Happy Christmas 2015

As another busy year draws to its conclusion, Amanda and I would just like to thank all of our friends and clients- past, present and future- all of those who take the time to follow the blog and everyone else a very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

As this time of year is often one for contacting old friends,  I was delighted to hear a song on the Acoustic Soundboard Forum by Andrew and Jane, a talented couple who commissioned this mandocello back in 2008. So, here is the song with ‘cello in action.

Enjoy!

On the bench; Jan 2015

Currently, I’m working on Mark’s Standard Plus mandolin, I've just cleaned up the maple bindings and you can see the results below.

One thing that you can’t see at the moment is that this one, is a left handed mandolin. Nothing on the outside to give that away, but my bracing is asymmetrical so, internally it’s a lefty! Evidently, about 10% of the population is left handed, so it’s logical that one in ten of my instruments should be left handed, but this is the first left handed mandolin that I’ve ever made and I have only made one left handed guitar back in 2009. I find this quite surprising; you would think that being a custom builder of fretted instruments, players who can’t find a decent left handed guitar/mandolin would be seeking guys like me out???

I’ve also just started preparing for Jonathan’s……? Well, what to call it; it’s a five course instrument, tuned CGDAE. I’ve seen them called a liuto cantabile, but I think that would be a tad pretentious, so let’s call it a 10-string mandocello. The extra course gives it a top E, so it has the range of both a mandocello and octave mandolin.

Jonathan had one of my guitars a few years back and we’ve been talking about this project for a while.

You can get an idea of the size of the ‘cello, here’s Mark’s mandolin in its mould.

Mandocello is completed

As you can see the mandocello is now completed and will soon go off to its new home. It was built to my new shape which has been designated “Model 2”.




My intention was to design a shape that could be used for a variety of multi-course instruments as well as guitars. Most luthiers and players agree that the “sweet spot” for the placement of the bridge is the centre of the lower bout, which is why the sound of a 12 fret neck guitar is often preferred. Starting with this premise I designed the shape from scratch and as you can see the bridge is in what many would consider the correct place.
Having positioned the bridge correctly I turned my attention to the upper bout. As many players wish to gain access to the upper frets, I wanted this shape to be designed for a 14 fret neck with a cutaway and not look like a traditional shaped instrument with a bit chopped out. Also when designing this shape, I did not want an instrument that was yet another derivative of an American one or tied to a particular time or place: I wanted it to look at home on the Star Ship Enterprise or in King Arthur’s court! One great advantage that this shape has for the mandocello and cittern, over the more traditional pear shape, is that it has a waist and you can sit down and comfortably play it.
I love the shape and early next year I intend to build a steel string acoustic guitar to this shape.

So how long does it take to make a guitar (Cittern) Part 4?

Now I’m up to 52 hours. Those 12 hours of work, since the last entry, have been just on the bindings and purflings. As you saw with the mandocello, this shape is a bit tricky: some of the rebates for the bindings and purflings have to be cut by hand; there are 56 separate pieces and 5 mitres that have to be carefully cut.


I always use wood (rather than plastic) for the bindings, therefore each piece has to be carefully bent on the bending iron to fit. Also I now tend to make up my own purflings from coloured veneers. So although it takes awhile you can see why - I hope!


What next?

During the initial stages of a build you can work on various components separately, but as the build progresses those components converge and you have to spend less time per working day on any one instrument. Using the cittern as an example; you fit and glue one piece of binding, you then have to wait a few hours for the glue to set before working on the next piece. The mandocello is still being polished so that gets an hour or two a day. So, you need to start the next one.

Remember the photo of the Snakewood? Well, I’ve just started some preparation for that guitar. This one is for yet another Andy, I seem to know so many Andy’s! Anyway this guitar for Andy D will have Indian Rosewood back and sides and a stripe of paua shell going down the centre of the back.

Having glued up the back and taken it down to 2.5mm I had to cut a slot 1.3mm deep and 3.7mm wide to take the shell and lines of sycamore and rosewood. One of the challenging aspects of instrument making is that you work to engineering tolerances in a material that its maker didn’t design it to be used in such a way!

