NECK AND SIDE ASSEMBLY

Well, I think I've been stalling long enough with this and it's time to get a move on. A decision has been made and there is no turning back now; The sides are going on the neck first. It has taken me a long time to figure out a way to do this that made sense to me but more on that later.

FITTING IT ALL
The side and neck fitting was pretty straight forward. I started by setting the sliding bevel to the correct angle for the heel block. Then the distance between the bottom of the slots and the heel block was measured and transferred to the linings. As the linings were glued on 'by eye' and the sliding bevel was resting against them, I wasn't sure it was all that accurate and allowed a millimeter or two for inaccuracies and final fitting. Each side was done with separate measurements.

Once the linings were marked, I cut them with a dovetail saw a pared away the waste with a chisel. The two processes were a little cumbersome as it was difficult for me to clamp the work down properly. I ended up making a little caul with a slightly curved face that fitted in between the top and bottom linings and clamped the side down to the bench with a bar clamp. In retrospect I think it would have been better to use a vise. Maybe next time.

With all the waste gone, I fitted the sides into the slots and started trimming the linings with a little bullnose rabbet plane until they were seated fully into the slots. I had to hold the plane at a slight angle to compensate for the curvature of the sides and the fact that they don't enter the neck at an right angle. The plane did tear a little where the individual kerfed blocks got cut down to thin segments, even though the blade freshly sharpened and set to a fine cut. Thinking back, I wonder if I would have been better off using a small sanding stick instead. However, be it a sanding stick or a plane, using a tool that was able to rest against one of the lining while cutting the other, insured straight cuts that otherwise would have been difficult to achieve, had each lining been cut individually.

The bullnose plane is a wonderful little tool. It's made by Lee Valley and I must confess that I'm really impressed with their planes. The level of precision, thought and intelligence that have gone into their designs, makes them a joy to use. I cannot speak highly enough of them.

Once the sides were seated well into the neck, I started trimming the linings to allow for the end block. This was done the same way, apart form the marking, which was done with a machinist square instead of the bevel. Also, I did most of the final trimming with the chisel to avoid some of the tearing mentioned above, and saved the very final touches for the plane.

During the final dry fitting it became clear that the curvature of the end block needed to be increased slightly. This was done by rubbing it back and forth on a sanding board, Cumpiano style. The sides were also thinned slightly by sanding in order to enter the slots with ease.

I made a clamping caul out of 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood lined with 1/8" cork. Two kerfs were cut leaving about 2mm of solid wood, enabling the caul to be bent slightly and conform to the profile of the end block.

GLUING THE END BLOCK
Once everything was fitted it was time for the end block to be glued. It soon became clear that this all became a little bit of a challenge; It didn't make sense to clamp end block down in position on the solera, without adding glue to it first because the sides were already in place. And, I couldn't use the end block clamping caul without having to get rid of the support block on the solera that insured the sides were perfectly square in the first place. Confused?....

I ended up with a somewhat half arsed approach by mixing two schools of methods into a one, Cumpiano and Courtnall representing one and Sloan and Bogdanovich the other, but, the end block did get glued on.

First step was to place some wax paper on the support block and bottom of solera adjacent to the glue-up and then slip the whole assembly down into position on the solera. Then glue was added to the end block and pushed into place, up against the sides as hard as I could and clamped down in place, square to the solera, with a big Bessey bar clamp. Next the solera support block behind the heel block was removed, and replaced with the clamping caul. Once the support block was gone the end block went a little out of squareness and I had to adjust the position of the bottom of the bar clamp to get it square again. Finally the end block was clamped to the sides with four small bar clamps. A MDF caul was used on the end block itself.

The glue clean-up was a little unwieldy as all the clamps and cauls were in the way, but I managed to get most of it off with a chisel. I left it to dry over night and did the final cleaning the next day.

GLUING SIDES INTO NECK SLOTS - WHAT A PAIN IN THE NECK!!!
Gluing the sides into the neck slots was no less than a nightmare and it nearly ruined the whole build. I kind of expected it be a challenging process, but I didn't fully realize what trouble was lying ahead of me.

