End Blocks, Linings and the Back

Just what the title says, made the end block and cut the mortise that will eventually hold the neck & drill the holes for the bolts..

All the kerfed kinings are glued on the sides and they are ready to be radiused.

The back has the bracing glued on and ready to be carved.. All in all good progress.

Neck block in the jig ready to be routed

and complete with holes drilled

both blocks attached to the sides

Gluing on the kerfed linings, can never have too many clamps

all glued on

notched for the braces

All glued up

Side Bending

The next step in Rick's Tenor is to bend the sides, actually you could to several things next but I chose to bend the sides. It's my first time bending Walnut but it is suppose to bend easy and it did.. I also bent the Maple bindings. The process went well with no surprises.

I use a Fox style bender with a heating blanket and controller

After bending the sides are cut to length and placed in the form to help them hold shape until the end blocks and linings are installed.

Wrapping the sides for bending, parchment & foil

Sandwiched in the bender, spring steel - side - blanket - spring steel

Temp going up, max set to 290 which I did not even get to bending

Bend complete

Sides all trimmed and in the mould..

Next step will be routing the mortise in the neck block and gluing the blocks to the sides

Some Work on Both Guitars

So I cut the sound hole  & bound it on Rick's tenor and finished bringing all the body parts to thickness.. I also cut he sides to rough depth on both the tenor and the parlour.

Then cut out the body shape in the top and back of both. Now ready to bend sides and brace the top and back..

Completed rosette and sound hole binding

Two tops and back

Finishing the Rosette and Jointing the Back

The rosette is now finished and the top is planed and sanded to thickness, in this case looks like 2.6mm is it.. or at least as far as I have the guts to go..

Rosette installed in the guitar top

The inner & outer purfling lines added.

I've also got the back jointed tonight, and maybe I can get it down to thickness tomorrow..

Using a shooting board to get the joint smooth

I can never quite get it as smooth as I want with the hand plane
but a couple of passes with some 220 grit paper
on a framing square does the trick.

All clamped up the simple old fashioned way

So once the back is to thickness things can start coming together to look like a guitar....

Another Rosette

OK for Rick's tenor I thought I would get away from the random rosette and go with an 8 piece with black purfling between the pieces and around the rosette..

Since the back and sides are Black Walnut and I have a couple of chunks of that laying around, that's what got used..

First cut some thin strips on the table saw. then cut those strips into pieces with a 22.5 deg angle on each side..

Then glue the pieces together with a 1mm strip of black purfling between each..

Glued up (fish glue)

all cleaned up

Then secure the whole thing a route out the rosette shape

Turned out pretty good, one piece came apart during the routing, but re-glued and that gets to be the part under the fingerboard extension :-)

Next Step is to route the channel into the top..

Rick's Tenor

My friend Rick asked for a tenor guitar for GDAE tuning.. I think we have come up with a design that works for that.. Basically a Martin Size 5/Terz with a 21.375" scale but of course only 4 strings :-)

Walnut back & Sides with a nice Bearclaw Sitka top..

Just jointed & started to thickness the top.. Probably the stiffest top I've worked with but that should make for a good guitar in the long run (I hope)

The Top

And rubbed down a bit to show the figure...

Parlor Guitar

So I've started the Parlor Guitar, the back & top are jointed and thicknessed and so are the sides. As well the rosette is installed complete with Zipflex Paua Shell purfling.. The Zipflex installation went well.

This is my first time building with Wenge and I've heard good things about it and it does seem to tap real nice but it's pretty brittle and tools need to be real sharp to plane, I'm also thinking pore filling is going to be a real chore as it has huge pores.....

Oh well it is suppose to sound great!

Planing the Cedar top to thickness

Gluing up the Wenge back

Running the Wenge rosette through my home made thickness sander,
The rosette is random pieces of Wenge with BWB purfling between them

Completed rosette and routed channel for it

Rosette installed and inlayed with the Paua shell

Closer view

See what I mean about pores.....