Starting a new BRW falcate braced falcate classical guitar

[John Parchem]

This guitar will have a traditional Spanish heel Spanish cedar neck made with a scarf joint and stacked heel. In other words a lot of steps.

Before doing anything I cleaned up the blank. I suppose I could skip this and do it after the scarf joint.



I have a sled with my scarf angle built in. I used to do this step by eye but there was always a lot of clean up. The jig makes a clean enough cut that I just need to clean the face of the head stock part. I had previously leveled the the face on the neck part of the blank.









I just use clamps and the edge of my bench to do the glue up. I use the bench to assure that the neck and head stock pieces are square to each other. I use cam clamps to hold the neck in place on the bench and C clamps to actually do the clamping.





With the clamps in place I can lift the assembly from the bench and inspect the joint



A clean straight joint



Before gluing on the stacked heel. I do all of the work to thickness the head stock and taper the neck. I wish I had a picture with all of the thicknessing lines drawn in. I take care to place the back joint such that it falls under the head stock break. When ultimately carved the joint from the back will be invisible as it will be right at the transition from neck to head stock.

Because it is easy to plane I like to thickness the head stock from the front (will move the break up the neck toward the heel side). Which is OK as I can plane the neck form the front both starting the neck taper and moving the neck headstock transition right back over the scarf joint. Not wanting to plane forever I took most of the excess off the headstock with my band saw.





After cleaning the face of the head stock and planing the face of the neck to position head stock transition to over the scarf joint. I use a safety planer to continue thicknessing the neck. I just stick a 3 mm shim at the nut position to establish the taper and use a safe-t planer to take the neck to the final thickness.



Now I can glue on the blocks for the stacked heel. A traditional Spanish builder will alternate the end grain direction of each block.



At this point I am getting closer to getting the kit put together.

[John Parchem]

Moving on with the neck takes me to my table saw. I made a sled that allows me to cute the slots into my Spanish heel. I also use it to cut the cheeks on a mortise and tenon neck. For the classical guitar the guide is square to the blade. The sled relies on a pin placed in the center of the 12th fret slot as an index to line up the slots as shown in the first picture.



I just flip the neck from one side of the guide to the other to cut the slots in each side







Not shown I used my bandsaw to loosely profile the neck and heel. I like to do most of the neck carving with the fretboard on. But the more I can do now without the neck not attached to the body is a plus. Starting with the heel I tapered the classical heel from close to the fretboard line to the heel cap line. Taking care to support the fretboard side of the neck to avoid a very painful blow out, I attack the heel with a chisel and at times a plane. First off I make a straight taper.







Using a rasp and sandpaper I also cleaned up under the heel.



Getting a little messy



I still need to put the relief curves into the heel and profile the head stock in the neck post.

[John Parchem]

Keeping with the scheme I picked out a BRW head stock veneer and put a 15° angle on it to match the head stock angle



I carefully alight the veneer on the headstock and glued and clamped it down. Hard to see but I did use a 4 mm mahogany caul during the glue up.



I taped down a center template to the head stock and cut the sides very close with a band saw. I follow up with a plane to take the side right down to the template. I take care checking often to make sure I am keeping the edged square. I used to use a flush cut router instead of the bandsaw plane but after chipping out the headstock once or twice I switched back to a plane.





I use this handy Luthiertool Slot head fixture to drill the tuning post holes and route the slots.





I am going to square off the ramps so I used a razor saw to carefully extend the slots using the sides of the slots as a guide. once I made the slot cuts I used a chisel to clear the waste in the slots. The second picture shows me testing the slots for depth.





I used a chisel cut the relief in the heel. I still need to clean this up once I have fretboard on and I am carving the neck. I like to shape the heel such that I maintain the profile of the rest of the neck all the way to the body. Now the neck is good enough to move forward with the assembly.

[John Parchem]

With a roughed out neck, it was time to bend the sides. I have several Houser neck profile each with a different back radius 10', 15' and 20 feet. I grabbed my 10' radius that I like for thin active backs. I marked and profiled the sides.


I profiled them on my bandsaw and thinned them to they just fit in my slots (about .085").





I proceeded to bend the sides.



While the sides were bending I made a tail block. I think I am using a bit of Koa I hade laying around. Some kind of wood in any case.

I made two tail block blanks and shaped them using my luthiers friend drum sander and my belt sander. I like the ends of the blocks to be the width of the linings so there is no abrupt change in width from lining to block.





The block is taller on one side as I still need to cut it to size. For side turned out OK! So I started the second




I first like to fit the sides center line to center line such that I have a nice square cut relative to the top and the sides fit tight enough to force the bent sides into the molds.

I mark on the center line and then transfer the mark to the inside using a square indexed to the top.





I cut close to my line and sand to the line on my belt sander indexing to the top.





I do this for all 4 ends until the sides fit in the molds.



On most of my guitars I preinstall the end graph on the tail block. I am not sure why this is not a standard procedure. Wy better than cutting the channel later. Also once glued on to the block it gives a nice edge to square up the sides.

I first needed to make and end graph from a bit of my binding (ebony and .020" mahogany) adding a matching purfling to the side without. Luckily I had the right purfling, but I have heated and removed what I need from another strip of binding.



Not shown I put a very slight curve to match the form on the tail block. Then I marked out and glued the graph on the block keeping it square.



Just for fun I made of video making the end graph



I trimmed half of the width of the end end graph from the tail end of the sides. Here I am showing the fit.



I glue the sides on at a time out of the mold.



Last step for fitting the sides. I went ahead and routed the ledge in the in the neck so that the top can fit flush to the neck.

Bit depth


Start from the end and work toward the neck to minimize how much of the router is cantilevered





Done for the day

[Kevin in California]

Whew!
You got alot done there today fella.
It's looking good.

I suppose I'll have to make at least one more classical at some point.

[Kevin in California]

How is this one coming along?

[John Parchem]

Just got back from three week RV trip around Mammoth Lakes. Getting back on it.

Also I have a support call on my website the pictures should come back soon.