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I installed the dual-action trussrod, which has a flat surface that sits flush with the neck surface so there is no need to cap it with wood. I padded the cavity with felt to ensure a snug, rattle-free fit, and taped it off so no glue would seep in.
To attach the fretboard, I taped it in place and then drilled small holes for guide pins that I stole from my wife's sewing stuff. (Hooray for gender-appropriate hobbies!)
Then I removed the tape, laid down a bed of glue, and clamped it with a long, straight caul that has holes drilled at those guide-pin locations.
To radius the fretboard, I needed a radiused sanding block. So I planed a 12" male radius into a chunk of hard wood...
... and used that to sand a female radius into a corresponding chunk.
Time to radius!
Now I could deepen the fret slots and bind the board. I started by attaching the inner layers of binding, then sawing the slots deeper. I filed the tangs off a piece of fretwire and used it to double-check the depth.
Then I added the outer layer of binding and smoothed things out.
Ready for frets!
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12-10-2014 11:13 PM
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Lookin' good. You're going to be making music on this baby before you know it.
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Always a pleasure for us to see your work in progress !
christophe
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I should vist these parts of the forum more often. Bravo Jehu, I believe it will be one superb guitar.
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Fretting for the first time is scary, so I needed to procrastinate by making a handy-dandy fret organiser.
As it turns out, my fears were not totally unjustified. After filing a slight bevel into the edge of each fret slot to prevent tearout should I need to refret, I tried the classic "hammer-in" method. I don't know if I slightly widened the slots when I was doing the final clean-out, or maybe (probably) I didn't over-radius the fretwire enough, but I couldn't get the ends of the frets to stay down.
So I heated and pulled the frets, and despite the bevelling I still got a bit of chipping in a couple of places, which I repaired with CA and dust.
Loose fret slots are not a problem so much as an opportunity to try another approach to fretting... double the practice! I decided to give Dan Erlewine's favourite method a go. I made some radiused clamping cauls and, after waxing the fingerboard, used them to press the frets into slots filled with 5-minute epoxy. This worked pretty well.
Next I snipped the ends of the frets and filed a slight bevel. They still have to be levelled and crowned, but that will wait until the guitar is all put together and ready for final set-up.
Finally I inlayed my dog's paw print into the headstock in Cypress. (I've got a bit of glue showing around the edges that I'll try to clean up somehow.)
A normal person would have had all of the grain running in the same direction, but I wouldn't want to be mistaken for someone who knows what he is doing.
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Nice fret job, Jay.
Personally, I like your design feature with the grain going in all directions....and if anyone complains about it just tell them that they don't have the highly developed sense of ascended aesthetics that you do so it's no wonder they don't understand...You might want to be sure to be outside of slapping range on that one...
Looking forward to the day you let us hear a tune on your creation...
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Second that opinion! Looks very wave like. It got a nice flowing quality. And if I would ever design a headstock inlay it would also be the paw from our dog.
Originally Posted by Scot Tremblay
Nice fret job, Jay.
Personally, I like your design feature with the grain going in all directions....and if anyone complains about it just tell them that they don't have the highly developed sense of ascended aesthetics that you do so it's no wonder they don't understand...You might want to be sure to be outside of slapping range on that one...
Looking forward to the day you let us hear a tune on your creation...
Cheers
Ted
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Beautifull work as usual,
the head inlay is cute !
I wish you a happy new year
christophe
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That sounds like a well-practiced line, Scot. All of these tricks of the trade that Benedetto hasn't told us about... Originally Posted by Scot Tremblay
...and if anyone complains about it just tell them that they don't have the highly developed sense of ascended aesthetics that you do so it's no wonder they don't understand...You might want to be sure to be outside of slapping range on that one...
Hey, let's not ruin a fun thread!Looking forward to the day you let us hear a tune on your creation...
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I trimmed the sides to the fretboard edge with a spokeshave, and then measured out the profile of the neck.
I quite like the feel of my Godin, so I copied its neck profile at the 1st and 11th frets and added just a hair more heft. Then I faceted the edges at a 45 degree tangent to the profile. This was pretty quick going with the spokeshave and a rasp for the curvy bits.
Then I did the same thing for the secondary facets, at a 22ish degree angle from those primary edges. This got the shape close enough to just smooth things over with a file, very carefully leveling any bumps or uneven spots. Then a bit of sanding and adding a cap to the heel. (You can see I still haven't learned my lesson about grain direction!)
The position markers are just strips of binding mortised into the side of the fretboard:
This has resulted in a really comfy C profile, which I think is going to feel nice regardless of what the guitar sounds like. Hey, I can always add a pickup!
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the Cypres of this neck looks wonderfull,
It must smell very good in the workshop.
Cypres is said to be very stable and last for 500 - 1000 years
many guitarists life to come ;-)
christophe
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You're right, Christophe, the Cypress smells fantastic. It makes breathing in all those wood particles worth it!
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As those in the know have probably guessed, I'm using Benedetto's book as a primary guide. I'm supplementing it with a lot of other sources (e.g., Cumpiano & Natelson's book, Liutaio Mottola's excellent resources, etc.) because it is simply not possible to build a guitar using Benedetto's instructions. I'm convinced that he published it as a deterrent to other potential builders. As you can see, I do not respond well to such dissuasion.
Anyhoo, when it comes to setting the neck, Bob is particularly vague. He basically says "If things have gone well so far, your dovetail joint should be perfect. Slide it into place and enjoy your new guitar."* This isn't helpful to those of us living in reality, and with most other resources being specific for non-archtop guitars, one has to rely on a combination of problem solving skills and Bits From the Internet.
