Acoustic Guitar Construction

Oh, John, this is just exquisite! It gots a "volute" just like my Santa Cruz OM, it's the right size, and it's not just a finely-lacquered cabinet (which it is), but it sounds like a splendid guitar. Many thanks for the sound clip. (I need to get my recording software up on the new computer so I can make a sound file for my #5 also - the real proof is in the sound)

Thanks guys I really appreciate all of your kind comments.

John - got any pictures of the volute-making process? Maybe a step-by-step?

Dave Bagwill wrote:John - got any pictures of the volute-making process? Maybe a step-by-step?

I went back through my pictures I did not have a lot but I try to describe what happened in between. I never made one before so I was not good taking pictures step by step

When I cut the one piece out of the neck wood I left an oversized profile of the volute. This came from a profile I got from a plan.


I use a safe-t planer to thickness the headstock. While thicknessing I worked around a top down view of the volute. I was not accurate I just stopped short of the line. Here is the best picture after I thicknesses the head stock but before I did any carving.



Unfortunately my next picture is a volute, still a bit taller and wider than I ended up with. The carving was easy, I cleaned the top profile with a chisel making a straight slope down to the headstock. I redrew the center lines and carved flat facets on the two sides . I used a combination of a rasp, chisel and round sanding block to clean up the transition into the neck. From there I refined it by taking off height redrawing the center and side guide lines and using a chisel to remake the facets. I once asked a guy making a sculpture of a face how he did it. He told me it is easy you just take away all of the wood that does not look like the face. That is sort of what I did.


The next picture was while I was refining the shape. you can see the transition was a bit uneven. When I was this far along I would take measurements from the side with the most wood removed and duplicate it on the other side. In the picture I needed to remove a wood from the left side of the volute to match the right.



Next time I will take more pictures.

Thanks John! Very interesting, I'm glad you took the pix. It sure turned out well.

Very nice John, Sinker RW and RW is one of my favorite combos.

Nice job on the volute -- actually all very nice.