Second and Third Guitars

[John Reid]

Of course, I had some “learning experiences” along the way. Here’s some highlights:

1. On the second guitar I had problems fitting the neck. On the first guitar I made last year, I guess I had beginner’s luck. On the first guitar I slowly and carefully made adjustments to the tenon and it ended up fitting nicely. On the second guitar I thought it was going well, but the neck ended up rocking up and down. So, I had to learn how to use shims. Took me a few tries, but I finally got the neck in place.

2. When doing binding on these two guitars, I thought I would be clever and put pieces of tape all around the sides before gluing in the binding/purfling, so that they would be easy to grab as I laid everything in. It was convenient, but without realizing it until the next day, I ended up gluing in several pieces of tape. Got a good laughed out of that, and some gaps I had to fill.

3. On the third guitar, I had more serious issues. It’s a long story of dumb mistakes, and the result was that, when radiussing the top, I sanded the neck block WAY too much. You can see in the picture that the truss rod access hole is only half there. What to do…. Well, I drilled out a new hole. The upper bout will be thinner than it should be. And, I’m going to have to remove a fair bit of wood on the neck tenon to fit it in to the too-short mortise. Good news, I guess, is that I carefully reviewed how I got there, and, hopefully, won’t make this mistake again. We’ll see.

[MaineGeezer]

You can tell people .you made the upper bout thinner to test a theory you have about tone enhancement.

[phavriluk]

I've considered two-at-once but gave up on the idea. I concluded that, for me, I wanted to try to confine my errors and misjudgments to one instrument at a time and I've been building serially. Not that I could say it improved matters any.

[John Reid]

I now have the necks in for both guitars.

As stated in my last post, for the second guitar I needed shims. For the third guitar I didn’t. I had a long way to go because of the screw up with the neck block, also mentioned in the last post. Took a loooong time, but it seems to fit well.

Sometimes I think of this like landing a plane. For a good landing, it needs a careful approach. All the angles (pitch & yaw) have to be right. Altitude has to be right. Have to be lined up with the runway. I’m not very good at it and sometimes need to circle the airport several times and the landing is rough.

Once again, thanks to John Hall for inspiration and insight. (In my bad metaphor – that guy, in one shot, can land a plane on an aircraft carrier in rough seas.)

[John Reid]

Another update on the two guitars.

Made and installed the headstock veneers. One is osage and the other is maple.

Also did the fingerboard inlays. The one with the diamond shaped inlays is osage, like the headstock. The other is maple and bamboo. That guitar is for my brother and sister-in-law. This is an attempt to customize the inlays for them. She is an artist, so I tried to make a palette and brushes. He makes bamboo fly rods, so I picked up a cheap bamboo rod at a flea market and cut cross sectional slices for the other inlays. Also did the heel caps (maple and osage).

You might notice something odd in diamond inlays.
I swear I labeled and relabeled and checked and rechecked. But, I till managed to put a fret marker on the 2nd fret when I meant to put it on the 3rd fret.

Been having lots of “learning experiences”. One example is accidentally dropping a heavy dowel on the top of one guitar. Used damp cloth and a soldering iron to try and fix it. It did help some, but mostly I learned that I shouldn’t drop things on guitar tops.

[phavriluk]

Inlays like these are right ambitious. Good going!

[Diane Kauffmds]

Good job on the inlays. I've also mixed up my inlays, even after checking and rechecking. It happens.

[phavriluk]

I've drilled 5mm holes for 4mm dots. Now I've got lots of 5mm dots.

[John Reid]

Could use some advice.

I installed frets on my two guitars. The fingerboards are pre-slotted StewMac. Had a problem with one fret.

One end did not seat. I thought the slot might be clogged from sanding and inlay work even though I did attempt to clear all slots before fretting. I pulled the fret and made sure the slot was clear. Then I tried again with the same result. I then figured the slot might be too wide at that end (maybe from being too careless when initially clearing). I checked with feeler gauges and that looks to be the case, meaning one end just won’t grab.

So, I don’t know how to get the fret seated at this point. Any thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks.

[MaineGeezer]

Try putting a bit of CA glue in the slot, then put in the fret and clamp it down until the glue sets.

Also bend a radius in the fret, equal to or a bit tighter than the fingerboard radius.