Completing the Parts

All that remains is to complete the parts is to shape the neck and finish work on the bridge.

In the previous post, we left the neck looking like this:

Quite a bit of whittling needs to be done.

Time for the spokeshave and carving knife...

Voila!

Completed neck with a wash coat of shellac:

The bridge now needs to be completed.  This shows it with one wing complete:

 

It is now complete (with some shellac added) and sitting in place on the guitar.  (It's not glued on yet.)

Next Post:  French Polish Time!

Neck and Bridge

The Final Parts

There are only two parts left to make: the fingerboard, and the bridge.  Here is a piece of ebony (for the fingerboard) and a piece of Madagascar rosewood (which will yield a few bridges).

Dimensioning a bridge...

While I'm at it, I'll make a bunch of bridges...

I'll revisit the bridges later, now on to the fingerboard.  First the ebony has to be thinned.

Then the fret slots are sawed using a jig.

Before gluing the fingerboard onto the neck, it is tapered to the proper dimension.

Here the fingerboard has been glued on and the frets installed.

Another view of the frets.  If something looks a little odd, I put 'gold' frets on this guitar (as opposed to silver).  Gold (not real gold of course) frets are fairly new and I thought I'd see how they look...

You can see that the neck still hasn't changed much from the board that it started out as, so the next job is to shape that board into a guitar neck.

Next Post: Shaping the Neck, and Back to the Bridge

Binding and Purfling

At Long last, we have a closed box.  We can't just leave it at that - the edges need to be bound, and decorative purfling strips added.

The binding have to be bent (like the sides), and a 'shelf' is carved out for the bindings and purflings.

Some additional carving has to be done where the binding fits into the heel.

After it's done...

 

 

 

Next Post:   A Couple More Parts

The Back

The Back

This is the back - it has been joined (two pieces glued together at the with the seam down the center), and thinned.  The next step is to add some braces to both reinforce it and shape it into a dome.

First, a strip is of cross-grain wood is glued down the center.  After gluing, it is shaped.

The three cross braces are what gives the back its domed shape.  A curve of 20' radius is planed into them.

After they all fit well, they are glued on.  The back is pulled into the 20' radius of the brace (not so difficult because at 2.3mm thick the back is pliable).

Here it is after the clamps have been removed.  The tops of the braces need to be shaped.

Brace shaping in progress...

With the braces shaped, the back has to be fit to the sides: just enough is cut off of the end of the braces for them to fit inside the sides, and a notch is removed from the binding for the brace end to fit into.  I neglected to take a picture of these notches, but they must be quite precise.

Oh, and a tail strip is inlaid at the bottom center.

Checking the angle of the neck to the body - it is the attaching of the back that fixes this angle.

Glued and clamped.  I'll let this sit overnight; tomorrow we have a box!

Next Post: Binding It Together

Installing the Sides, Tail Block, and Linings

Now it's time to make this thing more 3-dimensional by adding sides. 

After the side is bent, it is clamped into a mold to hold its shape while making the measurements to determine where the ends are trimmed for the final fit. 

The angled line (below) allows the side to fit into the slot that in the neck.

We also need a tail block to add reinforcement to the bottom of the guitar where the two sides meet.  I had a piece of mahogany sitting around that will be good for this.  Just needs to be sawn up...

After a lot of sawing, I got six tail blocks out of that hunk of wood.

Now everything is glued and clamped into place.

A lining has to be added to connect the sides to the top.  Here, I'm using a traditional Spanish method of gluing individual triangle-shaped pieces (called tentallones, or dentallones) one at a time using hot hide glue. I'm beginning where the two cross bars meet the sides, and working around the perimeter.

I meant to take more photos along the way, but got too engrossed.  The photo below shows all of the lining installed - the dentallones lining the top, and the lining that the back of the guitar will be glued to.  A tricky bit here: since the back is radiused, the linings that the back will attach to have to be sloped to the same radius for a proper fit.  That has already been done here, and our attention now shifts to preparing the back.

Next Post:  The Back

The Sides of the Guitar

The parts of the guitar are known by various names.  In the U.S. we typically refer to the wood between the top and back as 'sides'.  In the U.K. they are called 'ribs', which makes just as much sense.

The tricky part here (there's always a tricky part) is to bend them to the proper shape without breaking them.  They have to be thin enough to bend, but not so thin that they are weak and unstable.

These are the sides as recieved from the wood supplier.  The need to be thinned a lot, but this has to be done carefully so the wood is not damaged in the process (the power planer is not an option).

After thinning... 

In this case these sides had enough extra width to allow sawing some thin strips to use for the binding (you'll see that used much later).  The wood, as recieved, is not always wide enough to provide bindings but in this case I was lucky.

Some final thinning and smothing before bending...

Since I had the bindings cut, I went ahead and glued on some veneer strips for decoration.  Here, the veneer is being scraped level with the binding.

back to the sides...  there are two approaches to go about getting them bent into the desired shape: freehand bending using a 'bending iron' (a sort of circular or oblong shaped metal pipe with a heat source), or a bending jig - bending the wood over a form.  Here, I'm using a bending jig with a heat blanket to supply the heat.

Once clamped into the form, the side is allowed to cool, and remains in the form for several hours to prevent springback of the bent wood.

Next Post:

Fitting and Attaching the Sides,

Tail Block, and Linings