Numero Cinco, mas despacio

[Dave Bagwill]

Good and clean, great job from what I can see.

[John Parchem]

Looking good!

[Will Reyer]

Numero Cinco, Up & Running - “All's we lack is finishin' up”
Red Molly, guitar #5

About 3 months short of two years total build time here, ridiculous, and tedious, but done. More blunders and necessary fixes for same. First attempt at a luthier-featured guitar, if not luthier-quality. November in southern Michigan ran unseasonably warm, then winter arrived with 9” of snow, and cold in single digits, working in a farm shop.

I did the Don Teeter “push-in-with-my-fingers” fret installation in epoxy like I did with the 3 prior guitars with flat fingerboards. This one has a 16” radius, and thanks to Kevin in California for advice on radiusing that, but the next fretboard will be hammered in, as I found a machinist's slitting saw on-line that can be had in .023” thickness, and looks to be an easier process for radiused fingerboards.

Screwed the neck to the body with two K-D fasteners, no glue on fingerboard extension, nor the Corian saddle or nut – easy to get apart. The plane of the frets was substantially below the height of the 3/8” wenge bridge John Link had given me. Same method of neck set angle I'd used successfully for the previous 3 guitars. Got no idea how the height came out so wrong. Can't access the CAD layout I'd been using as I'm now at Windows 10 and it won't support the 2-D AutoCad clone I have.

Emailed John Link, 30 miles west of me here. He said it sounded like a neck reset, and sent me the URL for the Stew-Mac formula to do the math on the neck heel taper. The amount to remove at the heel cap came out to be about .036”. I really didn't want to try attempting that.

Made a quick wooden attachment to clamp on the end of my 24” straightedge to hold my Chinese 1” dial indicator. Took the average of 5 measurements for the amount the plane of the fret-tops was below the height of the bridge, with all 6 strings at concert pitch. This was .109”. Did same with strings slack. Result was .097”. Therefore, deflection with the strings at pitch averaged .012”.

I didn't want to try ruining the neck by resetting it. Kjell, local friend, luthier, and Elderly Instruments repairman came out to my shop, said Martin uses three bridge heights, 1/4”, 5/16”, and 3/8” - what I ought to do is just thin the bridge. The math amounted to making the bridge about 19/64”.

Took the plane iron out of my old Stanley low-angle block plane, got out sheets of 400, 600, and 1000 sandpaper, taped them on a broken piece of granite counter top the local fabricator gave me which substitutes as a surface plate, and sharpened the 25-degree micro bevel on the iron, planed the wenge down with cardboard soundboard protector covering the top.

Meanwhile, I had roughed out on the tablesaw some 5/16” wide strips of the white Corian from a sink cut-out I use for saddles and nuts. Gave these to Bob, my machinist friend, to make them .250” thick and he chucked them up in his fine old Bridgeport with digital readouts, fly-cut them to a uniform thickness of .251”. I should have given him a thickness tolerance that was one-sided below the dimension but didn't think about it.

Then I calipered the straight-across slot I'd routed in the wenge bridge with a 1/4” diameter router bit to find it was only .235” wide. Wanted to keep the full width for precise intonation. More rework. Had built a fixture for this for guitar #3. Two pieces of perforated plastic shelf lining, one on each side of the lower bout, supporting quarter-inch plywood with 3/4” white pine guide strips to utilize a Harbor Freight laminate trimmer. (photo of fixture on guitar #3)

Dismantled my purfling planer which utilized a HF laminate trimmer. Added a down-cut .250” bit and the guide fence. This old motor lacks the failed vertical depth adjustment gearing, so trial and error height adjustment was arrived at with a radiator hose clamp between the base and the motor to secure the depth. Likewise, Kentucky windage for the width offset.

Slot width ended up .018” over the .252” target. Super Glued a couple strips of purpleheart purfling on the leading edge of the Corian saddle, sanded the assembly down to fit. Got out my old Seiko cigarette pack size tuner with the big accurate needle and did the intonation sliding a paper clip to and fro on the quarter-inch wide saddle.

The neck cross-section, derived crudely from my Taylor, didn't approximate the feel of the Taylor, wasn't ergonomic. Unbolted the neck, filed and sanded to an improved vintage neck. Reassembled.
Strung it up. Tuned it up. Buzz on the third string. A piece of copy paper is .004” thick. Glued one under the nut. Third string still buzzing, playing in the shop. Took guitar in the (warmer) house, plays fine the next day, no buzzes.