I started by carefully coating the slots with glue, using a little stick to rub it on with and placed the neck on my work bench fingerboard side down. I carefully pulled the side assembly apart and inserted the sides into their slot sideways. But, the glue started to grab before they were fully seated and I had to yank it all apart as quickly as I could without damage anything. I have never been a big adrenaline junkie and this episode was no exception. I did not like it.

I cleaned the whole thing up and tried my luck again a second time. Well, why not? There was still some wet glue in the slots I could use. Dare I say that I wasn't particularly successful the second time around either - I'll leave it at that!

Third time lucky! Now it became a matter of pride. I was determined to get the sucker to obey. The whole thing was cleaned up again. During the clean up I noticed some small saw marks in the slots and I began to wonder if that had been the source of the problem, or at least partly so. I carefully thinned the sides a little more, rounded their edges to ease the insertion, added glue sparsely and they finally went in, albeit with a little bit of play that hadn't been there before.

The whole assembly was then placed back in the solera. The neck was lined up with two bar clamps and the sides were held in place, suspended on the little soundboard shims, with spool clamps.

I hindsight I wonder if gluing the side into the slots is such a good idea after all. There seems to be to schools of thought on this one too. Cumpiano and Courtnall both make this joint without the use of glue, whereas Sloan and Bogdanovich do them with glue. I my case, the joint was definitely a tighter one when it was dry fitted; A very snug fit that went together with a firm, but gentle hand. Whether it would have been a stronger one, I'll never know.

SETTING THE HEEL BLOCK BEVEL

MARKING THE HEEL BLOCK BEVEL

MARKING FOR THE END BLOCK

MARKING FOR THE END BLOCK

CUTTING THE LINGS FOR THE END BLOCK

PARING THE LINING WASTE FOR THE END BLOCK

TRIMMING THE LINING WASTE FOR THE END BLOCK

FINAL TRIMMING OF THE LINING WASTE FOR THE END BLOCK

DRY FITTING THE SIDES TO NECK AND END BLOCK

FINAL PROFILE SANDING OF THE END BLOCK

END BLOCK CLAMPING CAUL

SECURING END BLOCK IS VERTICAL
GLUING END BLOCK TO SIDES

ADDING GLUE TO HEEL SLOTS

GLUING THE NECK AND SIDE ASSEMBLY

FINISHED ASSEMBLY

FINISHED ASSEMBLY

FINISHED ASSEMBLY

MY SHOP

Lately not much has happened on the building front. Most of my shop time has been occupied by building a Go-Bar clamp and some other smaller jigs and fixtures. Apart from that, we've had an excessive amount of children's birthday parties to attend, not to mention Halloween. But, in the spirit of documenting this build I decided to take some pictures of my workshop last night.

It's a two car garage that, like so many other garages here in Southern California, is not used for it's intended purpose, but more a place where you shove all the crap you've accumulated over the years and that you don't really have any use for anymore but somehow has gotten too attached to to get rid of, in.

However, the garage has a small attic were all the really useless stuff has ended up, leaving the a fair amount of room for some tools and workbenches, and viola - a little workshop is born.

Last summer I completed my main bench made from MDF and two Rockler Shop Stands. It has six drawers and a shelf underneath. My other bench is made from the 1½" thick maple butcher block sink cut-out leftover from our kitchen counter tops. Like the MDF bench it is supported by a Rockler shop stand. It is on wheels and can easily be moved around as needed. I drilled several holes into the top to accommodate Lee Valley's Bench and Wonder Pups Combos and the attachment of a Patternmaker's Vise.

I also build a small dust collection system that is hooked up to my bandsaw. It has a port for a vacuum hose that doubles for the drill press, a floorsweep and an 'expansion' port that I can use to hook up a variety of other tools to. At the moment 'the other tools' only consist of a drum sander but in the event that more tools enteres the shop, this is where these would go.

Unfortunately the floorsweep is not very useful as bigger shavings from handplanes and the like just clog up the whole system. The port where the vacuum hose goes does not have very much suction, which I hope is due to the drastic and likely improper installation of a 4" to 1½" reducer. I hope to be able to fix this by adding a small cyclone seperator to it instead. This could potentially also take care of the inadequacies of the floorsweep; All projects for a later date.

The shelves on the back wall are cheap IKEA shelves.

THE SHOP

ADDING LINING TO THE SIDES

I'm slowly beginning to realize that guitar building is a peculiar thing!

