Acoustic Guitar Construction

Thanks,
Dave

Kevin in California wrote:Looking great. I sure like that wood.
Does that technique for carving the neck shaft work out pretty well for you?
I've never been able to make it work for me

This is my third guitar laying out at least the first facet to cut. It really helps me maintain symmetry. I first get the neck very close to the correct thickness and taper and layout to those measurements. My spoke shave cuts the facet with no effort.

I admit I do not layout a second set of smaller facets as I see and follow the edges and take a clean cut along the edge.

It may look like it, still a bit rough, but the neck in the picture has about 15 minutes of carving. So it goes really fast.

Just keeps getting better -- thanks again for the great log!

Thank you Ken,

I appreciate that your following it.

I am closing things up. I spent some more time on the neck profile so it does not look so chunky to me, also it feels good in the playing positions.







I also spent sure all of the bindings are flush on the rims. Filled a couple of gaps. One repair I had to make was to the spruce between the rosette and the sound hole. Somewhere along the line I knocked a bit of it out. Luckily I have a spruce ring underneath so I had a ledge to build up. I shaped a small piece of spruce from the cutoff to fill the cleaned up chip and glued it in with hot hide glue. It is hard to see the repair.









While I was waiting for the glue to cure I sliced up a block of walnut to use when I make my bridge. As in the book I will make a carbon fiber reinforced bridge and will ebonize the walnut. I will start rusting some steel wool tomorrow to make the solution. I never tried it before so it should be interesting.







Tomorrow, drill for the tuner holes, inlay fret markers and make and inlay my hawk and moon logo in the head stock.

Nice save on the soundhole chip, John!
Is this instrument heavier or lighter than non-falcate guitars?

Dave Bagwill wrote:Nice save on the soundhole chip, John!
Is this instrument heavier or lighter than non-falcate guitars?

Thanks Dave,

I think the top for this guitar is a touch lighter as I used carbon fiber to reinforce the braces so they are smaller for the same stiffness. Other than that the decisions that would make a guitar lighter or heavier would be the same with either x-brace or falcate braced guitars.

John is that book under your neck in the pic the one you use for your layout for your first carving ? And which book is that?. I want to try that approach . And also your guitar looks great!.