Acoustic guitar building

[Riggs]

Originally Posted by Mark B.

I have to give credit to a guy who "is not very mechanically inclined" ,according to himself, taking on a project like this.

Yeah you're proving the idea that somebody is innately "handy" is BS. Makes about as much sense as a kid saying "I'm no good at math," or "I'm no good at reading." It's just having the patience to work at it and keep going through mistakes and hard stuff. Great thread Kwak, I'll be watching the pics all the way through.

[Kwak]

Pressure's on then; I need to find my camera because it's MIA. It seems to have walked off.

I just realized that I don't have the goal in mind though, which is to acquire a new guitar and feel completely justified in doing so. At this point, I'm focusing on the short term and trying to get through the first few steps in the hope that some sort of momentum builds making the process go more quickly and more smoothly.

So far I HATE all this grunt work such as sanding and doing some things over and over but I'm of the mind that I can't proceed until I'm satisfied. I know that if I finally nail these critical early steps I'll have less troubles further down the road though.

[57plymouth]

Good to know I'm not the only one with an anvil in the garage.

[Kwak]

LOL, that's my friend John's. He picks up stuff like that at flea markets and uses them instead of clamps because he doesn't have enough. His running gag is that he's really Wile E. Coyote because all his tools come from ACME and he continually blows himself up. He's certainly been having a tough time with his 14" band saw and drum sander.

[Kwak]

OK, maybe it's no big deal that my template was off and my second set of molds were about to go screwy too. I just pulled out the original plans and traced the proper outline on the template and sanded it down to the size it should have been. Then I went and laid the template on all my cut boards and traced in the correct outline, and filling in the difference so that I had more than just a tiny line to guide by. I still had plenty of sanding to so there was still nothing lost except the little bit of time it took me to sand my template down - which was about an hour, tops.



Once that was done I tried to think about how I was going to sand the master board down. Yamaha Junkie supplied me with a makeshift spindle but using a hand drill brings in a measure of uncertainty so I tried to come up with my own fixed upright spindle on the fly:



It didn't seem stable enough though so I just made sure to clamp the board in the vise and handle the drill freehand, eyeing the outlines on BOTH sides of the board - and yes, I made sure they were lined up. Every so often I'd stop and overlay the board against the plans to see if I was getting close without going over:



I spent a couple of hours sanding with heavy grit sandpaper on the spindle and 100 grit wrapped around a piece of scrap wood. If I felt like the 100 grit wasn't getting the flat spots out I'd break out the drill again and give it a couple of passes "feeling" for the curve. Once it hit 11 PM though I decided to call it a night with the actual work. Here's how close I got:







They're actually much more accurate than they look here but that's because I wasn't pushing down on the board and the plans in order to take the pictures. The paper likes to spring back and the plywood is light in weight.

The next step is to get the other 3 boards to match this master board. Normally this would call for a router and a pattern tracing bit but I don't think I can get access to those so I might have to give my homemade spindle a shot!

BTW, after that I move on to finally cleaning up the bending forms. Here's a taste of how they look now against my new and improved acrylic template:



Yeah, they're off and I DO need to sand them a bit - but I'm told that they don't have to be perfect. I've heard that they can be about 3mm smaller than the outline of the mold to account for the thickness of the bent sides and that the wood will still spring back against the mold after it's been freshly bent.

[Kwak]

Just got back and cleaned up after a couple of hours in my friend's workshop. Not much got accomplished. It seems like I'll be running that cedar top through the drum sander forever; we just can't seem to keep the sandpaper roll tight and the roll overlapped after a little while leaving some light scorching on my cedar. It's not a big problem but at this point I'm considering on hand planing it to the desired thickness.

Meanwhile, I cut up some cheap softwood to use as spacers for my semi solid mold. Things are far from perfect but I'm a ways away from having anything ready to put into it.

[feedthemachine]

Just sitting back admiring this thread, awesome job so far...

[Kwak]

Really? Thanks, but I keep thinking that I'm really doing too much and am starting to get burned out.

[cjbart]

Originally Posted by feedthemachine

Just sitting back admiring this thread, awesome job so far...

I agree. Don't give up.

[Quiesco Viduata]

Originally Posted by cjbart

I agree. Don't give up.

Ditto. I was thinking earlier when reading this thread I'd love to hear the guitar when it's all done. That will be exciting.

Anything worthwhile always takes work and time. You'll enjoy your labour of love when it's all done.