kerfed linings and sanding.

Ok so it's been awhile and I haven't gotten much work done, but I am glad at what I have gotten done :)
so first I had to put in this kerfed lining on the inside of my guitar, this is so the top and back will have more to glue to.

This is the kerned lining.
I put glue on, trying not to get to much on, and then spread it out with my finger.





Once I had a nice even coat of glue I put the lining into place and used a few clamps to hold it there, I had to be very careful because I needed to leave 1/32 above the sides.

I then filled in the open spaces with as many clamps as I could

 And here is the end result!

Once I had done this to both sides I had to sand down that 1/32 I had left above the sides and make sure everything was even. I did not get any photos of this process, but I can tell you what I did.

First I had to make a tool to sand the sides with the right angle a 5 degree and 1 1/2 degree. This was a interesting tool because really those degrees are quite small. Once I had it made I just used 80 grit stick on sandpaper and I was ready to go.

I then started to sand both sides of the guitar using a white pencil on the sides to make sure I didn't go down to far. Once I got almost everything even I noticed a had a few really low spots, I wasn't sure what to do so I asked the luthier I talked about early. He said to take a small piece of wood and glue it into the low spots then sand that down. It's what I did and it worked great!

Guess that's about it for now. I am just getting ready to put in the rosette around the sound hole and then the top bracings.

The fix.

So, I seem to be saying this a lot lately, but again the reason why I haven’t posted any of the photos of the projects that I’ve tried so far is because most of failed…. Including gluing my sides.

After I took the clamps off I found a crack in between the two pieces of wood. So instead of being completely straight like this | the space between the two looked like this /\ (not quite that big but you get the point.) I went to a forum that I knew of “bluescreekguitars” and asked about this, I got a lot of info and it sounded like it shouldn’t that big of a deal to take the glue off and re-glue. So, that’s what I did. (Although one gentleman pointed out that I might be causing more harm than good. I see his point, but not much that I can do about it now that I started lol)

It’s kind of tedious work, because I’d rather not harm the wood, but I think I have it worked out. I had one of the sides off before I started writing this so I’ll talk about taking the other off.

 First I have to heat the spot with an iron, the only thing I had to heat the wood and glue with, I also had a piece of cloth between




the wood and the iron. Then I used this knife to slice into the first part of the glue. After I worked down far enough I used this tool, it looked rather dangerous but it worked, and just add a little water, heat it up, and work my way down… this way I took the cale off both sides of the wood.

The sides.

Okay, so I did take photos, but on a different cameras so they will be up later.
The kit I got has an internal mold that they say to use. I decided I wanted an external mold... And I am probably just making this harder then it needs to be but... I'm building one anyways.
I have one half of the external mold complete and now I just need to do the other side, shouldn't take to long and then I can start gluing the sides together.
As I said I'll have the photos soon with more details. 

Still waiting

Well now I'm just waiting for my guitar to adjust to the temp and humidity of the shop I will be working in... still no new photos, but I should get started soon... lol I need to get started... although I am a little nervous because I don't want to mess it up.

A little late...

I should have posted this two Wednesdays ago, but I guess I was just lazy... lol.
I GOT MY KIT!
It's awesome!
Although I have yet to start work on it, I had to let it adjust to the difference in temp and I'm a little scared to start.
Hopefully I will post a photo of everything tomorrow.

P.S. that's why I didn't do it right away! (because the camera battery was dead :p )

I decided!

I finally decided on which guitar kit I would get… and we ordered it!! Yea!!

Almost getting to the point where I can start the building process.

I suppose the next logical thing would be to tell you which one I got, Mahogany or rosewood.

I ended up choosing rosewood. It was very hard to decide, I thought mahogany would be nice, but the main factor was that rosewood is a more durable wood.

So, we ordered it on Sunday which hopefully means that it shipped today :)

Guess I’ll have more when I get the box, first thing I’ll have to do is check to make sure everything is there.

A real Luthier

Well last Saturday 9/10/11 I went to a local Luthier Dr. Muiderman.  We got to look around his shop and ask some questions.

It was pretty cool, learned some good stuff. I learned another technique to put the back and top on the guitar so I might not even need all the spool-clamps that I made, haha. Other than that I learned how he does some of his stuff, and saw a ton of tools he made, which made me happy because I can make them : ) lol.

We also talked about the different woods, I’ve got two choices Mahogany and Rosewood.

I still haven’t decided what kind of wood yet so that will be my next post :P

Tools!

Before I can actually start building my guitar, I need to have some tools, one of them looked rather easy to make, so I got to work on them.

This tool is a spool-clamp, it is used to clamp the top and back of the guitar to the rim when gluing.

Well I started out with a piece of plywood, and a drill. I had to drill sixty of these little spools. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this, but this is what the wood looked like after drilling five of them out. After this I had to sand them down a bit, as they had some rough edges, there is my stack of sixty after getting them all cut out and sanded.

Now I had to drill larger holes in the center because the ones there were not big enough. Here I used a special drill bit to make in indentation in the wood so I wouldn’t miss drill the hole. Then used a regular drill bit and drilled out a larger hole. Since the drilling caused the wood to have some rough edges again I had to do a little bit of re-sanding.

I then applied glue to the spools to adhere a metal washer, this was so the screw wouldn’t notch the wood. Once this dried I could put two of the spools onto the screw attach a wing-nut and I had my spool-clamp.

I also put a piece of rubber tubing on the bolt so it also wont scratch the wood.

Here are the finished pieces!

My story.

I have always loved music and a few years ago I took it to the next level by starting to play guitar.

As I have learned to play the guitar, I’ve found it to be my favorite instrument. As such, I have decided to make a guitar this winter as my senior project. This blog will be following my attempt.

I will post the steps I take, post photos and make comments regarding the process... And hopefully, I'll post about the finished guitar!"

Thanks for reading!