1966 Rameirez Revisited

[warren47]

The back glue up was uneventful except I needed to make a white/rosewood/white ( w/r/2) center stripe. I had poplar left over from another project so a 0.060 thick piece was ripped from a board. A 22 tpi 3/8 blade in a 12 inch bandsaw did an ok job for the rip. A 3 x 4 sanding drum mounted in a drill press fitted with a guide made short work of sanding the parts. After the glue up a 0.010 strip was ripped yielding the w/r/w center piece. I do not have a picture but the table saw, the rip fence and a secondary fence were put to work. The result can be seen in the picture. The next task was to make and install the bracing. Only problem here was the notation "slight arc" on the plans. What is a slight arc?

[warren47]

With the top and back joined I had to confront the problem of slight arch. I was able to find a summary (long story, build notebook was thrown out by our movers) I settled on a 25 ft radius. Now, how to do that? I settled on a solera with a 1/4 in ply cover. I dished the plywood with a grinder using a template to establish the radius. I also planed the neck support to facilitate the neck setting.

Nothing worth mentioning about braces. Make them, shape them, glue. Both top and back.

[warren47]

The last post missed a bit. Thicknessing. The top doesn't look too busy but it is. I have an 18 inch smooth plane, a 10 - 12 inch jack plane but they could not be used because of the grain. I ended up using a small adjustable throat plane that I had to keep very sharp. Many many 1/2 though chips came off. Took a few days. Keeping track of the correct direction to plane kept me busy. As I got close to the desired thickness i resorted to a long sanding bar. My dial gauge set up let me know the thickness but I needed to establish a reference surface. Went through this on front and back. Sorry, no pics for this

[warren47]

Here is where I began making mistakes that would come back to haunt me. I made neck which was rather straight forward. What I overlooked was that the plans were for a 663 mm scale and I was going for 650. Not a difficult adjustment as the heal had not been built up yet. I then realized that the neck stock provided was too narrow for the Ramirez head. Again, easy fix, just laminate shims on either side of the head. Heal build up was easy as was the initial shaping. Problem. Finish and seal the heal at this point. I did not. I didn't catch this until I tried to do final clean up next to the sides. The flaws will be obvious to any casual observer. I then cut the slots for the sides. Spanish heal. The next problem was that I should have made the foot block at this point. I put it off and put it off... only to realize it should have been glued in place before fitting the sides. I'm getting ahead of myself. Before moving on, that is a granite counter top in our laundry room. perfect surface for clamping things that needed to be planed. Unfortunately, we moved in January of 2024 and I have find other places to work

[warren47]

I have already discussed the sides in another thread. Let it suffice to say they were difficult. I thicknessed to 0.080. I did several modifications to by bending iron (400 watt element) before making progress. I even resorted to a make shift boiling trough that ended in disaster. I forget exactly what I used but I could not get an entire side into the water. I had a slight bend where the waist would end up. I put that in the water with a weight to keep it from floating. I failed to watch the entire setup. My wife came up with the lifesaver: "What's burning?" One of the exposed ends was getting the heat passing up from below the pan. Oh well, I needed practice pieces anyway.

Not realizing that there is quite a difference between a Fox bender and a hot pipe I used John's suggested bending temperatures. No go. out of frustration, I let my pipe rise to 500 degrees. Yep, it charred but it bent, finally. It took me a while to find that the optimum temp for this setup is 375 to 400 degreed F. I spritzed with ammonia water.

I purchased another side/back set of mahogany and set about making the sides. Much smoother this time. I had errors sneaking in that I did not see. As I was bending I kept matching to my cardboard template. I was well within 1/4 inch of where I wanted to be after the parts cooled. The boo boo was I only checked one edge. I had introduced twists that I would not detect until I closed the box. I have a picture of my pipe but none of the bending.

[warren47]

With the neck clamped in place I proceeded to fit the sides. First thing I noticed was that I had not thought about how to profile the sides. At some point in my life I was taught how to do a projection using drafting tools. Armed with a top view of the guitar (as planned, not built) I marked off "suitable" distances on the top view and a side view. I was able to create the side view using information in the plans. Using a 6 in dial caliper I measured the height of the sides at each sample point. these were transferred to the sides followed by double and triple checking. I was able to use a razor saw to make the cuts.

That out of the way I adjusted the edges that inserted into the slots on the neck. I then started clamping the sides in place, test fitting, re-bending where necessary until I got to the point where I decided to clamp all in place and glue in the lining (had already glued the neck to the sound board). I stopped just after the widest parts on the lower bout.

