The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Hi!
    It's been a minute since I posted I know. I'm happy to report that I have a lovely, fully functional, nice sounding and decently looking 17" archtop guitar in the style of a Benedetto. It's been together off and on for probably about 2 months. But my shop is completely taken apart right now because of a basement renovation. I've been applying a finish with the french polishing technique for the past 4-6 weeks. About 2 weeks ago I reassembled the tuning pegs and restrung it up. It needed some final setup tweaks and I've been noodling with it for so long that I decided to bite the bullet and take it to someone else to finish it for me. I found a very good resource in my area and he set it up perfectly by sanding the height of the bridge down and re-slotting it for the strings. It's playing great...it's sounding wonderful. I really can't believe it honestly.

    I know I'm probably driving you nuts right now with no pictures. I'm at work and need to actually pull a lot of video clips together of various process steps from where I left off and produce a couple of videos to tell the rest of the story.

    I will update again and also do a demo video of me playing it. It's an acoustic so I'm going to need to mic it up and I don't necessarily have the "right" mic for an acoustic guitar to record it... oh well.

    I must say some of the hardest parts of the process for me were cutting the binding channels and binding the f-holes. I kept it simple with one strip of rosewood premade binding. Cutting the channels by hand was a tough part of the process. If I ever do it again I will invest in something to make that more accurate. There are no inlays in the fingerboard, only dots for markers on the top of the fingerboard. I did do a simple "B" inlay in a square pattern for the headstock. It came out alright.

    All in all it was a very pleasurable process. It took a running time of 15 months to complete it. I haven't totaled up the amount of money I've spent on everything. I will do that after my shop is back together in December (I probably don't want to know...).

    ~Mike

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

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    Getting the neck and dovetail on the body is the most difficult in that it takes time to get it correct. Then once you get it all lined up it is working pretty fast and making sure it gets on the body as intended. The finishing done in a spray booth with even aerosol nitro from Stewmac would be the way to go the first time. Hope to see the pictures soon. One thing is to completely do the guitar yourself in total. You can buy pre-made tailpiece, tuners, and other hardware doing the whole guitar myself would be my goal. Good to take to a finish expert but I would have give it a go I think if you can get where to did the finish will be fine. Just do a natural so no shading till you get experience. Finishing is art in and of itself.

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by deacon Mark
    Getting the neck and dovetail on the body is the most difficult in that it takes time to get it correct. Then once you get it all lined up it is working pretty fast and making sure it gets on the body as intended. The finishing done in a spray booth with even aerosol nitro from Stewmac would be the way to go the first time. Hope to see the pictures soon. One thing is to completely do the guitar yourself in total. You can buy pre-made tailpiece, tuners, and other hardware doing the whole guitar myself would be my goal. Good to take to a finish expert but I would have give it a go I think if you can get where to did the finish will be fine. Just do a natural so no shading till you get experience. Finishing is art in and of itself.
    Thanks Mark. I was unintentionally unclear in my previous post. The guitar is completely done. Gluing the neck on the body was another of the several "watershed moments" of the process. My neck tenon fit wasn't perfect. But the jig I made to ensure it got glued on straight worked well and at the end of the day I got a good result.

    I may just leave the guitar finish as a french polish. I've got 8-10 coats of 2# shellac on it with wet sanding with 800/1500 grit twice and then a spiriting off step at the end. I didn't want to go down the route of a spray booth on the first one even with cans of aerosol lacquer as you suggest realizing fully well that finishing is an art form in and of itself.

  5. #29

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    Let’s see some pics of your creation, Mike!

  6. #30

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    Hi,
    Well I've finally gotten around to making a summary video introducing the guitar to the six of you who care enough to want to check it out. I hope you enjoy.

    I still have plenty of video clips to piece together to demonstrate late stage parts of the process and I will pull that video together to document as much of what I did as possible.



    Take care and happy playing.
    Mike

  7. #31

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    It's up and published!

  8. #32

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    mbar65: You can take great pride in having built your own very fine looking instrument. Your workmanship appears to be impeccable! I like the "imperfections" of the figured maple back. I consider them "character" and feel the only add to, not subtract from, the finished piece. I get you get many years worth of satisfaction and beaucoups happy playing hours. Congratulations, and play it in good health!

  9. #33

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    Congrats! Well done, sir! Very nice.

  10. #34

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    Great job and love the sound.