Tailpiece

An archtop features a tailpiece where the strings will be attached to. The guitars which stand model for my guitar have a rather unusual design and are not of the shelf available. I will try to build one of my own (with a lot of help of my father who is quite good in small metal work since he builds miniature steam machines as a hobby). I made a drawing of the tailpiece which you see below next to its example:


























I will fabricate it most likely out of brass or copper. I like copper the most because of its color but I am afraid that it is not hard enough. So it will probably be brass.

Shaping

I did some more shaping. It's all in the details. The sides of the body needed some more fine-tuning. With a little hand plane I removed small layers until I got to the right height of the body. Next up was the top. In order to get the outline on the top I clamped the body on to the top on a table. The symmetry was brought in by forcing the waist inwards with a glue clamp:

Now the outline of the body can be transffered to the body with a pencil. With an electric fretsaw the top was cut to its rough shape (with about a centimeter tolerance). The top is about 5 mm thick. It should be brought back to somewhere between 2 and 3 mm. With a hand plane I planed off a good 2 mm. Hence the pile of wood shavings:

And last but not least all the kerflings are glued in and as you can see I also drawn out where the sound port should come:

Kerflings

Yesterday evening and today I concentrated on the kerflings. They have to be glued in for extra support and give the top and back a larger surface to be glued on. There are lots of tools that guitar builder use as glue clamp. From clothespins (reinforced with rubber bands) to normal glue clamps. From a blog of another guitar builder I got the idea of paper clamps:

One side finished:

And to finish. I placed the body on a dresser, away from little hands. After that, my wife lighted the candles and we had diner. During diner my son pointed me to the follwing scene:

Mending

Mending was the keyword this weekend. And since it was a bit cold in our shed I used our dining table as workbench. As mentioned before I had some cracks in the sides of the body. Before I can start with gluing the kerflings in I first have to mend these cracks. The first step is filling the cracks with glue:

With a small iron thread I tried to get the glue as deep as possible in the crack. Then press the crack down firmly with some left over wood and glue clamps. Baking paper prevents the wood and clamps from sticking to the body:

There are still ridges that need to be sanded but the result is pretty good:

Loosing height

The first snow of this winter has fallen which gave me problems to get to Bemmel (from Woerden) last Monday. So with only 1,5 hours left I could not do as much as I wanted. I hoped to cut the body to its correct height and get the kerflings in place. But I did not have the time for the kerlings.

I had to draw out a line on the body where to cut off the sides. I used a mold which I brought to height with metal blocks:

 

Because it is hard to keep track of a thin pencil line when you are sawing, I used tape to accentuate it:

With a backsaw I removed the excess material away. To get better hold of the body I used a piece of wood to hang the body to. This gives you a surface to be able to apply enough pressure to the saw:

 

The end result:

 

The next steps will be: Glue down the cracks which are still there. After that I can glue in the kerflings.

We are getting in shape

I finished the bending last Monday. I had to alter the design a little because the wood was not really cooperating. I could not make the cut-away as tight as I wanted otherwise I would risk breaking the wood. But in the end I was satisfied with the result.
The guitar will measure about 8 cm at the head-block and about 10 cm at the tail-block. I fabricated the two blocks out of mahogany. Before gluing the blocks in I had to cut both sides to their best fit. I used an electric fretsaw to do this. Glue on the blocks, some glue clamps and we are getting in shape:

The basic shape of the body is there. This is not yet the actual height of the guitar, a portion will be cut-off later on:

Dad's Day

I had a day of today to be with the children. When the youngest was off to bed I could start on the kerfed linings helped by my son. These linings will be glued inside the guitar later on, to give the top and back a larger surface to be glued on. The linings where pre-cut for me I only had to make them triangle shaped and then kerf them. First I planed the linings with a hand plane:

My son helped me greatly by sanding the linings:

After planing and sanding the Linings they had to be kerfed. I used a miter box with backsaw to kerf the lining about every centimeter:

Some of the finished kerfed linings:

And the before, half way and finished image:

More bending...

Another three hours of bending. But I get the hang of it. The progress was lot better. The basic shapes are already there:

But being too confident has some drawbacks to. When bending when the wood is not hot enough results in cracks in the wood. I got some here and there:

Luckily these cracks can be mended. First you have to glue them down and then sand the ridges away. One difficult point is the cut-away. This is a very tight curve. I have a crack precisely at this point. I will let the wood dry first which should get the tension in the wood away. Next time I will try to get the cut-way in place. It is now up to:

Bending the sides

Bending the sides is very time consuming and needs to be done very carefully or otherwise you may break or damage the wood. You have to keep the wood wet and then heat it. When the wood is thoroughly hot you can put some pressure to both sides. Then move one centimeter further and repeat the process.
I used this heater:

After 3 hours of bending the first results are there:

Preparing the sides.

At the time I received the sides they where about 5 mm thick. Before I could start bending them I had to loose about 2 mm. I first tried to plane it by hand. Since maple (and especially flamed maple) has a lot of grooves, this did not work very well. So we had to use a router to carefully remove small strips at a time: When finished routing I sanded the edges, left by the router, away.

Bonding the Top wood.

To be able to bond the two half’s of the top, first the sides must be milled with a router. When they perfectly straight they can be glued together. To do this properly we used a self-made clamp:

At one side the metal pins are put in a straight line. At the other end the pins are put as close to the side of the wood as possible. The two half’s are glued and laid on the clamp. Baking paper prevents the wood sticking to the clamp. With the metal tube and two wedges the top is firmly pushed down. Little wedges at the side pins are clamping the two half’s of the top to each other. Keep it in place for two hours and the bond is strong enough.

Choosing Wood

To start the build I first had to choose what kinds of wood I would like to use. I want to keep it as close to my example guitar as possible. So for my back and sides I choose flamed maple:

As you can see I took these pictures after I started bending the sides which I talk about later on. The top will be made of Spruce. I picked a piece of wood which has a nice fine grain and a surprising vertical signature:

The other bits of wood I will decide later on.