Constructing Cutaway style guitars

[ken cierp]

I can't recall ever seeing much about the assembly process for making a cutaway guitar -- so lets get started here. To my way of thinking the most important and perhaps the most challenging aspect of the build is keeping all the components on center and on plane -- especially the neck block. Here's some photo's of my special fixtures -- note the neck block locators, the hinged mold to allow easy clamping and the alignment tool to use prior to gluing on the sound-board. I am sure this will raise a few questions and get those creative juices going. And -- yes you need a work-board, to me the handiest guitar fixture in the shop!

[Dave Bagwill]

I used a method like that in the construction of 2 of my 000's.
That kind of cutaway is very popular and looks fine, but as Ken points out, it also puts an extra pull on the headblock that you really need to effectively keep in place.

Something else you might try that does not torque the headblock is the fallaway cutaway that I use in my current Ditson build. There are no severe bends to make, construction is pretty straightforward. Just a thought.

http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad22 ... C00329.jpg

[ken cierp]

As a side bar note how neat it is to have the outside profile of the mold defined -- $2.00 clamps can be used to snug the rim to the inside of the mold.

[Tim Benware]

OK, now that I'm through the assembly to kerfing I have some questions on this process.

In the first picture - I am assuming you use the cutoff of the cutaway tongue to cover the exposed wood of the neck block in another glue up process.

In the second picture - I'm not quite getting what the wedge and top board are doing.

[ken cierp]

Yes the treble side is a cap made from the cutoff, you can miter it or not. The longitudinal fixture is a "T" square that sits in the truss rod channel and lines up on center with the tail block. The wedge is a lever to tweak the neck block to get it on center as well. It stays in place until the sound-board is glued on. Once the SB drys I found that nothing moves.

[Tim Benware]

Yes the treble side is a cap made from the cutoff, you can miter it or not. The longitudinal fixture is a "T" square that sits in the truss rod channel and lines up on center with the tail block. The wedge is a lever to tweak the neck block to get it on center as well. It stays in place until the sound-board is glued on. Once the SB drys I found that nothing moves.

So you use the wedge to get the neck block to center the t-bar with the tail block, then remove the t-bar and glue on the top correct?

[ken cierp]

That is correct