, and after his response, I decided to forego the shellac coat. So I used denatured alcohol as he said to do, and then started spraying. Of course, mother nature got in the way and I had to stop for over a day. But, now I'm spraying. I got 3 coats on Thu, 5 coats yesterday and will do 5 today. I leveled after the first 3 because of the gap in time. Then wiped with some DNA and did the 5 yesterday.

Here's how it looked after sanding back yesterday's coats.



Then after the 2nd coat today.





It did take a good while to sand back to level on the top and back. Surprisingly for me the sides went pretty easily. The troji came in handy for that part.

I'll probably do the 5 coats today, then sand tomorrow, and 3 final coats on Tue nite.

Can't wait for it all to cure.

[naccoachbob]

Finally I got some time to make some progress on this thing. Work has been the busiest I've seen in 15 years here. Plus, I had to wait for the logo a very long time. Also, the thought of shaping the neck overwhelmed me at first.

I don't have any experience in doing this, so it was intimidating. But I just finally gritted it out and got it done.

First pic is the headstock after attaching it to the neck. Doing the routing was somewhat straightforward even though I thought I had goofed it up. Ebony dust has become my greatest friend. Andy DePaule emailed me a 1:1 scale of the inlay that was being sent, and recommended printing it, then super-gluing the paper to the headstock where I wanted it to go. That was probably better than trying to etch it out with an Xacto knife, but still was a bit hard to see. It worked, however, and looks pretty good.

First pic is the headstock being glued up, and the second is sanded, ready to spray tomorrow.



I had hoped for a totally black ebony head plate, but the wisping, smokey look going up the right side of this piece is catching my attention. I like it.



Here's the neck with a coat of Zpoxy pore filler, after being shaped the best that I can. I really like the wide neck heel. I capped it with some white fiber and a piece of cocobolo.



As I said, tomorrow and Monday, I'll spray the neck. Last Monday I had cataract surgery, and this Monday I'll have the 2nd eye done. I've taken the time between as a bit of vacation. My first in 13 months. While the finish sets up on the neck, I'll start sanding the body, and polishing it to be ready to fit things together.

One question for the real luthiers here. Do you recommend drilling the tuner holes before or after finishing the neck? If you do it first, do you wet sand any - and how do you protect the raw wood inside the holes?

Thanks for viewing,
Bob

[johnnparchem]

Bob, The neck and the inlay looks great. I will also be interested in the knowing when to drill the tuner holes. I drill the holes before not wanting to chip off or crack the finish as the drill exits the back side. I do get a little finish in the holes, that I clean out with a combination of a reamer, just the hole edge, and a drill bit if necessary.

[naccoachbob]

I finally finished this one on Sunday evening. I strung it up about 8:15 that evening, and at first was a bit disappointed. No bass, no volume, and no sustain. I was expecting it to be kinda loud with some good decent bass, and of course with sustain, since I had built the top pretty thin, and the bracing on the light side. Because of the thin-ness of the top, I was uncomfortable going very far with the braces, but they were definitely lighter than on my first uitar build. Granted the nut slots were very high, the action was high. But still I thought I'd get more right off the bat.

24 hours later, after lowering the nut slots to the ball park of where they'll end, I began to enjoy the guitar. Not a lot of bass, and still not very loud. But the sustain was coming along. Today I tweaked the slots down to where they'll stay, and the bridge down pretty close. Things are getting better.
Considering I used Engelmann for the top, if I understand what I've read and heard, Engelmann is not the best spruce to use for booming bass. There's supposedly not a lot of headroom. So my top choice was not good if I wanted to play in a bluegrass band.

But I'm learning fingerstyle, and playing it, I was very satisfied with the distinctness of each note, and was hearing the fundamental well with some very nice overtones. Each bass note is distinct and not muddy at all - which is a problem on my first guitar. I found the fingerstyle sound to be pretty pleasing. So I'm hoping there's more to come as the wood ages.

If you were to build a guitar with Engelmann and Honduran Mahogany, what would you expect from it?

I wasn't going to confess this, but as it might be helpful to other new folks, I'll spit it out. I had taken pains, great pains, to make sure I measured everything 2-4 times before I did anything. I'd measure twice, walk away, come back and measure again. Recalculate if needed and measure yet again - EXCEPT for the very last measurement of where the bridge was to go. After drilling holes for the clamp, gluing it up, coming to it the next morning, I noticed the bridge looked a bit close to the sound hole. 1" to be exact. I thought back and realized I'd only measured once. Please get a good laugh out of that and learn from it. I got the bridge off by using my blanked for the sides supported on one end by the bending machine, a block of wood either side of the bridge, and a brick holding it down on the bridge. It came up remarkably easy with very little tear out at all. Of course, I had to sand down the top to feather in the new finish, and made rectangles of the 2 holes, putting in some off-cuts of the spruce in them and glued them on. Now that it's finished, they aren't noticeable unless you're pretty close. A tough lesson to learn.

I'm having a truss rod cover made, so there's not one and the rod shows in a pic or two, but other than that and some more setup type tweaking, it's a done deal. Here are some pictures of the completed project.















For me there were several firsts in this project. The neck was semi-carved, allowing me to make a wide heel and to shape the headstock like I wanted. It did have the truss rod slot cut and was fairly close to final dimension. So it gave me new work to do and to learn, but not a total scratch thing. That will come soon. This was the first time I'd bent my own sides, and that was the most exciting part. After using some orphan sides from one of the vendors, I bent these, and it went fairly easily. Next time, I'll probably do some more orphans as I'm learning how much or how little water to use to make them come out good. The rosette was somewhat inspired by luthiers here whose work I admire. To make one in segments requires some very extensive fore-thought that I learned in hindsight. All stuff to put away for next time. Lastly, this was the first time I've used an air compressor and spray gun. That was a real treat for me, and I'll use it from now on with the Emtech 6000 water based finish. I used to have a soccer player who was so afraid of making a mistake that he often just didn't do anything. I took the advice I gave him and allowed myself to make mistakes so that I could learn from them. And boy, I'm learning a lot!

Thanks for looking,

Bob