Acoustic Guitar Construction

I have made a few flacate braced contemporary classical guitars. While they fall in the classical range for size, nut width, scale length and string spacing, they are contemporary looking with a cutaway and a slightly radiused fret board. In general the guitars have been well received, in fact my instructor commissioned me to build one and he switched from his mid 70 Kohno 30 guitar. There are some that can not get over the contemporary features. So I am making what will look like a Hauser knock-off but with the falcate bracing pattern.

The guitar will be Lutz spruce and Brazilian rosewood. I will use ebony bindings with a maple purfling. Also I will come up with some purfling patern for the top. I will take a bit of a short cut and use a LMI classical neck and a classical rosette that I have.

I spent the day getting the project up and going. First off I did the tap test to determine the target using one of the Gore\Gilet methods. The Lutz fell into a normal range, a little more cross stiffness than other tops.





I joined both of the plates. I am a bit embarrassed, maybe being on the wrong side of 60, but when I went to my plane drawer to get a plane with a sharp blade I found a new looking Lie Nelson #62 low angle jack plane that I have no idea that I had or when I might of bought it.





I loosely profiled the top, back and sides, thicknessed the back and sides and glued on the back reinforcement strip. Ready to start bending and putting things together.

I love how you are blending the traditional with the contemporary. I'm sure it will be a very interesting build.
Also, feel free to send me any LN planes that you didn't know you had anyway!

You are off with a bang on this one John. Should be a real looker.

I always enjoy your construction logs John --- seems I learn some new stuff along the way as well.

Thank you for posting!

Thanks Guys! Ken, I am happy to have the opportunity to post in your forum.

I spent the last couple of days getting ready and starting on the rims and top. As this is a traditional design I am going to build on a modified soleara that I made for my very first guitar. The modification is one that I got from the Bogdanovich book. I liked the idea of having a removable outside mold on the solera. So I combined my solera with a outside mold I got from Kenneth Michael Guitars.



I also have a closed outside mold that I use for my contemporary Classical guitar with a bolt on bolt off neck. It comes in handy when trimming the sides and gluing on the tail block. I also use the mold to sand the tail block to match the rim. I had no issues bending the sides and my bindings with my fox style side bender.








I go a little ahead of myself. I normally would wait until I had both sides cut to fit in the mold. That way I would have the sides cut right on the center line at the heel end. But I went ahead and glued on the tail block. No real issue but I had to do all of the measurements and cuts to fit the sides to the neck with a floppy glued assembly.





I did remember to take a couple of mm off the top side of the heel block so the top can sit flush to the neck. I used my Bishhop Cockran router base to route off the heel block. I extended the guide bar a bit so that I could balance the router on the plane of the neck.



With the sides fit I used 15 foot radius sanding bar to trace out a close cut for the heel slipper for the back of the guitar. I used a band saw to cut close to the line. Then assembled it all in to my solera. I am going to wait to actually glue in the sides until the neck is close to the final profile. It is a lot easier to deal with a neck than to deal with a neck with a guitar stuck to the end.

I also propped up the rims the thickness of my top. The solera has a sloped ramp for the neck to ultimately give me 1.5 - 2 mm (measure at the nut to the plane of the top) of forward angle to the neck. Assembled as below I can use a radius board to profile the rims and the neck heel slipper.





My profile was much closer in depth at the neck end than the tail end. When the neck side was close I used some stick-um sand paper to prevent over sanding.



I also was able to install the rosette. I used a router to cut the channel but decided to cut the outline with a knife circle cutter and then route out the waste to the knife cut. I think I got the tool from LMI. It is nice in that it has the same size hole as my router base.







I got my cleanest channel ever with a perfect fit. I used titebond hide glue to glue it in. The dark lines around it are a combination of pencil lines and shellac from my initial preparation.





I jointed some of the waste from profiling the top for a couple sound hole doublers and thickness sanded it and the top to close to my final thickness.







While waiting for that glue up I profiled the head stock. I am glad I did not glue the sides to the rims. It was a lot easier cutting the profile on a band saw without the rims flopping around.

Looking very nice and you're really moving along! Are you using the cold hide glue throughout?

John J wrote:Looking very nice and you're really moving along! Are you using the cold hide glue throughout?

No I just use it for the decorative bits like the rosette, end wedge, bindings and purflings. I use a lot of LMI yellow glue, but I found the seams a bit too viable in places.