Count to ten

 

Ok. All ten fingers are accounted for and still attached to the same places they were moments before.

Take a deep breath, count to ten again, turn off the band saw, and start to pick up the pieces.

I wanted to trim down the head block to line up closer to the sides.  I normally use a hand plane or a sander, but I needed to trim it down a fair amount and this is edge grain that is a bit of a PITA.  So no problem, I'll just take a quick rough pass on the band saw (which has an aggressive resaw blade on it at the moment)

To get it to fit, I had to retract the safety guard all the way up,  which is a bit scary so I held the guitar sides by the back.....  all of this was not a great idea and the last part especially so.

At this point in the build the sides are pretty flexible.... it bound up on the blade and "spun" out of my hands.   Initially a big chunk broke off, and the whole thing spun right there on the table, striking the blade in at least four different places before it completely shattered and threw pieces in all directions.

It was nearly instant and quite impressive.

Band saws are "relatively" safe compared to table saws, but they can still be pretty damned scary.

It pays off to be prudently paranoid of such tools, better to chew up a piece of wood than a body part.  Even better to not be lazy and get some extra exercise with the hand plane or hand saw.

And in the end there will be a guitar with a story and some scars to prove it.

Back story:  whenever I need to buy any luthiery supplies, I often reverse sort by price and see if there is anything interesting.   What we have here is the least expensive black walnut back-and-sides set I have run across, if I remember correctly it was $15.

The size was a bit too small, but if I was careful I could get a L-00 out of it.  The website noted that it wasn't perfectly book matched, had a crack or two, some insect damage, etc, etc.

But as I was working on it.... I think it is (or at least was) going to be quite lovely and was strongly considering using this for a "good" standard build guitar vs an inexpensive experimental one.    I'm now strongly considering "experimental" ;-)

I've already steamed apart the remnants and glued the bigger chucks back together as much as was feasible. The Plan B will be to bend a new set of sides, probably using 1/8" plywood, and laminate it with the walnut on the outside.  That will ensure it is nice and strong, compensating for structural damage to the walnut in several places (up to and including one side being torn completely in two).

Plan C will be to toss these sides and find some new wood that will match up with the quite lovely (and undamaged) back.

I was debating on what to use for top wood.  Now I'm thinking Douglas Fir, I have a nice piece that I don't otherwise know what to do with.

For the neck, I have a sap wood black walnut board that has some character, and the left over walnut from the previous guitar for fret board and bridge.

We'll see after Sides Version 2.0 is done.

Cornhole

 

Not quite guitar, but most certainly hacking.... We have a neighborhood block party coming up and my assignment was to build a couple simple Cornhole boards. What is simpler than figured cherry?

I found these lovely pieces in the el cheapo cutoff section at Mr Plywood. Frame is mostly left over pine from building new front porch columns.

Mostly constructed with hand tools: pull saw, chisel, and my shiny new #5 jack plane. Best homework assignment ever.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok

 

So my friend Dave's cousin Greg had a big maple tree cut down in his front yard.  Rather than all if it going up in smoke as firewood, they invited me over, broke out the chainsaw, and filled my SUV with as much as could fit.

I bought an extension for my bandsaw, milled 'em up, stacked 'em up, and let them air dry. Once the moisture levels dropped sufficiently, down into the humidity controlled basement they went for a year.

I started with a couple of the smaller pieces that dried quicker and had interesting figure.  First pass I got three backs that were large enough for a L-OO sized guitar.  Thinned them down to 1/4" and stored them for many more months.

Once I was sure they were dry and stable.... I picked the one on the left to start building the first guitar.

For the sides, there was one particular board I liked -- it had a long narrow strip of flame and darkened by the rot in the core.   I took a piece of pine from a tree I cut down in my own yard to build sides, neck, and tail block.  I then cut the flamed maple strip into tiles and epoxied them to the pine.   Neck joints are among the most critical in building a guitar, as such I find it a great deal of fun to come up with a completely different design each time -- this one is an internal tongue-and-grove, with a raised neck held in with two furniture bolts.  Neck angle is adjusted by rotating it in the pocket and using shims to hold it at the desired angle - worked like a charm.

For the neck, I took strips of relatively straight grained piece of the maple and laminated them together.

I didn't have anything from a tree I cut up myself that I thought would be a good fit for the finger board and bridge, so I ended up getting an off-cut from Goby Walnut who specializes in local trees. I figured that was close enough. Speaking of figure, I also really liked the live edge on the piece I picked out of the "cheap bin" - I believe it cost me $1.