It be loud! Sounds splendid, across the scale. Antonio de Torres and John Link are confirmed, the soundboard does make the machine, as expected. Hoping to get Greg Doss locally to make a short mp3 file playing it for me, and next time I get to Austin, Tjarko Jeen also, which I'll add to the posting along with my picking.

A big thank you to John Link, Kjell Croce, Kevin in California, John Parchem, Herman, Dave Bagwill (I misspelled his name last time) and probably more I've forgotten, and Ken for hosting this, as well .

Back out in shop with feeler gauges, 3rd string definitely lower than the others, but not buzzing. Don't want to make a new nut, this one is just tapered enough to press in and secure itself without glue, like a dovetail on a gun sight.

And I still don't like the cross-section of the neck on the bass side, since I ride the neck in the web between thumb and fingers. They euphemistically call this “cowboy” style, which is a fine excuse for those of us who could never learn to bend the wrist around so that the neck could be supported by the ball of the thumb.

Took the neck off a 3rd time, got out file and sandpaper. Took the paper off the bottom of the nut, filed the 4th string slot a little lower. No buzz. Still need to file the top of the nut lower. The next day took it to play in a bar in Battle Creek.

May not get sun for the next 30 days in southern Michigan and there's snow on the ground so the poor photo of the completed guitar will have to do for now. And I need to figure out how to get “admin” privileges to install my sound recording software, so that will yet be forthcoming.

As a former Texas boss famously used to say, “All's we lack is finishin' up”.

[Dave Bagwill]

Thanks for continuing the saga, Will. That be some good 'splainin of the process you went through.
Look forward to clips!

I might add that we in southern Oregon have the most snow in about 100 years, and some very low temps for this area and, also having a shop in a barn, I've been unable to do anything for a couple of weeks now. Itching to get back at it.

[John Parchem]

Will, The guitar looks great finished. It is good that you were able to take it out and play it.

[Herman]

Great Will, nice to see you find your way around the trouble. It figures you live on a farm. No matter how bad things get, you will work it out. Well done!
Herman

[Will Reyer]

Sounds
02/01/17

Got #5 completed almost a month ago. Was invited to play in a “round robin” in a bar in Battle Creek the next day, a Saturday. Always before when I attended they played acoustic. This time they had a mic set up and guitars plugged in. No second mic available to amp my new git, so played a couple numbers with Dan before they started.

Went to Otto's house a couple weeks later. Played acoustic 5 hours in his guitar room with 3 other guys, Martin, Guild and Taylor represented, I think. When we finished Jesse James, the Guild guy, Dan, remarked, nodding at my guitar, “That's the loudest guitar in the room”.

Was going to take it to the Last Saturday Open Mic at the local tapas restaurant this past Saturday, but I had glued a thin plywood donut around the sound hole on the inside, and the resultant thickness, with the top, precluded inserting my in-soundhole pickup.

Meanwhile, doing snow removal and trying to get my new recording sound ware to work. Not much point in showing guitar photos without sound bites. My old MP3 and Wave Editor worked fine on Windows 7 but not on 10. Sent for newer product reputed to accomplish the same. Spent about two weeks dorking with it/emailing the source, and it's not as represented, I can't make it work. I'll admit to being a Luddite and old and in the way, but I wasted my money. Pam bought me an Apple Air 2 iPad for Christmas that came with Garage Band, looks like a learning curve there, too.

Fortunately there's a friend of mine between here and Kalamazoo, Greg Doss, who used to sometimes set in with us acoustic at a now defunct cafe in Battle Creek. He normally plays electric and jazz, but owns a fine acoustic, also. Took him my #5 guitar today and he made the two attached mp3 files.

Greg plays with a thick flat pick and I play fingerstyle with just my fingers. I used to use finger picks in college but after letting my old Guild D-35 sit in the closet for 15 years, when I took it up again I forwent the picks. The sound #5 makes with Greg playing is different, as expected, than the sounds I produce from it. He's also several orders of magnitude a better player than me, having professional musical abilities, but put #5 through it's sonic abilities, as flatpicked, splendidly. He recorded this with one mic, nothing added.