Acoustic Guitar Construction

Thanks David!

Glued on the bridge last night:


Shouldn't be too long before she is playing!!

Well it looks as though I have this one almost finished. A teaser pic for you all before I do the final buff and take the glamour shots. The whole guitar is covered in a fine layer of bone dust, but the bridge in particular is very dull locking because of the bone dust that got on it when I was compensating the saddle. Even though these pics might make some people think I make half assed guitars because it is not, I repeat NOT totally finished, I am still going to post the pics. HEre they are:
The bridge looks huge to me in these pics, but it is just about the same foot print as a Martin belly bridge. I think the lack of pins has something to do with why it looks so big.


The bridge:


So far, so good with the bridge. Once I get it all rubbed out and do the final set up, I will take pics with the good camera and get some close ups of the worm holes I left in the sides.
Thanks for looking!

Tony

Looks great Tony.Might need some cleaning up though, I'm not sure if you mentioned that already.

Tony it looks good to me. I like the bridge design you came up with.

John

SKBarbour wrote:Looks great Tony.Might need some cleaning up though, I'm not sure if you mentioned that already.

I am not sure if I mentioned it Kyle. I better go back and look at my post to see. Good catch though! hahaha


Thanks for the positive comments. I had a bit of an "oh fudge" moment. Only I didn't say "fudge. I said the mother of all curse words. Bonus points if you can guess the movie that line is from. I was able to tune it using harmonics, but when I strummed a chord, the whole thing was out of tune so badly that I was freaking out. This is the first fretboard I have slotted and the first bridge I have made so I was thinking I had messed up one or both of those things. My first thought was that I had cut the saddle slot wrong and my compensation was off. I grabbed a ruler and roughly measured from the first to the 12th, then the 12th to the saddle. The two measurements were something like 12 and 5 eighths and 12 and 7 eighths respectively, I don't remember them at the moment, so just work with me. I added in my head, and don't ask me how or why this happened because I was in a major panic, OK? I knew the scale length should be 25.34 so I started with 25 inches in my head then added the two fractions, 1 inch and three eighths. My scale length is 26 and a half inches???!?!?! How did I mess up so badly?? I then did what any smart man would do. I walked away and had a drink. Water. On the rocks. A big one. I got out a calculator. one eighth is .0625". I had 12 of them to add. That is 1.5 inches. Add that to the 25 inches I could not get out of my head and that comes to 26.5!! The calculator doesn't lie right?
I had to go out with the family so I had no more time to mess with things. It would have to wait till later.
I got home later that day and couldn't look at the guitar. I was sick to my stomach that I was going to have to remove the fretboard and the bridge and fix it all.
When I finally went to check it again, I was actually hoping it had fixed itself while I was out, I decided to measure the scale again. This time however, I actually measured from the nut straight to the saddle. 25 and three eighths?? IT DID FIX ITSELF!!! I later realized my stupid mistake from earlier.
My problem turned out to be a nut slot cut too low for two of the strings. Somehow it tuned using harmonics on the 5th and 7th frets, but when I actually played the open strings in a C shord or an E chord, it was so out of whack. That is what caused the initial freak out that lead to my poor addition skills which lead to the second, bigger freak out over the scale length.

FYI, I set this bridge using the KMG bridge setter. Since I used my own bridge design I wasnt sure it would work with my bridge setter. I emailed Ken who explained how to use the tool with any bridge and I was off and running. It worked great.
I also used the KMG SS Bridge clamp to glue on the bridge as can be seen in a previous post. That also worked great even though it is designed to be used with a pinned bridge and bolts through the 1st and 6th bridge pin holes. I used the cam clamp for pressure in the center of the bridge, then tightened down the bolts that apply pressure to the wings. It also worked great despite not having been designed for that purpose.

You might want to invest in an Ibex C clamp for the bridge gluing (especially if you plan on doing another pinless). It will fit the sound hole a little better than that cam clamp. You can pick one up for around $15-16.

Edit: the shop fox model is 10.99 at Highland Woodworking site.