The slot had to be 3.7mm wide, my nearest router cutter is 3.2 mm. You can’t force something like this so the slot has to be spot on and you have to allow room for the adhesive too. If you force it, you split the back - you only make that mistake once!

The first cut is straight forward, clamp a straight edge to the back and make sure that the router is firmly held against it and away you go. The second cut is trickier, how do you move the straight edge 0.5mm and keep it parallel to the first cut? Answer, you don’t! After some head scratching I used some strips of heavy duty tape stuck to the side of the router’s base. Each strip was 0.17mm thick so this allowed me to slowly increase the width of the slot until it reached the perfect width.

Links

You can see that I’ve added a few more links to the side bar. One is for the “UnpluggedShop” to quote from it, “This site is about working with hand tools as a hobby and is dedicated especially to computer programmers, scientists, clergy, business administrators, truck drivers, CEOs, undertakers and those of all professions who need to get out more and get a life doing something relaxing with their hands. That is what Therapeutic Woodworking™ is all about.”

There is some wonderful stuff there for anyone interested in fine woodworking. I’m pleased that they find my blog interesting enough to track!

There is also a link to a forum called Just for Luthiers - one of many forums on the Acoustic Magazine website. I started contributing to it a while ago and there can be interesting debates about guitar construction. However, it occurs to me that forums such as these and the internet in general leads to a homogeneous world of lutherie where, just because large US manufactures do something, everyone else has to follow. What many fledgling guitar makers do not take on board is that a manufacturer of guitars (or any other consumer product) will usually evolve a technique of construction that suits there manufacturing requirements and create spin around it to justify its use. Individual luthiers do not have these constraints and should be constructing instruments that reflect their creativity and ingenuity. If I want inspiration I look to past masters or original thinkers such as Andy Manson and not the major US companies.

So how long does it take to make a guitar (Cittern) Part 2?

If you saw one of my previous posts, you will know that I’m logging the time that I’m taking constructing Ruaridh’s cittern, so that I can answer the above question realistically.

Well, I’m up to 15 hours and here’s what has been done so far.
The neck blank has been worked on: laminated together, head joint made, carbon fibre reinforcement strips inserted and the slot for the adjustable truss rod done. The head overlay complete with pearl “N” has been glued on and the head shape cut out.

The sides are bent, back joined and taken down to its final thickness. The soundboard has also been joined and taken down to a bit over its final thickness and the rosette inlaid and cleaned up.

The time that I’m logging is the time that I’m hands on, doing practical work. What I’m not taking into consideration is design and development time.

This cittern being so what unorthodox has taken a fair bit of thought. The Rumsfled jig has been back in action, have a look at this if you’re interested.....

The Red Mandolin

You saw the multiple piece mandolin back in the last post. I’ve decided to use a Redwood soundboard for this one, so that all of the woods used are of a reddish hue; hence its name, the Red Mandolin.

I’ve just made up the rosette.

I mentioned a while ago our trip to Italy to visit Cremona and the Museo Stradivariano. One stunning violin, a copy of the Stradivari “Hellier” violin, by Sacconi stood out, this had pearl inlay of dots and diamonds around the outside. This motif was also used by another luthier that I greatly admire; the 19th century English guitar maker Louis Panormo. I’ve always wanted to make one of these rosettes, so this seem the right time!
Below you can see the sequence of making it, the 3mm diameter dots are bought in but all the diamonds (6 x 3 mm) I cut by hand.

Cutting 2.6mm wide strip from pearl blanks

Precautions from dust

Jig to cut angle

Careful positioning

Filling with ebony fibres and epoxy

Mandocello

The mandocello has been strung up and the tailpiece successfully tested. So it’s now being French polished. In this day and age of sustainability and various environmental issues, French polishing is probably as green as it gets. You are using shellac which is a secretion from an insect and harvested from the bark of the trees where it deposits it to provide a sticky hold on the trunk. Alcohol as a solvent, pumice powder (from volcanoes) as a filler and its all applied by a pad made up from cotton waste and old well washed white T-shirts. To stop the pad sticking olive oil is used as a lubricant. As a I say as green as you can get.
If you want to know more about French polishing guitars, there is great on-line guide/tutorial by Orville and Robert Milburn.

