CUTTING IT ALL UP

I finally started the preparation of the individual component. It was a moment I have been looking forward to with great anticipation. Mostly because I could use my bandsaw for the purpose it was bought for - resawing guitarwoods!

FIRST CUT

For this resawing I had bought two blades: Iturra's 'Bladerunner' (identical to Highland Hardware's 'Woodslicer, only half the price) and the Lenox Carbide Tipped Tri-master, both 1/2" blades. I had hoped to use the Bladerunner with it's roughly 1/32" narrow kerf for the bubinga in order to get five 1/8" slices out of the 3/4" board. Two for the back, two for the sides and an orphan, or a spare, in case something would go wrong later in the build - I'm going to bend the sides by hand later! The five slices would also give me four strips of binding as well as an centerstrip for the back.

I put the Bladerunner on the saw, tensioned the to 15.000, tracked it and set my guides and tried some test cuts in some 9' wide maple but I couldn't get the blade to behave. It squealed and howled it's way though the stock only to reveal a cut that had wandered all over the place. I tried to lube the blade, same result. I thought maybe I should adjust the fence for drift but it seemed the blade just went randomly from left to right. After a while I decided to give it up and try the Lenox blade instead. The Lenox blade has a considerable wider kerf, about a 1/16", so I had to give up the idea of getting five slices. But before I changed blades I cut the binding portion off and sliced it up into five as I first had intended with the whole board.

The Lenox blade was quite a different animal! I also tensioned this one to 15.000 psi, though I think the saw really got stretched to it's limits. I have an Iturra spring in it and it held the tension with no problem, but I had to use considerable force to turn the tensioning crank. It did not like the last couple of turns. I think I'll try to go a bit easier in the future and see what happens.

The Tri-master went though the stock with straight cuts, great commitment and endurance. Still noisy, though. The only time the cuts became uneven was when I didn't hold the wood steady against the fence or table. I ended up with four sliced just under 1/8" and a bit of some veneer from the last cut. It cut though the Bolivian rosewood with even greater ease. It seems that the denser the wood the easier it was for the Tri-master to cut. I did some test cut in walnut and the blade appeared to be struggling with that the most. I read somewhere that shavings from softer wood tend to swell more and fill up the gullets creating more friction and heat. I don't know if it's true, but it certainly appears to be the case here.

Lesson learned:

In retrospect I think I was a bit naive to think I could get five slices out of a 3/4" board. At least with my setup and skill level, whatever blade I used. It is nice to make the most out of what you have but being this frugal, could easily have yielded me nothing. What I did get was stock that, when all the saw marks have been planed away, will be barely about 0.100" and no definitely more. A close shave.

One side of the bubinga showed more interesting figure with darker ink lines and medullary rays and I had planed to use that for the back. Unfortunately I ended up cutting what was intended for sides into back and visa versa. It is not disastrous but a shame nevertheless. To add salt to the wound, I also forgot to cut off a bit of the end of the mahogany to use for an end block and back joint reinforcement, before I ripped it into the neck blank. One must learn to pay attention!

The little white pieces are bone for the nut and the saddle. It stank when I cut it up!

THE RESAWN PARTS

THE RESAWN PARTS

LEFTOVERS

At the end of the day I had a lot of usable left overs, well, left over. Enough for several fingerboards, saddles, kerfing, bracing, a set of bindings and a couple of face plates and lots of nuts and saddles for future builds.

SOLERA

I finally got to finish my solera or workboard that the guitar will be assembled on. It is basically made out of three sheets of 1/2" Baltic birch plywood laminated together. The blocks are made from maple as is the soundhole clamp. The blocks sit in slots that have been cut around the rim of the workboard and can be positioned to accommodate various guitar shapes and sizes. The hole in the end of the neck extension allows the workboard to be bolted to a bench for easy access from all sides during the construction process. The holes between the blocks have been drilled to allow the use of spool clamps when the back of the instrument is glued on.

As with the plan, this concept is also from Roy Courtnall book. However, I chose not to hollow the face of the workboard out, as Courtnall suggests, in order to accommodate the dome that will be build into the soundboard. Instead, I'll be using a cork shim to lift the soundboard off the solera. The reason for this is that I still haven't made a decision on how to deal with all the complications the construction of a domed top entails. The cork shim also appears to be a simpler and more versatile approach.

SOLERA

SOLERA

SOLERA

BLOCKS

PLANS

The guitar I'm going to build is a 3/4 classical with a scale length of 580mm. It is based of an reduced version of the Torres plan "Antonio de Torres 1" from Roy Courtnall's book. All measurements have been reduced to fit the shorter scale apart form the head of the guitar, that has been reduced only about 2% in order to accommodate a standard set of tuning machines.

The soundboard bracing is different from Courtnall's Torres. I have chosen to emulate Jeffrey Elliott's Torres/Hauser with the open harmonic bar. I don't have any particularly good reason for doing so, other than I was speculating that maybe the open harmonic bar would allow more of the already smaller soundboard to vibrate freely. Maybe I was just seduced by the nice photographs on Jeffrey Elliott's website.

Other than that I pretty much intend to stick with convention though chances are I might alter things a little as I go along, goof, learn, progress and discover. It has been quite fun redrawing the plan. It made me consider and investigate a lot of things I wouldn't otherwise have thought of.

SOUNDBOARD BRACING PLAN

NECK, BRIDGE AND SOUNDBOX PROFILE

MATERIALS

As this is my first build and I intend to use as little prefabricated materials as I can in order to learn as much as possible about the process. I'm sure I will at times regret this decision however, I hope it will be worth the effort and pay off in the end. Apart from tuning machines, fret wire and a few sheet of veneer for purfling and rosette this represents everything I'll be using to make my instrument from.

WOOD AND BONE

A CLOSER VIEW

From left to right: Englellmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) for the top and bracing. Bolivian rosewood (Machaerium scleroxylon) for the fingerboard, bridge and headplate. Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) for the neck, kerfing, back bracing and endblock. The last piece is Bubinga (Guibourtia tessmannii) that will be resawn into back, sides and binding.

I bought the spruce on ebay form Kootenay Tonewoods. It was sold as a lot of five tops graded AAA for about $120 including shipping and free bracewood. The Bubinga, the Mahogany and the Rosewood all came as 4/4 stock from a local lumber yard. It was bought little by little over the past year or so and came to about $60 altogether. Both the bubinga and the mahogany have some crossgrain fractures, that I think I'll be able to avoid when they are sawn up for their purpose.

The bone in the lower right hand corner is cattle bone, also from ebay. I got them form Tropiworld who sold them in boxes of fifteen for $20 including shipping.

All in all the guitar should come in well under $150 in raw material and hardware. On top of that comes glue and finish materials and a few other bits and pieces.