*not an actual quote
This is the longest time I have ever spent on a joint, but in the end it paid off. I now see why this is normally done with a router and templates rather than eyeballing things with a handsaw and chisels. There are essentially three things to consider: The neck angle (a straightedge resting on the frets should hover about an inch off the body at the bridge location), the centreline (the centre of the neck should line up with the centreline of the body), and the pitch of the neck from port to starboard. When I first tried the joint, the pitch and centreline were (by some miracle) perfect, but the angle was steep: about 35mm off the body at the bridge.
Thus began several hours of tweaking. I settled on a methodical approach: angle, then centreline, then pitch. I removed enough material from the heel to correct the neck angle (note the highly technical neck setting apparatus):
Then I had to correct the now-slightly-off centreline. By this time, the joint was a bit wobblier than I need it to be, so there was no point in levelling the pitch (which requires removing material from the tenon). I added two thin shims which I was able to make out of offcuts from the neck block itself, which probably makes no difference but gives me a brain-smile. After a long session of fitting the freshly shimmed joint with a piece of carbon paper, it ticked all the boxes and was tighter than fumblefingers' views on album covers.
Erstwhile, in order to get the joint in place I had to shape the neck extension. I traced the contour of the top and removed the excess.
Then glue 'er up and clamp 'er in!
Here you can see that the extension above the neck block sits flush and there is a shaft of daylight under the remainder. That lap joint isn't my best work, I'll try to find a way to finesse that.
For a nut, I decided on black TUSQ, as I thought it would look good with the black binding. I chiselled out the slot and sanded the bottom of the nut blank. The rough shape of the top was traced using the ol' half-pencil trick, which as you might imagine involves chopping a pencil in half.
Then a couple of dabs of glue to hold it in place. I left it a bit oversized for now.
And at long last here we are, as they say, "in the white"!
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Looking good. You're close to hearing it. I suggest you go ahead and make your fittings now and string it up in the white. It's much better to have to change things without the finish on (not that I've ever had to
). I'm sure by this point you understand why archtops cost what they do. Great job.
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really like the binding and the backstrap on the headstock.
you did some pretty fancy stuff for your first archtop.
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Wonderfull Jay !!!
did you weigh the guitar at this point ?
Christophe
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considering that this is your first archtop - are you a descendant of Mr da Vinci by any chance? ... really nice work...
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Looking really good!
You must feel pretty good about yourself.
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Some time ago, some one suggested that a "more than 3 pages long thread" derails or gets boring.
Yours is the perfect exception to this rule, and I always enjoy reading your explanations and comments on your work. Nice pics for better explanations on what went right and on what went wrong, some touch of humour in the comments. It's always a pleasure to discover the up-dates of this thread.
Congrats on your very nice work, and so many thanks for sharing your experience.
As suggests Jason : time for stringing !
All the best
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First I thought it was a bear's claw and that you'd used a top wood with bear claw figure in it. Heh, now I'll save that idea for mine. Originally Posted by Jehu
Finally I inlayed my dog's paw print into the headstock in Cypress. (I've got a bit of glue showing around the edges that I'll try to clean up somehow.)
.
David
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If I might offer the friendliest tip and warn you, I have an 18 hour rule. NEVER judge or expect anything from a guitar in the first 18 hours after it's first strung up. From my experience, they are young and love doing their impressions of a cardboard dog with something stuck in its throat. Give it a day but play it in as much (or keep it by a sound source if you've got it) and wait for it to sweeten. It'll happen pretty fast, and will continue for years.
My experience and humble experience only.
David
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Amazing
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Thanks for the kind comments and encouragement, everyone. But we're still only halfway there; I still have plenty of opportunity to screw things up!
Jason -- I knew if I waited long enough someone would start getting impatient
. Good point, though... I'm barely confident I can apply the finish, let alone repair it if I need to make adjustments. I've started on the fittings.
David -- Thanks for the advice; I'll reserve my disappointment for the day after I string it up. Kidding of course. I'm sure I'll love this thing regardless of whether it sounds like the proverbial fart in a garbage can. Although I'm still half-expecting it to explode into a thousand tiny slivers once I tune it to pitch.
Christophe -- No, I haven't weighed it yet. I'll have to track down a luggage scale or something once I get the pegs and all of the appointments on there.
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These were almost exactly my thoughts at this last update as well. Great thread! More good will throughout than most of any length to be sure. Originally Posted by 339 in june
Jehu, I may have missed it in a previous thread, but have you given your background in woodworking, and specifically guitars or other instruments? If it's already somewhere else I'd be glad to read it there. Otherwise, I'd be interested to know what you've done previously and how you ramped up to this project. I'm really impressed with your tenacity.
Thanks for the updates.
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Not a whole lot, to be honest. I was around it growing up; my dad and grandfather did quite a bit of woodworking, and I still have a number of pieces of furniture that my great-grandfather made. My uncle was a violin-maker. So I guess just seeing that things are possible, that problems can be solved, is a big part of it. But aside from dabbling here and there, I didn't really get into it until relatively recently. I didn't do anything to ramp up to this. I went from much simpler projects straight into this behemoth. As for my experience with instrument building, you're looking at it. Aside from a few minor repairs and silly alterations to beater guitars, this is pretty well it. Sink or swim! Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
All of this to say: If I can do it, you can too.
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