Merry Christmas

Well, El Corazon is now completed and hopefully I’ll be delivering it, in person, to Chris after Christmas, weather permitting!

I’ve been very pleased by the way the guitar sounds already. Spruce tops can take months to play in, but this is sounding very sweet already. Each instrument made is a development of the previous; little tweaks and modifications are always made and on recent instruments (whether a classical guitar or mandolin) I’ve become more and more interested in the bridge’s design, the break angle over the saddle and the height of strings above the soundboard. The bridge is the interface between the strings and soundboard and its efficiency in transmitting energy is paramount. More on that later!

Anyway here is El Corazon for your enjoyment.....




Merry Christmas!

This week.....

El Corazon

Most of the finishing of El Corazon has now been done. I’m just waiting for the polish to harden before the bridge can be glued on and then the ever-patient Chris will at last get his guitar!

Richard’s mandolin

There has been some more work done on the Richard’s English walnut mandolin which you can see below.

NEVER BUY CHEAP TOOLS! Good quality tools will last a life time and always pay you back. However, here’s an exception; whenever I see these little clamps, at a market etc, I buy them, 6 for £1!! They are really great for gluing linings on, as you can see on Richard's mandolin.

Andy’s arch top

I’ve finally finished shaping the soundboard for Andy’s arch top. It took quite awhile to the get the contours and thickness to what I wanted. The tricky part was the sound-hole and rosette. I made an acrylic template and used a series of template followers on my router to cut the oval sound-hole and rebate for the rosette. I’ve taken the rosette right up to the edge of the hole and bound the inside of it with maple. What potential clients don’t always appreciate is the time taken to do one-off tasks such as this sound-hole; it represents a whole day’s work and the guitar has to be priced accordingly. Fortunately, this is Andy’s 4th instrument from me so I know that he really does appreciate the effort.

I like to effect and will probably do this again on a flat-top. The next test is the bracing.......more on that later.

The Heart of El Corazon

Whilst working on the ergo electric, I’ve also been bracing the soundboard of El Corazon. I know that Chris is interested to see how it’s all put together, so here’s the story......

The soundboard is taken down to a thickness of about 2.7 mm, a bit thicker than its final dimension; I like to leave a bit of meat, as it will have to be scraped and sanded a few more times during the construction process.

The bridge plate and sound hole reinforcements go on first. The bridge plate helps to stop the soundboard distorting around the bridge; any distortion could lead to the bridge pulling away in places. The area around the sound hole needs to be reinforced too, particularly as the rosette is inlaid into the board making it very thin in this area.

Next the fans go on. Some luthiers cut the plate, some notch the fans; as you can see I’m a notch man. All the gluing is done on a curved board making the soundboard a subtle dome shape. The fans are then shaped: the ones on bass side more than the treble side; this is a way of getting tonal balance in the guitar.

Whilst all this gluing and shaping is going on, I tap the soundboard to listen to the sound it produces. Also I measure how much the soundboard deflects when a 500g mass is placed on it. I record this deflection for each guitar and this data helps me with the consistency of my instruments.

With the fans in place, the two large cross braces are glued on. I my opinion these are mostly structural, although the one below the sound hole can be glued on at an angle to make the treble side shorter and hence tighter and similarly the bass side longer and looser.

Of course that’s the way I do it and there are as many methods of working as there are luthiers and we’re all right!!

Next stage is to glue together the magic box!

New Links
I’ve just added a couple of new links to the side bar:
WD Music: great for all guitar hardware, very helpful guys
Stringbusters: strings at low prices and again very helpful
And last but not least one to the Muse website.