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.