An interesting old-style builder

[Dave Bagwill]

This fellow is a czech, and builds some fascinating instruments using rather quaint tooling at times. check out the clamps he uses for kerfing, for instance. Interesting.
http://www.tulacek.cz/Schenk/

[dave d]

Thanks for posting this Dave, there is some beautiful craftsmanship shown in the photos.

[Ray Ussery]

VERY cool! I love to see those curls of wood roll up from a plane or scraper or knife or spoke shave of some sort...you can almost smell the wood...there are still some folks out there that do things like they did 2-300 years ago and longer...thank goodness it isn't all lost with time. Thanks Dave...

Ray

[Dave Bagwill]

Another of his builds showing more processes. He does use a bandsaw and a power drill, that's about it.
http://www.tulacek.cz/Ries/

[RDavis]

True craftsman this fellow is and I appreciate his way of building. I have been trying to build some other projects with mostly hand tools and I really enjoy it. Shop is nice and quite, shavings instead of dust and helps keep my old joints and muscles in shape as an added benefit. Thanks for the post.

[Dave Bagwill]

I had a few questions for Jan, about brace inletting; what looks like a steel string bridge though this is a classical guitar; domed or flat tops and back; and why there is not binding on the top, just purfling, and of course the back has neither; here is his response:

"To your questions: yes, all braces are inlet into the solid spruce linings.

This type of bridge is indeed very similar to steel string setup and it
is original to this model. In fact it was the most typical setup in
Europe in the 19th century with the exception of Spain. It is intended
for gut strings and wound basses with knoted ends. The pins are not
sloted, the slots are in the bridge itself. There wasn't originally any
bridge pad.

The top has no radius, these guitars were usually (with some exceptions)
completely flat. On the other hand the dome of the back is very
pronounced. For example this Ries model has cca 8mm arch on the longest
back brace and the longitudial arching of the back is even greater. So
it takes some time to have nice joint between back and sides. The back
has quite a bit of tension. I do not know if a radiused dish would
worked, the geometry is a bit different here. I do it just with a
blockplane and some fine tuning with a file.

It is just so called half-binding on this top, with the endgrain
exposed. It was very much used. Or often there is a sort of sloped ledge
for the purfling, so that just a minimum of the top is visible under
the "binding". I have not seen two stepped ledge on originals of this type."

Best regards
Jan


I do like the hand tool approach, the slower pace, the shavings - it does take a high degree of skill that does not come easily.

[Dave Bagwill]

I asked Jan about his unplugged approach to thicknessing top plates and backs and sides. Here is his interesting reply:

"Hi Dave,

for tops it's really easy. Any smoothing plane will do provided it's
sharp. I use old Stanley no 3 most of the time for this. For sharpening:
Diamond stone, Japanes water combination stone (with a honing guide at
30 degrees) followed by a green stroping compound on leather. I sharpen
the blade to a very slightly cambered shape not a straight line so that
the blade edge(s) do not mark the top. In less ideal case when there is
some runout in your top it's necessary to plane each half of the
bookmatched top in the opposite direction (carefully at the centre joint).
I take the top down to about 3mm (or a bit more) and install the
rosette. Then I level the rosette (the whole top face side) with freshly
sharpened plane. I take the top down to final thicknesses with a block
plane and hand held scraper blade. The whole work is very quick.

The rough thicknessing of the figured maple back and taking bulk of
material away is best done by fairly aggressive planing with ordinary
smoother across the grain (in the direction of the width of the guitar).
For finishing the backs with figured maple I often need high angle plane
blade. My solution is just another smoother but with dedicated
differently sharpened blade. I sharpen this blade normally with the 30
deg. bevel but then I turn the blade on the honing guide and make a few
passes on the water stone with the rub face of the blade (30 deg. too to
keep it simple but you can experiment). This turns the normal plane into
an 75 degree high angle plane (45 degree frog bed + 30 deg on the blade
side with newly formed back bevel). It works really great with even the
most wild figured maple. Of course you need to push the plane harder
with the higher angled blade and it dulls quicker. But it finishes nice
and shiny without tear-out no matter from which end you plane - a big
advantage when planing the sides for example.

Of course it would be easier to show it than to describe.

Best regards
Jan"