At last Geoff’s OO steel-string is finished and ready to go!

At last Geoff’s OO steel-string is finished and ready to go!

As some of you may have gathered, I don’t like the idea of a UK luthier making slavish copies of American guitars; that said, I do like the OO shape! It works extremely well for a small-bodied 14 fret neck guitar, so in spite of myself, I was happy to build a guitar, for Geoff, to that shape. As you can see the only thing OOish is the shape of the body; I’ve kept to my headstock design and followers of the blog will know my thoughts on the Martin shape already!

This guitar has a 635mm scale length and although I may extol the virtues of 650mm scale, the shorter scale is easier to play and produces a warmer tone. Geoff wanted a guitar that not only was easy to physically play but gave up its sound without a fight and I think he’s got it here.

I try to do everything myself (with much support from Amanda); so apart from building instrument, there’s the website to maintain, the blog and videos. I’m finding photographing the instrument a bit of a challenge and one that I haven’t mastered yet. One of the trickiest aspects is photographing shiny surfaces without getting unwanted reflections. Here are some more photos of the OO; best I can do! That Honduras rosewood really is quite wonderful!

Geoff's OO nears completion

The bridge (the design of which was discussed in a previous post) was glued on to Geoff’s OO this week. As I’ve said before and make no apologies for saying again- this stage is the most nerve wracking of them all. There are so many opportunities for completely wrecking all of that hard work; what if you drop something on that polished soundboard, what if you glue the bridge in the wrong place!!!!

Assuming the bridge fits the contour of the soundboard, the first task is to mark out where the bridge goes- if, like me, you cut your saddle slot before gluing the bridge on, you have to take into consideration the compensation needed for correct intonation. The marking out is achieved with masking tape, a soft pencil, various rulers and straight edges. One quality that you need to be a good luthier is spatial awareness; you don’t have any straight edges to take as datum- everything is measure from an imaginary centre line that floats about 7mm above the soundboard.

Once I’m happy with the position, I cut around the bridge with a scalpel; through the masking tape and polish and not into the wood.

The next step is to scrape the polish away from the exposed area so that you get a good glue joint. Notice that I’m wearing cotton inspection gloves; I always wear these once the guitar has bee polished to protect its surface from accidental scuffs and fingernail marks.

With all signs of polish removed, the bridge can be glued on- I like to use Titebond for this and have never had any problems with it. The tape stops the bridge moving until the glue grabs. A top-tip is to fold back the end of the masking tape on itself- that way you have something to easily get hold of when removing the tape. The tape comes off before the glue hardens so any glue that’s oozed out should come off on the tape.

Next step- get it playing!

The Standard Mandolin

The Standard mandolin is coming along nicely too. The flamed maple body has been bound with cocobolo which makes a stunning combination.

Cocobolo is also going to be used for the fingerboard and bridge so it should be quite a striking looking instrument when it’s complete. The simplicity of the mandolin is really growing on me and that coupled with the light colours of the tonewoods used, seems to give the look of an early stringed musical instrument.

Ebony bindings

Ebony is currently the material that I favour for bindings. The main function of the bindings on a guitar is to protect the edges from any damage so, of course, a very hard wood such as ebony does the job admirably. Also, from an aesthetic point of view, it clearly defines the shape of the guitar and for want of a better term, looks very classy.

I had been using a supply of ebony off-cuts that I was given but I knew that I would run out of them, so a while ago I bought a fair bit of ebony from my supplier in India.

Geoff’s OO is the first instrument that I have had to use it on. When I got the ebony out of stock it seemed such a shame to cut these beautiful pieces of jet black wood up “just for bindings.”

It took quite awhile to prepare the strips to the correct dimensions, unfortunately the supplier in India didn’t have the facilities to machine them to my required finished size.

Once to size, you have to bend them. Ebony does bend on a hot iron remarkably well and it’s at this stage you start to appreciate using good quality, straight grained, crack free ebony! You can also see that I use the traditional method of clamping the bindings in place with a fabric tape.

Looks good eh?

Wood with Strings

If your reading this blog, then you’re clearly interested in guitar construction- have a look at Peter Brown’s blog; Wood with Strings (there’s a link on my side bar). Peter refers to himself as a hobby builder, but you’ll have to agree he does some very nice work, all of which is meticulously written up. Also all credit to him for being honest and calling himself a hobby builder. I’m not too keen on guys, who build instruments as a hobby, calling themselves luthiers. If lutherie is your source income or you were trained in the art- fine call yourself a luthier, other than that you’re miss-leading potential customers and devaluing the work of “full-time” luthiers. When I had motor-bikes I used to maintain them myself, but wouldn’t have called myself a mechanic.

Koa

I’ve just got in this Koa wood. It’s meant to be a six piece set for a ukulele, but I think that I should be able to squeeze out two mandolins. This will be in the future though; I want to keep the wood until I’m sure that it’s dry stable enough to work with. I always seal the end-grain of any new wood with wax and now I also run some thin CA over the surface, towards the end of the board, so any hair-line cracks are sealed and don’t spread.

On TV

Have you seen that advert for O2 mobile phones with the guy playing what looks like an original Panormo guitar? Wierd!

What's on the bench?

Phil Hare guitar

I thought that I’d give you a bit of an update on the various projects that are currently on the go. I’ve had a few enquires about the progress of the Phil Hare guitar. Well, the body has been French polished and the neck is being Tru-oiled, so essentially I’m just waiting for the finish to harden-off before the bridge can be glued on and the guitar completed.

Geoff’s OO

Then we have Geoff’s OO- this going to be a lovely little guitar! You can see that the body is together and the next stage will be the bindings and purflings. The back and sides are Honduras rosewood- it looks great, but what a swine to bend! It was just physically hard work- the sides were taken down to 2mm thickness but they really put up a fight. I would estimate that they took me 5 times longer to bend compared to a set of Indian.

The rosette is very nice- two rosettes in one- I’ve made a wooden rosette from the off cuts of the back and then inlaid a ring of abalone.

Talking of abalone, a slight worry here, I’ve noticed that StewMac can no-longer ship abalone and pearl products outside of the US, I hope that this isn’t a sign of things to come- supplies are hard enough (and expensive enough) to find.

Paul’s mandolin

And a few steps behind the OO is Paul’s mandolin. This one is going to be an English walnut twin-pointer with a mother-of pearl rosette. Paul wants a pick-up in this one, so we are going to try one from K&K: it doesn't need a battery which is an advantage for a small instrument.

Here is the video of Phil’s ergonomic guitar....