Acoustic Guitar Construction

I thought about sending it but decided to finish the body first.


I bent a set of Australian Blackwood bindings with a BWB prufling and leveled the the sides getting ready to bind the machine.





I was planning to do some fancy mitering when I routed the for the bindings I lifted over the endgraph a bit by gluing on a stripe of purfling to the top. Then I finished cutting the binding rebate by the end graph by hand.



But in a loss of focus, when I noticed part of the rebate was not cut cleanly I ran the router clear around the guitar so now I am set up for a clean butt joint between the bindings and the end graph. I am OK with that. A clean butt joint looks better than a bad miter. In any case I glued in the bindings with an additional black fiber strip on the top.



With the binding glued on I routed the mortise in the top of the guitar using the jig I have from Luthier tools. I had no problems or excitement and ended with a clean centered mortise.





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I had been doing finish prep for the last few days, so I drilled for the neck bolt so that I could put the guitar into my finish jig and applied the first coat of zpoxy. I am really liking how it looks on this wood combo.







So Kevin, I will finish pore filling the body before I send it off for a neck.

I hope this pops to a second page. because this post is going to have a bunch of pictures as well.

I have the neck carved. It still needs some final sanding but I stopped for the day as my standards for what I would take was going lower. This my first with a classical heal for a couple of years. Also as the client wants a older style looking guitar it is a slot head with a carved volute.

I cut the neck out a a large Mahogany neck blank. I normally build up the necks from 1" mahogany neck blanks. I do slice up all of the waste into neck and tail blocks.




I clean it up, square it and locate the nut line using a jack plane.





Before cutting the tenon I cut the bottom of the heal at 1.5 degree angle planning for a 3/4" tenon. With the heel trimmed I was able to install the brass inserts without fear of cracking the tenon.





I used my table saw using a table saw miter guide and a tenon jig. I have one of the fancy jigs that I can use a router to cut the tenon but it is such a hellacious experience I have moved to the table saw.





I used a japanese saw and a chisel to trim the tenon to the correct size. Note the heel cheeks are below vice clamps Nicking the cheeks with a saw at this point is bad.



I drew in a rough guide for the heel shape



I use a router on my router table to cut the truss rod slot.



I made a fret board using a 16" fret board radius bit





And I used my LMII fret board jig to cut the slots.



I cut the fret board out on a band saw, clean the edges with a plane and trim the end on a sander.



I had a template for the head stock so I used it to trim a 2 mm thick slice of amboyna burl (the red will match the top)







Getting closer



The next post will finish the neck

I use a hand plane and my safe-t plane to square and thickness the head stock. I lift a bump to allow for the volute. I have a fancy slot head jig to drill the holes and route the slots.







Now we are getting somewhere



Before gluing on the fret board I made sure that the neck angle was good and centered. It is a real pain to work the cheeks after the fret board is install. Especially if the neck needs to be pitched forward a bit.





I used #16 brads to index the fret board and glued it on.



I used a chisel to carve the volute and it came out OK I was ready to plane the whole thing off if I could not get it looking good. I basically carved off anything that did not look like a volute.





I laid out some lines for the primary facets and use a spoke shave to cut them. I use some nice rasps to get the areas that the spoke shave does not cut.



I glued a thin black fiber sheet to a scrape piece of amboyna burl and super clued in place on the end of the heel. sorry no good pictures



I used a chisel to carve the basic heel shape and then used rasps to provide the rest of the shape. Using the heel end cap the center line and the heel outline as guide lines the heel will naturally take shape if you use look sweeping strokes with the rasp.



With the basic shape established I use my eyes to cut secondary and tertiary facets on the neck it self and sand the facets off with shoe shine like sanding.

Looking good as always John. I appreciate your detailed pictures end explanations.

Thanks John and all who looked,

I cleaned up the neck quite a bit and slimmed up and took some height off the volute. Then all that was left before finishing was the fret markers and my logo. I ended up cutting the logo out twice. the inside hawk was just a touch big, it was oh so close and I cracked the moon pushing it in. Oh well I did a better job on the second one.

Here are some pictures of the logo work and where I am at now.

Nice and woody guitar. Proceed John!

Pretty dang nice John