I was very nervous about bending the sides by hand on a hot pipe, but to my surprise it went quite smoothly. When it came to adding kerfed linings to the sides, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. After all it's just gluing a little strip of wood onto another. How hard can that be? Wrong!!! It soon became apparent that they were next to impossible to manipulate without snapping them left, right and center even though I try to handle them very careful. Where did this come from?

Being at a loss of what to do I read through my books on guitar building, "Build Your Own Acoustic Guitar" by Jonathan Kinkade being one of them. In the section about kerfed linings he mentions that "the kerfing strips are easier to manage when they are cut into 6" strips". This little sentence suddenly got a whole new meaning. I also consulted several fellow builders just to find that they too had been caught off guard the first time they had a go.

Something had to be done and off I went:

BENDING:
Through a lot of research it became clear that the best way to avoid breaking the linings were to pre-bend them in some way. Some people suggested wetting them and clamping them on the outside of the sides and leaving them over night. Others suggested steaming them with wetted paper towel and a hot household iron. I experimented with a little jig to hold the linings in while heating them with a heat gun. In then end I resorted to bending them like the side, on my bending iron.

At this point the linings were already in a somewhat bad shape: One had broken in two places, one had a fracture while the last two were still intact.

I started by bending the 'three piece' lining since it was the most damaged. What the heck, why not break it a little more if it would come to that. It went quite well though, and stayed in three pieces after all. Second came the fractured lining. This proved to be a little more troublesome than the first one, as it was still in one long piece and therefor had to be handled with much more care. Despite this, I managed to turn that into a 'three piece' affair too. Now, two of the linings were broken in three pieces; At least there was some sort of consistency (I'm keeping a positive mind).

Learning from my mistakes I managed to bend the last two linings without breaking either of them, though I did have a few close calls.

I aimed at bending them into a C-shape with each bout slightly overbent to avoid having the yet-to-be-clamped part of the linings smearing glue on the sides. I did not worry too much about bending the waist area for the same reason.

INSTALLATION:
I decided to use the damaged linings against the soundboard, where the fractures would not be immediately visible, whereas the two intact ones would be used for the back where they could been seen through the soundhole.

I clamped the side into the lining jig and started with a dry run with the three-piece linings to see if some unforeseen issued would pop up, but to my surprise it went pretty smoothly. It seemed as if all my struggles disappeared once the linings had been pre-bent. I started clamping the linings on at the waist and moved my way outwards along the upper and lower bouts respectively.

I took the lining off again and applied a modest film of glue to it by dapping it on with a finger and glued it on the side with 3/4" plastic spring clamps, about 1mm proud of the edge. I butted the broken segments up against each other the best I could to disguise the fractures. Some ended up being barely noticeable while others sported a little gap. Oh well!

In retrospect I think the clamps, though they are very nice and have a good squeeze, were a little too wide for the job. As a result there are a couple of spots where the linings are not sitting tight against the sides. I tried to shave a couple of the swiveling clamp tips down but to little effect as the area where the jaws connect has a big 'knuckle' that prevents the clamps on closer together. Alternatively I could have made two long bent cauls to go on either side of the glue-up to even out the clamping pressure.

I did experiment by applying the glue on the first strip with a newly acquired roller - the kind you use for lino printing - but even though it did leave a thinner, more even translucent film of glue on the work that produced virtually no squeeze out, it wasn't a particularly well suited tool for the fragile linings. However, I think I'll be trying it out again later on other processes. It might have worked very well if the linings had not been pre-bent and could have been laid down flat of a bench for support.

As this build is progressing I'm slowly becoming aware of how little glue is actually needed when you want two pieces of wood to stick together. When I started out, I was pouring it on with a thick coat that left me a huge mess of squeezed out glue to clean up afterwards.

After about twenty minutes I cleaned up the excess glue with a sharp chisel. In Bogdanovich' book he recommends waiting only 8 minutes before doing this, but I find it to wet to work with. Maybe he works in a dryer and warmer environment, but for me fifteen to twenty minutes seems to work better.

