#1 in progress: cedar/mahogany medium jumbo scratch build

[David L]

Looks good from here!

David L

[nkwak]

Looks good from here!

David L

Thanks!

Now on to the binding...

[nkwak]

The other night I went over to Kitchen Guitars (my friend is looking to do this semi-professionally so he named his operation in his garage workshop) to work on my stuff for a little bit. I didn't have a plan and I have to figure out how much purfling I'm going to need so I decided to play it safe and just bend the rosewood binding strips. Things appeared to go smoothly and I didn't hear any cracking but after I unplugged the heating blanket I opted to just leave everything sit until I return on Wednesday. My friend John had never bent EIR before and noted that it smell funky or something like that. I kinda liked it: not so funky as patchouli or sandlewood but still what I'd call exotic. It's subtly peppery to the palette but not overly pungent.



After that I collected my glued-up neck blank and the 6 F-clamps that I was missing in order to glue up neck blank #2. I admired the job I did and marveled at the tap tone of the neck as well. There's a lot of cutting yet to do though, so I broke out the blueprints and the tools and got to work marking up the lay of the land tonight.



Firstly, I marked where the 15 degree break angle for the headstock is to go. Ironically, the plans also call for 15" from the end of the tenon to that point :





Then I moved on to marking up the tenon. A lot of the mahogany in that area is going to be cut/chiseled away. Here, I marked where the "cheeks" will be chiseled out. Everything between there and the end of the neck blank will be cut away with my band saw:











Meanwhile, once I have the headstock planed flat I'll move on to gluing on the headstock wings:



Next up though, gluing up neck blank #2. It will be tricky lining up the pieces since I pre-cut for the truss rod but then again things didn't line up exactly the first time either.

PS: I haven't even planned for the neck profile or heel shapes though. I'd really like to emulate the shape of the neck on my Larrivee OM-03R but I don't have one of those gizmos or whoziwutzits that comform I could use to "trace" the profiles with. My friend has one but I don't know how to use it - though I'm sure he'll show me how since he has used it. Do any of you have any sort of suggestions that I could rely on as a primer though?

[nkwak]

Speaking of the other neck blank, here's some info on that:

I've been sitting on some extra wood to make laminated necks so I went and cut out some plies last week. This time around I used the original 3/4" x 24" x 6" Honduran mahogany board I bought last year along with more 1/4" maple and a spare cut of 1/4" walnut. As you can see, the Honduran is much darker and IMO denser. If I don't use it this time around I could see it matched up with rosewood back & sides:



My little 9" Ryobi bandsaw has a new blade but I think I dulled it when I cut out the 1/4" maple ply on the last neck. I did a little better accommodating for the volute but hog seems to be warping so the headstock doesn't look all that good.:





...then there's the headstock. This time around I traced the inner walnut ply instead of the clear plastic template so there's a little extra all around. The plans leave some extra space to work with so maybe THIS won't be an issue. Just in case, I measure the headstock thickness on my Martin D-16GT just to be sure and I think I'm OK:



At this point I have all my clamps back and I've cut 3/8" off the top of the walnut ply so it's just a matter of getting everything lined up. I also need to order up a couple of truss rods. I haven't even given a thought to what to do with regards to the fingerboard and headstock inlays, only that I'm going to keep things simple and use a rosewood veneer and fingerboard.

[nkwak]

Way back on the 4th I got a chance to put a little daylight hours in and paid my friend and my guitar a visit. I started out by truing up the important surfaces of the neck blank:





Purty good so far. It looks clean, but let's measure:

First, the break angle: 15 degrees per the plans.



Now let's look at the plans to note the length from the end to the nut:



Zero at the nut:



15" at the end of the blank where the tenon is:



Did I mention that 15 is my little guy's favorite number? Don't ask me why. It must be a coincidence...

Moving on to what lies ahead: profiling. I'm going to try to emulate the neck profile of my Larrivee OM-03R. I've been enamored with the neck profile ever since I first picked up a Larrivee many years ago. Tomorrow I'm going to go pick up a contour gauge and work on making templates with some spare plexiglass.



