Here’s a shot of the front that wasn’t too bad:

And here’s the very next shot of the same from from a different angle that has gone horribly, horribly, awry:

After reviewing the shots from that first set, and finding not enough useable ones, I went searching for a new locale. Luckily, our Fine Arts building has a large glass enclosed atrium by the auditorium, and the rainstorm had finally stopped and was starting to clear. This gave me the ideal lighting environment: natural, but not direct, light.

Here’s the back of the headstock under fluorescents:

Here’s the same shot from almost the same angle, with natural light:

Big difference! The Osage orange actually looks orange rather than green (yech!), and the mahogany has that beautiful rich color that it is known for.

So, that is the first component to good pics, GET THE LIGHT RIGHT! But, that’s not the end of the story. Even with the right light, you still have to work out the best angle. Especially with reflective surfaces, you have to make sure that you aren’t getting light bouncing back, washing out whole sections of the piece. (This is particularly tricky with guitars since they have almost no flat surfaces; everything is curving every which way.)

Here’s a shot (in natural light) of one side of the guitar that is reflecting too much:

From the other side, the light is much kinder:

But, the most important factor in getting good shots is this: Take as many pics from as many angles in as many environments as you can! Pixels are cheap, use as many as you can. You can always delete the really awful ones if you’re running out of space in the camera. (A second card is also a good idea!) The more you have to choose from, the more likely that you’ll find just the right shot.

Nobody wants to end up with a Tinman that looks like he’s green to the gills!

I’ve been focussed on teaching and getting in some WWing and luthiery instead of posting blog entries, but as the guitar build nears its conclusion, I’d thought I’d catch up a little.

The body and neck are all completed, so before I can get it into the finishing room I need to make the bridge. We decided to go with cocobolo for the bridge, instead of ebony as we originally decided on, so that it would match the cocobolo bindings etc. I had a leftover blank from the Beast builds that was only partly cut out that would fit this size bridge easily. Before doing any shaping, while it is nice and flat and rectangular (-ish), I routed out the saddle slot and drilled the pin holes.

Then I could cut the shape to outline. I created a new design to compliment the jumbo body shape, echoing the round belly, while providing an upper shape that would achieve the most important function of the bridge: to tie into the X-braces for best transmission of the sound vibrations.

With the outline cut at the bandsaw and the saw marks smoothed, I could proceed with the shaping with rasp and file and sandpaper.I wanted a multilevel bridge, with the central belly being the highest part, then the much lower wings, but with a front ridge to provide strength and (again) maximum vibration transference.

Positioned on the body (with all the blue tape helping with position and layout marks):

After masking the bridge and fingerboard glue surfaces, and much finish sanding, it went into the finishing room for its first coats. Two coats of blonde shellac were followed by two coats of an oil/varnish, applied VERY thinly, and sanded to 600 grit between coats. I wanted to get things sealed and protected before the next step, which was to cut a sound port into the upper bout. This is a new innovation that the customer wanted that is to allow the player to hear the sound of the guitar better while playing. Not having done any before, I was concerned, especially with the osage orange, which has a tendency to want to splinter at cuts.

Sure enough, I had some trouble with the edges, so I decided to make a decorative porthole ring to go around the hole. Easy to say, tricky to do. It had to be thin enough to not be intrusive, but it also had to follow the curves of the upper bout. I used the same mallee burl that I used for the endgraft and heelblock. Using a combination of a circle cutter, band saw and drum sander, I was able to get my ring. Then I fired up the bending iron to carefully bend it to shape. After letting it dry in the form overnight, it was ready to glue into place.

Some homemade spool clamps proved to be the best method for glueing.

And, after some finish sanding and some shellac, voila!

Now, back to more finish coats, then final assembly and setup.

First, I like to add a fingerboard finish to the radiused and sanded board, especially with cocobolo. This seals the wood and provides a nice smooth feel. Of course, before any sealing can take place, the slots have to be cleared of all of the sanding dust that has accumulated during the radiusing process. This requires a special tool that can get in the narrow slot without widening it. Then a couple coats of the finish is wiped on and buffed to a satin sheen.

Since each fret will have to be sized for length and trimmed, a staging board helps keep the frets organized. Then comes the fun (insert sarcastic comment here!) of trimming the barbs to the correct length. They have to be long enough to hold the entire fret firmly in its slot, but still leave enough of a gap so that any seasonal contraction of the wood doesn’t push them through the binding. Using the EVO fretwire, which is harder and longer lasting than conventional nickel-silver wire, means using a bit more force to clip them all, but with the right tools, even that can be done. (I just hope I’m never asked to use stainless steel fretwire. That just eats tools for breakfast!)