Mandocello tailpiece and future mandolins

The mandocello is now being French polished and whilst this process is going on, I’ve made its tailpiece. There didn’t seem to be a decent commercial mando’ tailpiece available so I decided to make one. Also I wanted it to be able to accommodate ball-end strings so it owner won’t have to source expensive, long, loop end strings.


A great help whilst making the tailpiece was my Axminster cross-vice, it allows you to use your pillar-drill like a vertical milling machine and you can see it being used here in conjunction with a router bit.

The finished tailpiece is below and I’ll test it this week.

Mandolins

Early next year I’m going to be building a mandolin for a lady called Jill. She likes quilted maple, so I was fortunate that my wood supplier was willing to prepare two slices for the back and sides and a matching neck blank all from the same board. You can see a piece of it below: it’s hard to believe that its surface is flat and smooth.

I’ve stared to build another mandolin for fun, from less usual “mandolin wood.” The photo below is not of sides of smoked salmon but some cocobolo (rosewood from Mexico)!

I’ve always liked the multiple piece backs that early fretted instruments had, so I thought that I would do something similar here. The middle piece of wood is Brazilian rosewood. It’s going to be quite something!

Binding the Mandocello and beginning a Cittern

Mandocello Update

The body of the mandocello is now together: this is the first time that I’ve used this shape and it’s not until you’ve got the body together, that you get a real feel of what the finished instrument will be like and I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. This is going to be a stunner!!

With the body together the bindings and purflings are next. The mandocello has 29 separate pieces that make up its purflings and binding so it’s quite a time consuming process. A rebate is cut around the edge for the bindings and purfling and this is done with a hand-held router.

The problem that I encountered with this shape is that the point of the cutaway is very thin and the back is curved, so the flat base of the router wobbles and the rebate can’t be cut accurately. So, at this point I thank my old tutor, Hebert Schwarz, who made me do everything by hand and get out my purfling cutter that I made about thirty years ago!


The purfling cutter is like a cutting gauge and allows you to cut a line parallel to the back or to the sides.




Once you’ve cut the line the rebate is chiselled out by hand.

There are so many websites that show guitar makers (notice I didn’t say luthiers) using jigs and machines for every operation. If you want to master the art of being a luthier you need to develop skills and know how to do things properly by hand, so that when your jigs and machines fail you, you can still get the job done!
Instruments progress in fits and starts, the purfling and bindings tend to take a long time to, you glue one piece on wait for it to dry, do the next etc.

So whilst this process is under way, I’m starting the preparation for Ruaridh’s cittern………

So how long does it take to make an instrument?

This is a question that I’m often asked; I always reply, “at least 100 hours.” The truth is, of course, I’ve got no idea! Last year I was listening to a Radio 4 program: “Malcolm McLaren salutes the talent of Christian Dior.” One of the things that he mentioned was how long it took to make a Christian Dior dress. I can’t remember the exact time but it was literally hundreds of hours (350 rings a bell!). My reaction was surely it can’t take longer to make a dress than a guitar! So I thought that I should actually log how much time it takes. The instrument that I’m going to log is the cittern that I’m making for Ruaridh. This will be an interesting build (aren’t they all!) as he wishes me to minimize the amount of tropical hardwood that I use and for this instrument it will only be the bridge and fingerboard that will be made from ebony, all the rest will either be spruce or temperate hardwoods such as walnut and maple.
Below you can see the neck blank starting to take shape. I can’t use mahogany as it’s a tropical hardwood and the usual alternative for a neck is maple. The cittern will have 10 tuners, so I wanted to keep the weight down and maple is much denser than mahogany. So, you can see my answer below, the neck will be laminated from maple, walnut and a green stained veneer.

I always laminate my necks as I believe the resulting neck is much more stable. The use of walnut cuts down on the overall weight as it is much lighter than maple.

Also the sides have been taken down to 2mm thickness, bent and fitted into the mould. Yes, it is the same shape as the Mando!


So far five hours work.....................