The top is stika spruce from Alaska Specialty Woods.  Not exactly local, but it fits the theme.... When I put in an order for the "clam" guitar top and a random selection of other stuff - one very inexpensive item was not in stock. They asked if I wanted a refund or a higher grade top for the same price?  I said either a refund.... or if they are up for the challenge send me a top that they thought would make a good sounding guitar but was so wonky looking they would be embarrassed to sell it & was destined to be firewood. They included two different tops of this caliber, this is one of them.  I love it.

And now.... we have great sounding little guitar made out of a couple-dollar's worth of wood (and several years of work!)

Eventually I'll get around to making a few more....

Sharp

 

I upgraded to a Lie-Nielson #5 jack plane.

Well worth it.

0.001" / 25 micron shaving.

Clams

 

Recently I was perusing the Alaska Specialty Woods website, which is rarely a good thing for my credit card.  This time I did a little damage to the credit card buying damaged wood, damaged in a very cool way.

The Teredo / shipworm clam excels at boring through wood.  If a log, Stikka Spruce in this case, is floated down the river and sits/sinks in brackish water, it might get attacked by Teredo clams.  Later that log might get pulled out of the water, quartersawn, put on a web site, and finally do a little damage someone's credit card.

I've always wanted a Teredo top since I first saw Yasmin William's guitar

Yasmin's is symmetric / book matched.  

I'm mulling over how I am going to do mine...

book match:

Asymmetric:

 

Voiding the Warranty

There are some decent beginners guitars, held back in part by trying to be as indestructible as possible -- tops that are too thick, over braced, and encased in way too much finish. I always wondered how they would sound if the finish was stripped, scrape down the top,  and thin the braces.

Let's find out.

My test mule will be an Orangewood Oliver, which I picked up for $170.  Solid mahogany top & neck, rosewood fingerboard/bridge, bone nut/saddle, the tuners tune, and well pretty much everything else doesn't matter.

With a couple thousand dollars worth of labor, we *might* be able to make this sound as good as a $500 guitar!

Initial thoughts on Oliver before getting to work:  the fundamentals are good. My only real complaint as a "beginner" guitar is that the frets are very rough / not polished - otherwise the setup/playability is solid.  It is not very loud, which is probably a positive for a beginners guitar, and I like the fundamental tone.  The overtones are lacking-to-non-existent, which isn't much of an issue for a beginner.

And it is really pretty nice looking, very dark. 

Slide guitar / now to hack or not to hack? (hack for the win)

 

A while back I mentioned that the Mytlewood guitar's top was damaged and I was working on replacing it.  The new top is made out of Alaskan Yellow Cedar, with an offset sound hole, and the hybrid X-brace/fan bracing I have been using recently. 

It sounds quite lovely.

And then the trust rod broke. Sigh.  At the moment it is great for slide guitar and cowboy cords.

I figure I should bother to take a photograph of it in its current state before I pull off the neck and decide what to do with it.

Update:  I pulled the neck and yanked out the truss rod.   Same exact truss rod as the one in this video, I used basically the same technique to get it out.  And pretty much the same problem, the 4mm nut had broken.   Unfortunately the light at the end of tunnel was not as much of a happy ending.

Holding the neck just right in the setting sun, you can see the shadow of fibers that have split under the stress.

 

This is a thin neck....  the right thing to do would be to remove the fingerboard, fill in the channel, cut a new one for a low-profile truss rod, and reinstall the fingerboard.

I think I will mull over doing the wrong (easy) thing first.  What is the worst thing that can happen?  If it goes bad, I would have to remove the finger board, fill in the channel, cut a new one for a low-profile truss rod, and reinstall the fingerboard....

Update 6/13/24:   Replacement truss rod was delivered.  I noticed that the diameter of the nut was just slightly larger than the block and I had not accounted for that - the neck was pushing on the nut. Over the years as adjustments were made pressure was put on different sides of the nut until it eventually weakened and broke. So the root cause was a manufacturing defect (mine), not a fault of the original truss rod.  I fixed that before tapping in the new truss rod.

I then mixed up a batch of thin hot hide glue, injected it into the cracks, wrapped it in parchment paper, then wrapped the whole neck tightly with rubber bands.   The cracks are now gone....  score one for the lazy method of repair.