Acoustic Guitar Construction

Thanks Kevin, It is a Hauser 37 shape, before the cutaway. I had a Hauser cutaway bending mold made when I got the Hauser bending mold several years ago.

I am waiting a few more days until the finish cures of the guitar so that I can buff it out. While waiting I decided to build a contemporary bridge mostly following the instructions from Gore\Gilet build volume. This is a CF, 2 layers, reinforced Padauk. I used padauk as it is lighter than rosewood by a little bit. A lot lighter than cocobolo. It is a little heavier than black walnut, but at least as the time I wanted the color.

Before making the bridge I made a router jig to route the separation between the saddle block and the tie block. Also I used it to route a saddle. The jig is simple I routed a channel for two pieces of aluminium that were just right two hold the router base guide stable. With the tracks in place I used the router in the guides to route a well for to hold the bridge while I am working on it. The leading edge of the well is perfectly in line with the router track because I routed it using the track.





I sliced a strip of padauk close to the bridge size and resawed it so that I could make a 2 mm, 3 mm and a 4 mm slices to be laminated with the carbon fiber strips.





I used some west system epoxy 105\206, laminated the stack together, clamped it and let it cure overnight









The next step was drilling the string holes. I tried to make I nice reusable jig out of wood and aluminium, but drilled one hole off center. So I just drilled the holes in the bridge on my drill press. I took a bunch of extra time to make sure that everything was square to the drill bit.



I used my jig to make the first cut to separate the tie block and the saddle block. This cut went to 2mm from the bottom of the bridge. I then shaped the saddle with my luthiers friend remounted the bridge in my jig and cut the saddle and cut ledges for some bone strips on the tie block. I shaped the saddle block a bit with chisels and sand paper.







The bridge ended up at 16.5 grams (minus the bone that is coming)



I am still nervous about the color, as it is different for a bridge. But with a hint of brown in shellac it is not horribly off of the cocobolo head plate.

Mighty sweet John, almost there. Now lets get some strings on her and make that video!

Looks great!

I really like this project -- its a reminder that time and technology marches on, I have a real problem with the idea that the only good or best guitars were constructed in year 1937 or what ever. I firmly believe that guitars and their musical properties like all else will keep on getting better and better.

Way to go!

Thanks Kevin and Ken.

I am looking forward to hear how this one sounds. For me there is a lot of new new stuff, but how ever it turns out, I have documented everything I have done and can make changes on the next try. I appreciate you guys following the progress and the encouragement.

Yikes, when I installed the tuners in the middle of the head stock on one side the tuner was up above the veneer about a half of mm. I remember how proud I was of my ability to sharpen a scrapper while thicknessing the veneer to the final thickness. It appears on one side I scooped out a bit much. I thought for a bit of leaving it, but finally I got the nerve and lay my iron on to the top of the the head stock. cleanly pealed off the veneer and glued and shaped a new one. This time I put black fiber between the head stock and the veneer.

Wow John, nice save and it looks like nothing happened.