Luthierization

A fancy word for the becoming of a stringed instrument. I will publish my progress as I create an acoustic guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, and a violin. I am currently working on a guitar and ukulele. I'll post as I go. I don't know if I can give enough instruction for you to create one as well, but I hope I can furnish enough pics and information that maybe you can at least get a whack at it.

Well, everyone knows that they need a label if you're going to make musical instruments, so here is my label:

Next you need some wood, so I got some wood and sawed it into really thin sheet, then "bookmatched" (joined together) to make the front:

This happens to be some nice black walnut. You can see the pattern drawn on the face if you look real close.

So while that is being glued together and drying, we can move onto the next step of bending the sides.  First we got 6" wide strips about 3' long the same thickness as the back. Once you get the strips you need to lightly spray a little water on them, then wrap them in aluminum foil. Next sandwich them between two sheets of sheet metal, same length and width as the wood. Now it's time to put them in the bender, like this:

There are three 100w light bulbs inside this contraption that heat things up quick. It is actually the heat that softens the wood, not the water. The water is just to keep the wood from scorching.  After gengerly moving the two paddles towards both ends, you turn out the light bulbs and let it cool. After cooling and removing it from the bender you get these results:

Now things are pretty fragile at this point, so we put the sides in a mold to help hold things together while we work with it:

While in the mold, we glue the two support blocks, one for the neck at the front, and one for the butt end. That will hold the two side together. While in this position, we ad some kerfing  for the front and back sides. This actually adds strength to the sides as well as give some gluing surface for the front and back pieces to set on. It's a little tricky gluing on the kerfing, it bends well while not glued, but as you start gluing it on, it absorbs the glue a bit and starts becoming a bit brittle. But do it gently gives good results.
Now that we have the kerfing on and things are all drying, we start working on the back. I found some pretty curly maple at the exotic woods store up the road in Oakland. Really nice people there.  So we cut some thin slices of the maple, the same size as the front pieces. We pup a nice strip of walnut in between just to break things up a bit. Here is the back piece:

Things are pretty brittle at this point, so we have to brace things up both inside the  front and back, here is the back all braced up:

After things are braced up and the bracing is trimmed a bit we can now glue the front onto the sides, like this:

Notice that we drilled the sound hole before gluing on the sides, this is a good idea!

Next we glue the back on. After words it looks like this:

Now it's starting to look like a guitar. The splotch is where we did a test varnish, just to see what it will look like shinny.
Next we work on the neck We sandwiched some light maple between two pieces of dark rosewood.  We glued it together like this:

While that dries we get a chuck of rosewood and sorta cut  out something that looks like a head. We then glue the head on the neck like this:

After all dries, we do a mortise on the neck block on the body, and slot the back side of the neck, then bolt things together like this:

back view

front view

There we have a diamond in the rough! We are working on putting the trim on the front and back of the body. I'll bring more pics when it you can see some difference. Just a lot of sanding an prepping right now.
So, until then, happy luthering!

Ok, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. A lot of work now, as I said, is just a lot of sanding and prepping for the next stage of the game. However I did take a pic of getting ready to glue on some Kerfing and Binding for the front and back. The guitar body has to be routed around the edges to accommodate the application of the Kerfing and Binding pieces.

Right now we are bending the kerfing and binding pieces, the same way we bent the sides. After the kerfing and binding pieces are bent, they will be ready to be glued. Those pics will come next. Stay tuned!! :)

I've got a little update on the slow but sure progress for the guitar. We have had the Kerfing and Binding bent on the bender as we did for the sides of the guitar. We routed out the groves for the kerfing and binding to as seen in the above picture. Here is the result of bending the kerfing and binding:

Here you see the binding, the darker wider strip, and the kerfing, the striped strips. These nestle in the routed groves on the body. After gluing them in, you get a lot of blue painters tape that helps hold it all together while the glue dries, like this:

You will notice the clamp at the waist, this adds a little more pressure so that the glue will support the natural springyness and keep it from coming apart later.   More to come!
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I finally got some pictures to share after a long wait.  It wasn't such a long wait to do the job as it was collecting and up loading the pics :)
I'm still sanding on the Kerfiling  and Binding trying it get is level with the surface of the body. While doing that we got a fret board made. This was done with careful measuring and a special saw blade on a radial arm saw. Then we drilled holes for the fret dots as shown below:

Now we get to work on the neck its self.

Above are the top view and side view of creating a channel in the middle of the neck and placing the adjusting the truss rod. The rod will be used for removing the bow from the neck when finished. It also helps in adjusting the string height from the frets if it is way too high. You use this adjustment as last resort for that purpose. Normally you adjust your nut and bridge height for that.

Here we position the adjustment part of the rod and create an opening slot on the head so that you can have access to the rod adjustment. This will have a cover screwed over it to make it look nicer.

Now we position our fret board on the neck. We first drilled some holes in the fret slots. Then we nailed the board on the neck just to hold it's position while doing the gluing.  The nails will be removed after the gluing is done.

Finally the gluing. Here the fret board is being glued and clamped onto the neck. We now have the fret board and truss rod on the neck. The next step will be shaping the neck, which I will bring more pics when that is done. Stay tuned!
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The Bridge. This is the next step of getting closer to completing the guitar.
First, you start with a piece of rosewood like this:

 Then you cut it, shape it, and drill it until it looks like this:

 Next we have to get the body all sanded and ready for the varnish and that will be on  my next post on this section.



I have now applied the varnish to the body. I need to do about four more coats. Then the bridge can be mounted. Next I need to shape and varnish the neck. That will be my next post. Enjoy the pics below:

And Now, the long over due update on progress of the guitar. She is now complete and has a wonderful voice. I named her Coleen. It is Irish for "Irish Girl".  Since I have found a new fondness of Celtic music, I thought it fitting to give her that name.  The pics below show her finished state and this ends the Lutherization project for now. Unless I decide to build something else.