24 hours later, after lowering the nut slots to the ball park of where they'll end, I began to enjoy the guitar. Not a lot of bass, and still not very loud. But the sustain was coming along. Today I tweaked the slots down to where they'll stay, and the bridge down pretty close. Things are getting better.
Considering I used Engelmann for the top, if I understand what I've read and heard, Engelmann is not the best spruce to use for booming bass. There's supposedly not a lot of headroom. So my top choice was not good if I wanted to play in a bluegrass band.
But I'm learning fingerstyle, and playing it, I was very satisfied with the distinctness of each note, and was hearing the fundamental well with some very nice overtones. Each bass note is distinct and not muddy at all - which is a problem on my first guitar. I found the fingerstyle sound to be pretty pleasing. So I'm hoping there's more to come as the wood ages.
If you were to build a guitar with Engelmann and Honduran Mahogany, what would you expect from it?
I wasn't going to confess this, but as it might be helpful to other new folks, I'll spit it out. I had taken pains, great pains, to make sure I measured everything 2-4 times before I did anything. I'd measure twice, walk away, come back and measure again. Recalculate if needed and measure yet again - EXCEPT for the very last measurement of where the bridge was to go. After drilling holes for the clamp, gluing it up, coming to it the next morning, I noticed the bridge looked a bit close to the sound hole. 1" to be exact. I thought back and realized I'd only measured once. Please get a good laugh out of that and learn from it. I got the bridge off by using my blanked for the sides supported on one end by the bending machine, a block of wood either side of the bridge, and a brick holding it down on the bridge. It came up remarkably easy with very little tear out at all. Of course, I had to sand down the top to feather in the new finish, and made rectangles of the 2 holes, putting in some off-cuts of the spruce in them and glued them on. Now that it's finished, they aren't noticeable unless you're pretty close. A tough lesson to learn.
I'm having a truss rod cover made, so there's not one and the rod shows in a pic or two, but other than that and some more setup type tweaking, it's a done deal. Here are some pictures of the completed project.
For me there were several firsts in this project. The neck was semi-carved, allowing me to make a wide heel and to shape the headstock like I wanted. It did have the truss rod slot cut and was fairly close to final dimension. So it gave me new work to do and to learn, but not a total scratch thing. That will come soon. This was the first time I'd bent my own sides, and that was the most exciting part. After using some orphan sides from one of the vendors, I bent these, and it went fairly easily. Next time, I'll probably do some more orphans as I'm learning how much or how little water to use to make them come out good. The rosette was somewhat inspired by luthiers here whose work I admire. To make one in segments requires some very extensive fore-thought that I learned in hindsight. All stuff to put away for next time. Lastly, this was the first time I've used an air compressor and spray gun. That was a real treat for me, and I'll use it from now on with the Emtech 6000 water based finish. I used to have a soccer player who was so afraid of making a mistake that he often just didn't do anything. I took the advice I gave him and allowed myself to make mistakes so that I could learn from them. And boy, I'm learning a lot!
Thanks for looking,