Hmm how to glue in the foot block. I needed down pressure in the same area I had to clamp the sides to the block. Here is where disaster hit and I didn't even notice it. I felt I needed an exact fit between the ends of the sides and the foot block. As I was not at that point I had to do some re-bending (see it coming yet?). I have a small iron (form another endeavor) quite capable of getting to 400 degrees. Set it up spray (the mahogany that is setting on my spruce top) the ends and re-bend. I used a piece of wood that spaned the gap between the neck and the foot block. I used a 30 # dumb bell to assert the downward force. It was an easy effort to fit C-clamps to do the final clamping.

I let the glue dry overnight and finished the lining in the morning. The following morning I removed all the clamps and released the assembly from the solera.

It took a while to understand where the dark brown stains on the sound board came from.

Cutting to the chase, two part wood bleach to the rescue. I am not happy with the results, I took no pictures but attached is a close up of the affected area.

[warren47]

with the wide banding I needed to make 0.250 linings for the back. I used poplar and tried to bend a 0.25 x 0.25 strip. No go. I resorted to making six strips 0.22 tall by 0.75 thick. These were cut on the bandsaw and thicknessed using my drum sander. I had to make a gluing fixture to hold it all together (see picture). The fixture was shimmed so that I got reasonable squeeze out when the clamps were applied. The linings were then glued to the sides. Clothes pins were used to hold it all together. The bar in the glue up picture was installed to keep the sides from springing while clamping the linings

A picture of the drum sander setup is shown below

[warren47]

With the linings in place it was a simple matter of trimming the braces on the back, notching the linings to receive the braces and gluing the back on. It did take some finessing to figure out which spools had to be set while pulling or pushing on the sides before the next one could be set. It did not go together perfectly but the minor errors would be hidden by the bindings. I did have to apply weights by the neck to get the proper seating. Looking back I realize that I should have made right angle braces that would act as a partial mold. The solera was drilled for them, I simply overlooked the opportunity.

[warren47]

With the back attached I had to revisit an earlier project. At one time, I had the tools to make an adapter for my Dremel rotary tool. The adapter and tooling were left behind in the recent move. I had access to a trim router so I tried to follow Bogdanovich's drawings. I found they leave a bit to the builder to resolve. Tool made, 3/16 down spiral bit installed poor results. The lip riding on the top of the guitar will tilt if there is any dome to the top. I have about 1/4 inch dome in the last 6 or so inches. I modified the adapter to get around that problem. Channels cut, I failed to check all around the guitar with a test binding.

Plans call for a 0.19 inch binding part of which is the white strip (0.030) on the inside. Having failed earlier I knew I could not bend the 0.19 inch binding. I bent the white portion and glued it in place using dress maker's pins to hold everything. A few hours later, problems appeared again. Some of the pins had come loose and the strip pulled away from the back of the channel. I wasn't going to take it apart so I'd try to fill it later. I knew I could not bend the remaining 0.16 rosewood binding so that too was cut in half. I made a total of 8 0.08 x 0.375 strips. All were pre-bent on the iron. Error, fitted to the template, not the slot each would fit in. Anyway, glued it all up without a dry fit. Gaps on top of gaps. I used pipe clamps reaching across the guitar to try and close them. I only have so many clamps.

Some of the gaps were big enough to fill with shims. Others I tried to fill. John is right, you cannot match the color. Even rosewood gets darker when mixed with shellac At this point, pragmatism set in. It was mine to play so I would do the best I could.

[warren47]

Shaping the finger board was uneventful. I planed both sides to thickness while using a sanding board to keep both sides flat and parallel. I sanded one edges straight and used it for a reference. Contrary to some instructions, I played out the frets before tapering the sides of the board. I have a 24 inch steel scale graduated in 1/100 in. I clamped it onto the fret board parallel to the ref. edge. I used a machinist scale and a head worn magnifier to layout my 650 mm scale. I have a 0.020 kerf fret saw. It was run against a straight edge and sawed to depth.

I used the recommended reference pin method to locate the board while gluing. Inserting the frets was not a problem until I got down to 13 - 19. I ended up filing off the tangs and gluing them in place. All was well until I looked down the finger board from the bottom of the guitar. It wasn't visible without the finger board. But the surface of my neck was not on the same (similar to a twist) plane as the top of the guitar. Once again, I wasn't going to give up nor was I going to take it apart. You will notice fret 19 is missing. I ran out of wire.

The bridge was no effort what so ever. Set the location, lined it up with the finger board, drilled the locator pins and glued it up.