Back and Bindings

Before I can close the soundbox I had to prepare the back. I already plained it to the proper thickness so only the brace needed to be made and glued on. Also I made a label and glued it in.

After that the back could be glued to the body in the same manner as I did with the top so with spoolclamps.

We now have a closed soundbox with still quite some overhang on the top and the back.

I bought some flamed maple bindings. Before they can be glued to the body they have to be bended and to do that I used the same method I used for the sides. So I put the bindings in a jar with boiling water and leave them there for 15 minutes. After that they where flexible enough to be put in the mold and clamed up for a couple of days till they where dry.

After they where dry I could glue them to the body. First I routed in the channels in the body. This is quite a nerf wrecking part of the build. I used my dremmel tool with stew-mac router base and binding attachement. First I set it up to route the top and back flush with the sides. After that I set it to about 2mm depth. It wend perfect and I ended up with nice binding channels.

I alsomade a slot at the back for an end wedge. It could now be glued in and secured with a piece of masking tape.

After that the bindings could be glued in and also secured with masking tape.

After I removed the masking tape I could scrape and sand down the bindings untill they where flush with the body.

I have a little gap between the two top bindings as can be seen in the last picture. Bit of a bummer but I will fill it with glue. It will be covered by the tail piece so it will not be seen anymore.

Top and headstock plate

Before I glued the top on the body I had to make the braces and glue them on the backside of the top. I made them out of spruce. The rough shape is chisseled out and after that I used my disksander to smooth them. The disksander I resently got from my father who made it him self.

The braces are glued just under the sound hole and fan out to the sides. I do not have pics of the clamping but this is the end result.

The sides with the neck attached to them:

I prepared the mold to have calmps build-in but I decided to use my spool clamps instead.

 The result:

The last thing I did this week was make and glue the headstock plate. I made it out of zebrano like the body. I first made sure the headstock was level with a sanding block. The glue was then applied to the headstock and with some masking tape as hinges the plate was glued to the headstock. With a wooden block under the clamps the clamping pressure is spread out evenly across the headstock.

After the clamps where removed it looks like this:

And the total picture:

The headstockplate and the top still have overhang which has to be removed in later stages of the build.

Neck work

I did some work on the neck in the past week. After the heel was unclamped I had to make it thinner to about 15 mm. I reduced the wood with my drillpress and a fostnerbit. The little parts that where left after that can be removed with a chissel.

The part of the neck that is glued into the body has to get a rebate to receive the sides and the top. I did that the same way with the drillpress. First I cut a groove all around the neck. After that I used the drillpress to reduce the wood by 2 mm.

The neck can now be glued into the body. I put a piece of backing paper on the bottom of the mold so I do not glue the neck to the mold.

The clamps have to stay there for a couple of hours. After that the top can be glued on the body. But that is for another post.

Stick Dulcimer Neck

This afternoon I finaly returned to working on the Stick Dulcimer. The neck had to be cut to length. I decided to go for the shorter scale length (ment for the Gdg tuning but also Dad tuning is possible). With the plans I determined where to cut it and then cut if the excess wood. 

A piece of the part that came of I used to make up the heel of the neck. I cut it to the correct length and thickness and glued it to the neck.

This has to dry now. After that the rebates for the sides and the top have to be measured out and cut. But that is for another day, today I had enough excitement.

New workshop

It has been little over year since my last post. This has several reassons. In the first place we moved to a new house about a year ago. This brought a lot if work along with it and thus a lot of time which I could not use for instrument building. The new house had a small stone shed next to it which had become my new workshop. 

I had to insulate it which took a while too but in the end of last year it was ready to use. 

I also made a guitar stand back then which can hold guitars I am working on.

In the front the lute guitar I am working on. The middle one is a guitar I bought in Indonesia once, it only needs a new low E string. The twelve string has a lot of issues. I will start on that one when my current projects are finished. All in all I am really pleased with my own desicaded workshop although it is tiny ;). After this all was finished I had a kind of medical issue which has occupied me for the first three months of 2014. It is not better yet but at least I can spend some time in my workshop again so updates will become more regular again.

Sound Hole

Now my side project with "Junior" is finished I thought it is time again to spend some time on my Stick Dulcimer build. Next up was the sound hole and rosette. It will be a pretty simple design with only a thin maple rosette around the sound hole. This is how it is done. Since the sound hole is tiny compared with the sound hole in a guitar top, I could not use my dremmel with sound hole attachment for this purpose. Instead I bought two fostner drill bits:

As you can see one is slightly bigger then the other (35 and 29 mm to be precise). I start of with the 35 mm bit to cut a rebate into the top.

Then I change to the 29 mm bit and drill all the way through to form the sound hole.

What you end up with is a sound hole with a rebate around it. This rebate no can be filled with anything you like. Some put a piece of perfling into it but a wooden rosette is also possible. I have choosen the last option and used a scrap piece of maple to cut it out of. I first drilled all the way through it using the 29 mm bit.

The I drew a line around it with a diameter of 35 mm using a little mold I drilled out of some scrap wood with the 35 mm bit. With a fret saw I sawed it out roughly (a bit to wide) and sanded it back so it fitted the rebate around the sound hole.

This ring is then glued into the rebate. As a "clamp" I used our fruit bowl which already heavy all on its own but was loaded with fruit also so I thought it would work nice. And it did.

The end result looks very nice.

Next up will be shaving and sanding the top and back to the proper thickness.

New patient

After I finished Junior I got a new patient in. And it is a special one...... a Lute Guitar also known as a Guitar Lute, a Lutar or a Wandervogellaute. It is an instrument which has the body, same scale lengths and thin neck of a lute but is strung up as a guitar. The peg head is not that from a lute nor it is a traditional guitar head stock. It looks more like a violin or viola peghead. 

The issue this instrument has is that it once was used as a stair. The back did not take that very well.. It was mended but not really need. I am taking a look at it to see if I can get it any better.

Also the carved rosette has a nasty crack. Will have to see if I can do anything about that also. First I am reading in in to the world of lute building. After this project I hope I can call myself a real Luthier since lute building is where the name originates from....