After trimming the tangs, any rough remnants of the cut need to be filed flush. Then, after one final slot cleaning, the hammering can begin. This is the easy bit. The cocobolo holds the frets nice and tight, with no need for glue. All you need is a good support for the neck and a firm hand.

When I get to the fingerboard that will extend over the guitar body, extra support must be used under the hammer to avoid snapping the extension.

The ends are clipped close to the bindings and then filed flush. (Also not a task I enjoy. I much prefer to work wood rather than metal.)

That’s it for the neck, until its ready to be attached to the body for the last time. Then the frets will be levelled and the ends dressed. (In a nice casual ensemble!)

Then, the sides are flushed with the ends and the whole bound fingerboard get a trip through the drum sander to bring the bindings level with the top and bottom. Then the fingerboard gets glued to the rough neck, with the truss rod in it’s slot. After the glue cures, the neck is taken to the router and, using the flush trim bit, the sides of the neck are brought to the width of the fingerboard.

It’s now time to work on carving the neck. This is one of my most enjoyable parts of the build; every stroke of the rasp has an immediate effect. There’s no glueing, its all shaping the neck, checking it, making adjustments, testing again, until finally, you’ve gone from a square block that would be very uncomfortable to hold, to something that fits the hand to a tee! One thing that made this neck especially enjoyable to carve, was the purchase of a specialty vise to hold guitar necks. It was so easy to hold it secure, work on any part of it, shift positions, reclamp, etc. Previously, I’d had to clamp it to the edge of my bench and work on one side at a time. Changing position to work on another part became a major production! This was a piece of cake as I attacked the neck with spokshave, rasps, and sandpaper.

After the initial shaping, I was able to meet with my client, so he could get a feel for the neck, and see how it was fitting his hands. On the whole, he was pleased, noting just a couple of small spots to address. That’s the benefit of a true custom guitar; you’re not selecting from a short list of options, everything is tailor made just for you!

Next, I did an initial radiusing of the fingerboard to a 12″ radius. Then I marked out and drilled the holes for the mother of pearl position dots. After they were glued (with gel CA glue), I did the final passes with the radius block, to bring everything to a nice silky smoothness, leveling the dots at the same time.

Then I marked, drilled and glued the black side dot material into the binding. After leveling, its ready for a final sanding and frets.

That’ll be next.

For the commissioned guitar, the customer wanted a mahogany neck, and I found a very nice board of reclaimed Honduran mahogany that had been rescued from the bottom of a river, where it had lain for decades. This was an ideal choice in a couple of ways. One: because of the reclaiming process, the wood is incredibly dense and stable, easily the heaviest mahogany I’ve ever encountered. Two: the customer is a heart transplant patient and intends to use the guitar to help others as they wait for new hearts, so the recycled wood fits in with the theme.

The first step was to make the basic sandwich of two pieces of the mahogany (cut to minimize waste) with a creamy maple filling. (Shown here with the maple neck sandwich of the second build.)

Next, the top part is cut off at a 15° angle and, after planing the scarfed surfaces flush, the two pieces are glued together with a scarf joint to provide the head. This also ensures that there are no short grain areas in the head that would be prone to break from the tension of the strings.

Since the width of the neck assembly is too narrow for the shape of the headstock, wings must be glued on to provide the extra width. The waste material of the original neck stock is used. This also helps to further reinforce the scarf joint.

The final pieces of the puzzle are the headstock overlay and underlay (a new element with this build). Aside from providing the contrasting wood to house the inlays, these pieces further strengthen the head joints, with plenty of long grain to resist the strings’ pull. I used cocobolo for the overlay and osage orange for the underlay.

With the sandwich all glued up, its now time to cut the headstock to profile. This headstock has a very special element, an inlay by Jimmi Wingert, a well known artist who usually is providing inlay for her mother’s guitars, Kathy Wingert. The customer had commissioned her to inlay an image of the “Tinman”, from the Wizard of Oz, which, because of his own search for a heart, had become his nickname.

This inlay upped the ante for the next step, since any slips could ruin the artwork (and cost me a considerable amount of $!) I cut the outline of the head at the bandsaw, and then dutifully taped the pattern to the headstock using double sided tape. I set up the router table with a pattern bit and started on the first side.

…

Maybe it was the cool morning temperature, maybe it was the fact that I had used the pattern to rout a number of shapes previously and the glueing surfaces had been compromised, but as I reached the end of the first side, I had the sickening feel of the pattern slipping. After a string of expletives, I tore the pattern off and surveyed the damage. A nice divot that, THANKFULLY, stopped shy of the inlay. A disaster, but not a complete disaster. I would have to rework the headstock shape to a thinner waist to get past the slip, but it was still useable.