Just for curiosity's sake, I wanted to see how the scale lengths compared:







Looks to be exactly the same: 25.4". Of course, I will not be copying the headstock shape. Speaking of which, I need to glue on the headstock wings and get them leveled.

[nkwak]

Moving right along, the next thing I did was to measure the dimensions of the binding/purfling channels on the body and also finally pull my bent rosewood binding strips out of the Fox bender where they sat for nearly 3 weeks. I don't have pics of this but suffice it to say that the binding strips fit perfectly in the depth of the channels. The purfling will be the tricky part though. I have a variety of different widths and can't keep all the purfling strips I have laying around straight. I also need some more so I have a bunch in the shopping cart at lmii.com and just wanted to check before buying them.

Finally, I moved on to selecting a veneer to use for the headstock. Since my rosette and binding are rosewood I'm also going with rosewood for the headplate and the fingerboard. No fingerboard yet but here are the leading contenders for the headstock:



These all come from a box of scrap pieces which are comprised of some split backs and orphaned sides. As you can see, one of the choices is from the same board that I got my rosette. This one is my favorite, though. On the back is written "41" which I have no idea the significance of.



As you can see, it's quite dark but the lighting doesn't do it justice. In this one it almost looks like ebony but believe me, it's a dark piece of rosewood with nice contrast and an almost purplish color. I may take more pictures under natural light, but FWIW I matched it up with the binding and my end wedge and they all match pretty well.

[nkwak]

I haven't been able to put much time in on this lately but I enlisted a little help with my 5yo for a few minutes here and there with the neck. I'm starting to think about how I'm going to do the MT joint and start shaping the neck. First things first, I checked to see if my laminates accommodate the proper size trench for the truss rod:







I also traced the profile of the neck of my Larrivee with a contour gauge and transferred it to a piece of scrap rosewood where I cut it out with my little bandsaw:



Then I started thinking about what kind of headstock I want. I asked the question over at the OLF and I think I've got a better idea. I asked my 5 year-old son Joey what he thought:



He suggested something like this:



Well...I don't know about that. I'm thinking something mildly Gibson-ish - minus the mustache and potential lawsuit! It's a very common headstock style.

So anyway, last night I got to pay the guitar body a visit. I forgot the purfling I'd ordered so I didn't get to install it like I'd hoped so instead my friend and I jammed for a bit. Then I remembered that I wanted to cut the sides away from the pre-mortised neck block so I went and did that too.



(Yeah, I know. It still needs a LOT of sanding down and I'd like to give it a layer of shellac around the binding channels so that I can use CA glue to set them.)




I also took a lot of measurements so that now I can work on the tenon at home. I'll make the tenon a bit oversized and whittle it down once I have the neck and the body together. After that, I'm debating on what to do with the neck carving. I'm leaning toward installing the truss rod and (pre-slotted) fingerboard first. What do you guys think I should do?

[RnB]

I can see that little guy has all the answers to your dilemmas....lol!

Coming along. Nice work & pics. Are those Michael Payne's MJ Plans? I have a set of OLF SJ plans I'd like to tear in to one of these days.

[nkwak]

I can see that little guy has all the answers to your dilemmas....lol!

Coming along. Nice work & pics. Are those Michael Payne's MJ Plans? I have a set of OLF SJ plans I'd like to tear in to one of these days.

Thanks! Yes, this is from Michael Payne's MJ plans, though the X brace angle is widened to 100°.

[nkwak]

I went over to my friend's place to work on the binding but figured that it's something that will take more time than just a couple hours every other week so I brought the body and bent binding home. I routed for side purfling but didn't bend any so it's been a challenge. I already had to chisel off the first attempt because it twisted and there were gaps between the purfling and the mahogany sides. For the second attempt I think I'll attempt to glue the side purfling to the rosewood binding.