The back linings were installed in a similar fashion, including a dry run before the real deal. I worried it would be difficult to have the linings follow the undulating edge of the side made to accommodate the domed back plate. This did not prove to be a big problem, as it was relatively easy to manipulate the linings to follow the edge as they went around the bouts. The back linings were also installed 1mm proud.

LAST THOUGHT:
I have come to believe that installing regular kerfing and reverse kerfing must be two quite different beasts. When installing reverse kerfing you have to bend the strips 'the other' way, making the bouts the tricky parts as the kerfing is opened up, making the thinner segments, the ones that have slightly deeper cuts, prone to breaking as they will take more of the bend than the thicker, less deep and stiffer cuts, while the waist, where the thinner sections only can bend so much before the 'kerf blocks' are butting against one another thus limiting how much each segment can bend, is a piece of cake. With normal kerfing I imagine the problem is quite the opposite and that the waist is where the breakage is likely to occur. And if it does, it is no big deal as the fracture will have little effect on the stiffness and cosmetically it is virtually hidden.

I also believe there is a great distinction in the properties of regular and reverse kerfing (and solid linings for that matter). Apart from looks, reverse kerfing will inherently create stiffer and stronger construction than regular kerfing due to the fact that the uncut, solid part is on the 'outside' and not glued to the side itself. Whether this is something desirable, something that will make the guitar hold up longer and make it sound better is another matter. But, if stiffness is what you are after, then it is not desirable to have the reverse kerfed lining broken or cut into sections. Whereas it is likely it would ease the process of installing them, it would also defeats the purpose of having them reversed in the first place.

BENDING LININGS

BROKEN LININGS SEGMENTS

DRY FITTING TOP LININGS

APPLYING GLUE

GLUE CLEAN-UP

SOUNDBOARD LININGS GLUED AND CLAMPED

THE SIDES WITH BACK LININGS INSTALLED

INTERIOR VIEW OF THE LOWER BOUT

FINISHED SIDES WITH LININGS

FINISHED SIDES WITH LININGS

FINISHED SIDES DETAIL

TRIMMING SIDES FOR BACK DOMING

My doubts about whether or not to add the sides to the neck first continues. However, yesterday I took yet another step towards doing just that by trimming the sides for the domed back, ready for the kerfed linings to be glued on.

Earlier I had fabricated some small shims that was to function as spacers to raise the sides equal to the thickness of the soundboard, about 2.2mm around the neck area, and attached them to the solera with double sided stickytape. Well, actually they were a little more than that including the stickytape, but when I squeezed my calipers a little they went down to 2.20mm. Then I put the sides back in the solera and marked the sides at the neck to 78.5mm, measuring from the bottom of the solera, roughly 2mm less than the final height, allowing for the thickness of the back. The same was done at the tail, though here to 84mm, roughly 1.5mm less than the final height. The reason for this was that the soundboard is about 0.5mm thinner around the lower bout than at the neck and the shims were at consistent thickness.

Next, the 15' radius disc was laid upon the whole assemble. In order to have the disc resting at an equal height above the marks at the neck and tail, two shims were added, one to each side around the bottom of the lower bout. I made a little 'marking device' from some scrap walnut by drilling a hole 21mm down from the top, matching the distance from the bottom of the radius disc to the marks on the sides.

I butted the little marker device up against the radiused disc, stuck a white pencil through the hole and traced a line all around the sides creating an undulating line following the radiused dome of the disc. Unfortunately the support blocks on the solera were so high that they got in the way, interrupting the line whenever I bumped into one. However, once the initial marking was done I took the sides out of the solera and finished the segmented line by using a piece of card as a ruler.

A couple of weeks ago I also made a clamping jig for the sides as an aid for gluing on the kerfed linings. This jig proved to be a very handy asset when it came to trimming the sides to final height. I first tried to plane them without clamping them to anything but it was virtually impossible to control, the jig however, provided a very nice and sturdy support. The sides were planed with my block plane using long even strokes, mostly starting from the waist area, the peak of the dome, and outwards following the bends of the bouts in order to plane with the grain. The plane was first set to a coarse setting but gradually adjusted to fine setting as I got closer to the marked line.

SOUNDBOARD SHIMS

MARKING SIDES FOR BACK DOME

MARKING THE MISSING LINES

TRIMMING SIDES

SIDE CLAMPING JIG

THE TRIMMED SIDES