I consulted with the client (ever so understanding) and layed out the tuner holes carefully (they were tight, but they did fit) and prepared a new pattern. This time, I would use the tuner hole position to screw the pattern to the headstock before routing. (Since I had used the old pattern for both guitar and bass, I hadn’t done this before, and the tape had held before. It only takes one time!)

This time, the routing went smoothly, with no problems. After drilling the pilot holes to the final size for the tuners, I could finally breath a sigh of relief. A couple of thin coats of blonde shellac to seal everything, and I can turn my attention to the fingerboard.

Both Tinmen had a terminal scare, but both emerged, hopefully for good!

So when I decided on the bindings for the current two builds, I didn’t give it much thought. The client specified cocobolo for his, and I decided on ebony for mine, being a nice accent to the myrtle. I got the binding stock and chugged along on the build. I was a little nervous about the added bends around the cutaway, but that just means two extra curves. When it got time to bend the binding, I fired up my pipe and prepared my wet cloth and spray bottle. (I have been using a new technique after seeing famed Luthier Flip Scipio wrap his hot pipe with a wet cloth to provide constant steam. It really works.) I started with one of my ebony bindings, and everything went nicely, it bent like butta! I got that one in the mold to dry and started in on the next one. No sooner had I started then I could see a split starting to open up. Sigh! I grabbed another one and…ARGGH! The same thing happened. I tried the cocobolo and got a couple of sides bent, but the third one decided to join it’s fractured ebony brethren. I took that as a sign and shut everything down.

When I got back to it, after a couple of days, I managed to get one more cocobolo bent, but the remaining ebony blank also began to split almost immediately. I was done. Unfortunately, I hadn’t ordered any extra (that stuff adds up, ya know!) I knew I would be going up to the Athens area in the next week or so (which actually turned into a month, plus), and I would get more then, this time getting some extra.

(If you look closely, you can see the wood beginning to separate on the curves.)

I also did a little reading on ebony and, lo and behold, its one of the finickiest woods to bend. Because it has such a fine grain structure (and is so dark, ebon-like, almost), its hard to see when the grain is running out or not. (Grain runout means that the grain runs at an angle instead of parallel to the length, making it more likely to split during bending.)

When I finally got the replacement blanks (with some extra!), I went back to the bending iron. I was able to get the rest of the ebony sides bent with only one breakage (and that one just snapped completely), and the final cocobolo side.

With the ebony, if it was going to break, at least it did it on the first bend. Otherwise, it bent beautifully. (The one cocobolo that broke I think did it in sympathy with the ebony.) I may have to do a little touch up bends, but essentially done and dusted! Now I know to charge accordingly for any future builds, not just for the expense of the wood, but to cover the inevitable breaks and the extra blanks needed.

Just make sure there are no children around when your trying to bend ebony, otherwise you’ll surely need to be bound, and gagged!

The braces are milled from well quartered sitka spruce stock, the bottoms are arches as needed, and each brace gets glued into place. After they have set, I carve the to reduce their mass, while leaving as much height as I can for maximum strength. My favorite tools for the job are my 1/2″ Stanley 720 paring chisel and a Chinese style ebony finger plane.

Lots of curved shavings make me want to get a hamster (although I fear the cats would look on it more as a snack!) When everything is carved, and I am getting a good tone from the top, they get sanded smooth. Maple bridge plate are glued as well, and the soundboards are ready for the sides. You can sees the two different bracing patterns (and some layout lines from earlier incarnations if you look close.)

The diamonds are added for a little extra seam support where there isn’t any brace. You can really see the different soundhole and bridge plate positions for the two different designs.

Compare and contrast!

These then get glued into the routed channel with liquid hide glue.

Then, to frame the woods, I rout a thin channel on either side and glue in some black-white-black purfling strips. The purfling strips are purchased premade using a dyed cardboard type material that is flexible and stays white and black no matter the finish or age. After glueing these get scraped flush. Then everything gets sanded smooth. (There’s a couple of areas on the blackwood that are depressed, and there is some glued reflecting back in the picture. These will disappear after the finish sanding and finishing process.)

It doesn’t show as well in the pic due to the lighting, but the bloodwood is truly vibrant against the whiteness of the Italian Spruce. (The rough bit at the top will be covered by the fingerboard, so its a good area to make test cuts with the router.)

The second rosette, which will be for my personal guitar, will have a fairly standard design of paua abalone in between two rings of purfling. The purfling channels are routed and the the purfling is glued and then scraped.

