Wednesday, March 13, 2024

House








And the second of the Parlor twins: a guitar built (mostly) from Eden Nelson's house.  Eden was remodeling and asked if I could convert some of the left-over boards into a guitar he could hang in the room in his house that they came from.

The top, back, and sides are "Eden's House" ~100 year old douglas fir.  

The braces came from a particularly nice board that our mutual friend John King gave me when he remodeled part of his garage.

Some of the lining came from a tree that was cut down in my yard.

The rest -- neck, fingerboard, bridge, etc -- came from the Rebuilding Center,  recycled wood from some anonymous local house.



(Mostly) Red




Up next we have the first of a pair of twins.  Since the prototype parlor when out the door so fast, I built another prototype/path-finder one step ahead of its twin.   Now you may be thinking that this particular one doesn't appear to be 100% done -- they are never done + I am in this for the fun and not as a business, so I tend to make such posts whenever it makes me happy no matter the state of the build.

The star of this one is the unusual woods. The back and sides are Red Mulberry, which is known to be one of the domestic woods with similar characteristics as rosewoods, but the trees tend to be small so not often used for guitars.  Head over to here and scroll down to Mulberry

The finger board and bridge are Osage Orange, which is related to Mulberry and looks very similar, but it is harder.  The Osage was sanded much more recently than the Mulberry, it will fairly quickly oxidize to match the color of the back/sides.

Neck is Red Oak, from a board that caught my eye passing through a big box store.  

The top is a B-grade (I'm a big fan of B grade) Engelmann spruce.  Originally I had planned on a B-grade Red Cedar top, but I decided to set that aside for another build that will likely have Osage Orange back and sides.

I am particularly fond of how the knot shadow lines up between the back and sides, wrapping all the way around:





Sunday, March 3, 2024

Lost

 

Cleaning out my old photos, I ran across a nylon string guitar that I had not uploaded.  I honestly can't remember much about this one, including where it ended up. 







Monday, January 1, 2024

Parlor

 


Here is my first parlor guitar. I used some nifty mahogany my friend Dick Cheek gave me, so it seems fitting that this guitar went to Dick.


  




Sunday, November 26, 2023

Hot deals on Black Friday

 

Hot hide glue is great, but requires a reliable way to heat it to 135-145F.  There are many ways to do this on the cheap, with baby bottle warmers, wax warmers, and small hot pots frequently being mentioned.

Macy's Black Friday sale had small hot pots for $10 and the "low" setting is 140F.

They come in many colors, with the one I selected being the obvious choice: 



Yes, that is pink with gnomes.






Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Even more holes

 






Round 2 -- this one with Black Limba body,  mis-matched Stika Spruce top, left-over maple neck, and the fretboard & bridge is from a random recycled floorboard from the Rebuild It Center.

Monday, February 20, 2023

Holes

 





As you may have noticed, I really like putting the sound hole in the upper bout rather than the center.  It makes a big difference to the play, you get a much better idea of what others are hearing.  Plus it increases the active area of the soundboard and so on.

I also think it looks great when matched up with a cut-away or the like.  It looks kinda odd if you don't have a cut-away.... more on that to come.

So what if you take this to the extreme and move the sound hole to the side of the guitar?  There are many examples of this if you search hard enough,  here is one example.

I had most of the pieces and parts to crank out a new experimental guitar, and really wanted to test this out before I built my next non-experimental guitar....

Top is reclaimed cedar siding + braces are reclaimed fir, both from the Rebuild-It Center.  Back and sides are my favorite cheap + has a good tap-tone Luan from Mr Plywood (< $10 for enough to do a guitar.... this particular one with an interesting gray/yellow splotchiness). The neck is the original one from the Cherry guitar that was dropped and damaged - I whacked off the bad bits and grafted in a ~$0.50 cherry board mill end I found in the mill-end-bin at woodcrafters.   Topped off with whatever spare, mismatched tuners I had laying around.

You will also note that this one has the hybrid X bracing with fan braces rather than tone bars in the lower bout.  As you can easily see via the big hole in the side.

Results?  Sounds great for the player - it is loud, well balanced, and crystal clear.   It is muted on the bass for someone who is sitting right in front of the player. The bass / mid / treble balance smooths back out as the listener moves back. Presumably it doesn't project as far, but we were too busy playing it to be bothered to test that.

Rich Wehring immediately bonded with this one and took it home.