Practice Sides Guitar

[Will Reyer]

Practice Sides Guitar
Will Reyer 12/23/13 Photos and mp3 attached.

By all rights this ought to have been a total piece of junk that sounded even worse than it looks. I had to learn as I went along, and fabricate fixtures to do each step. The first guitar I built, a square-neck resonator with an electric stove drip pan for the cone, is explained at: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1450 This is the second guitar.

I figured a reso would be the simplest way to start; no truss rod needed, no real frets required, easy sides as both top and back are parallel, no intonation required beyond the theoretical scale length.

In order to build the resonator, from found stuff or materials on hand, I built a Fox bender, and, not wanting to ruin the only three pieces I had, thicknessed by friends, to make sides from, I took another plain-sawed soft maple board (rough-sawn loose gate lumber from the neighbor's barn), jointed one face and band-sawed to thickness for the inside, and made two practice pieces to try bending sides before I ruined the real ones. I bent these at 200 F, the most heat I could get out of my bender. It wasn't supposed to work at that heat, and Ken and his forum told me what was wrong:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1042

I bent the real reso sides at 300 F and built that guitar. But I had the two practice sides, also, so I cut two pieces of 1/2” plywood and glued them together clamped in my female form, which was traced from a Santa Cruz Orchestra Model for the resonator build.

I decided I ought to also practice making linings before making the reso, so I took one-by pine lumber I had and made reverse-kerfed linings 1/4” x 3/4” and installed them on the practice sides. I thought that these were so strong that they would hold the form, until I went to attach the top and found it would no longer fit the female mold. At that point I decided I might as well build a standard 6-string guitar from the practice sides for the resonator, even if the back and soundboard would be parallel, unlike a normal 6-string. I made the sound hole 3/5/8” diameter, an eighth smaller than that on the Santa Cruz OM as I figured the volume of the interior would be less, being shallower.

I used the same 6mm underlayment plywood for the top and back of this guitar as I had used for the resonator. My research seemed to indicate that a reso could be built like a boxcar, since it was the cone that produced the sound. I assumed a conventional guitar built with a top twice as thick as a normal soundboard would sound spectacularly awful, but it was an inexpensive way to work thru the process and learn from. I used saved white pine scraps for all the interior bracing except for the upper transverse graft. I had a scrap of good straight-grained quarter-sawn doug fir from sizing a door, and used that there. Added more 1/2” plywood for the head and heel blocks.

Routing the top and back to the silhouette pulled some of the paper-thin top veneer on the underlayment plywood, necessitating the spray can brown crude sunburst. I thicknessed some scrap teak for bindings but couldn't get it to bend on my hot pipe for the waist bend – it just broke. So I planed another rough board the neighbor gave me to find it was actually old white oak, and made the bindings from that. The bridge plate inside is a scrap of teak, the neck is plain-sawn cherry with a plain-sawn soft maple 1/4” strip in the center.

The headstock is yellow poplar, veneered with mulberry from my north fence row, as is the fretboard, plain-sawn. The bridge is more plain-sawn soft maple. The nut and saddle are Corian scrap from a sink cut-out. The finish on the body is 20 yr-old satin urethane brushed on, three coats, and the neck/headstock finish is two coats of sanding sealer. I made a single-action truss rod from 3/16” drill rod, but it was an afterthought, and the nut turned out not centered in the retrofitted hole drilled in the neck mortise. I couldn't get a socket wrench on it thru the soundhole and had to grind a screwdriver into a tool to insert in the hex nut which I had prudently hacksawed a screwdriver slot in.

The headstock attaches with a version of a Spanish Vee joint, like the Godfather Of All Guitars, Antonio de Torres, did them back in the day. I'm a former shop teacher and a working carpenter most of my life and I'm old and ornery and that suits my idea of a righteous wood joint for the purpose.

I also took my gospel for fretwork from the letter of Saint Don the Teeter to the Oklahomans, and epoxied them, pressing them in with my fingers, in .032” slots cut with a metal-slitting saw made for machinists, using a sled on my table saw. A machinist friend, Bob, made me a bushing to go from the 1” arbor hole down to the 5/8” needed to work on my Powermatic. Bob also made me slots with an end mill in the edge of a piece of 1/8” 6061-T6 at fret spacings for a 25.4” scale, similar to the aides Ken sells, to cut the fret slots. The fingerboard is flat.

Don Teeter is seen as a heretic at lots of luthier sites, but having used hammers since big enough to hold one, it seemed a lot easier method with fingers than beating on soft metal with one. I tried something new, however, and didn't use lemon oil on the fingerboard at the end, as I have for guitar care the last 50 years, but waxed it and buffed it a little per Ken's method – couldn't immediately find my buffing wheel for the bench grinder, so just shoe-shined it. Liked both results.

I also noted Teeter advocating using 3/16” or 1/4” wide saddles for accurate intonation, so did so using the latter width, which meant that I didn't really have to make an installation groove at an angle in order to get the necessary intonation.

I roughed out the Corian nut and tuned it up using a piece of quarter-inch wide maple of the calculated height for a temporary saddle with no intonation. Mirabile dictu, it sounded pretty good. Does it sound like my Santa Cruz OM? Well, no, but it sure sounds a whole lot better than it has any right to. I took it last Friday down to Jimi Z at the guitar store, with the maple in for a saddle. He likes high action as an electric bluesman, and I'm an acoustic fingerpicker and mostly play 3 chord Carter style, but I think he was surprised at the sound. He played some blues in standard tuning, then switched to Open G and played with a slide. Filled the whole shop with sound. And told me I had the tuners reversed.

Today I filed Corian into a saddle, doing the intonation with my old Seiko tuner that has a big needle. The guitar looks like a junior high shop project, the neck is way too fat, etc, but I can play it. Rhines was wrong, I didn't have to build a dozen to get a useful sounding – albeit ungainly – guitar.

I was going to build a copy of the Santa Cruz OM next, as I've got a quarter-sawn piece of old white oak hopefully long enough for sides and back. But now I kind of think I'd like to try building some more like the practice sides guitar, only maybe using 1/8” plywood top and back instead of 1/4”, to see if I can get some consistently repeatable results. See if this wasn't just beginner's luck.

[mike-p]

I like this guitar, reminds me of budget 30's guitars i really like.

[John Parchem]

What a cool project, looks and sounds great.