Then a channel for the abalone is routed and the abalone pieces are prepared. They come pre arched, but the ends need to be mitered to provide a seamless ring with the 15 pieces of abalone. This is done at the sander with a simple jig. When everything is ready, the pieces are selected to minimize any abrupt changes of pattern between pieces. The abalone and border purfling are glued in together using extended cure epoxy. Then everything is scraped and sanded flush to a sparkly shine.

Brace yourself for what’s coming next!

After making the molds, (which because of the cutaway design, require two different sides), I got the bending pipe heated up and ready to go.

The customer ordered a back and sides of osage orange, and I will be using Oregon flame myrtle for mine. In order to warm up, I bent the myrtle sides first, starting with the non-cutaway side. No big problems, although you do have to be careful when there is a big curl in the wood not to let it bend on an angle, which it really wants to do. Got it bent and clamped in the mold fairly quickly. The myrtle bends much like walnut, except at the curly bits. The cutaway side didn’t really pose too many problems, it just takes longer. Because of the extra bends, reversing on each other, working on one curve tends to start to unbend the opposing curve. So there is a lot of redoing involved. Once its clamped and dried in the mold for a few days, it finally sets up. Next was the osage orange, a wood I hadn’t worked with before. It bent relatively easily, with no figure its curves came out very smooth.

(It might make a good dye, though. While working with the wet, steamy wood, my hands took on a distinctive yellowish hue that took a couple of washings to get out. “They call me Mellow Yellow…(quite rightly)”)

Taking the OO sides out of the mold, there was a bit of spring back, so I’ll have to do some touch up bending before attaching the top.

Next up was thicknessing and glueing the soundboards. Mastergrade Italian red spruce for him, and ‘Bearclaw’ sitka spruce for me. Nothing new here, I used a simple jig to clamp the thin (0.115″) boards. Supporting one side with nails and a boarder, I tent the two halves up 3/8″ and nail in the opposing support.

Pushing down the glued boards provides just enough clamping pressure to the two sides without the thin wood bowing out.

A little weight on top helps keep the joint aligned and flat.

After an hour, I scraped the squeeze out before it completed dried and left them to cure.

You can really see the ‘Bearclaw’ figure ready to pounce from the sitka spruce top. I can’t wait till I get the finish on it (but that’s a bit of a ways to go.)

Next up will be outlining the small jumbo pattern and layout the braces. I’ll be doing two different layouts since the customer wants a 12-fret model, and I’ll do a 14-fret design on mine.

I definitely need to find a better name for this style other than “small jumbo.” No paradoxes allowed at Acorn House!

When it came time to finish, I found that I didn’t have any Walnut Danish oil on hand (my normal go to A&C finish), and the closest available was an hour away. So, not having time to make the trip, I read up on the technique of fuming oak with ammonia, a period appropriate method. The ammonia fumes react with the tannin in the oak, causing it to darken. Traditionally this is done with aqueous ammonia, a very strong concentration that is highly toxic, and of limited availability. Not something I really wanted to mess with, not having the necessary safety equipment. But, some people have been experimenting, lately, with using household cleaning ammonia, janitorial strength preferred. Stopping by the local hardware store, I found some “Extra Strength Ammonia.” Very generic, no strength concentration listed, and cheap. I decided to give it a go.

I set up a tent outside using a plastic painting tarp and some loose boards and bricks. With the wind to my back, I set the frame inside with a tray that I filled about halfway with the ammonia. Honestly, I didn’t even get a whiff of the ammonia smell, so I was wondering just how strong it really was. The big difference between household ammonia and the stronger stuff is how long it needs to be exposed. So, I left the frame in the tent for a couple of days, checking it periodically.

After the two days I untented to check, and possibly refresh the ammonia. The bright sun was deceptive, but it was decidedly darker, although grey rather than brown (which I was expecting). It had worked! (assuming the finish browns it as advertised.)

I applied 4 coats of my favorite satin oil/varnish, and it immediately showed its true colors, a rich nutty brown. Now I could really see the benefits to fuming rather than using stains, dyes, glazes, etc. to imitate the fumed look. Some of the “fake” methods do bring out the medullary rays better, BUT, they lock in the color, In the fumed oak, the rays have a chatoyance that is lost under stains and dyes. There is a depth to them and, depending on the angle of viewing, they change from a light brown ray against the darker field to a dark brown ray.

That’s the magic of fuming. Its not just the color.

To finish up I glued in the polished plugs, matted my etching and used a point driver to secure the mat, art, backer and glass in the frame. Ready for hanging.

Even though fuming a large piece would be more of a pain, building a big enough tent, I don’t know if I can ever go back to a stained A&C finish. That’s got me fuming!