This one uses Douglas Fir siding, two doors off of a Cherry cabinet, and a Maple floor board (see photo on bottom left of the raw doors & siding). All the wood comes from the Rebuilding Center (http://rebuildingcenter.org/).
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Cherry
Back to playing with recycled/reclaimed materials.
This one uses Douglas Fir siding, two doors off of a Cherry cabinet, and a Maple floor board (see photo on bottom left of the raw doors & siding). All the wood comes from the Rebuilding Center (http://rebuildingcenter.org/).
This one uses Douglas Fir siding, two doors off of a Cherry cabinet, and a Maple floor board (see photo on bottom left of the raw doors & siding). All the wood comes from the Rebuilding Center (http://rebuildingcenter.org/).
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Works in progress
I have three guitars in progress. One "serious", one "semi-serious", and one just plain hack.
The "serious" guitar is flamed Myrtlewood back/sides, Engelmann Spruce top, Honduras Mahogany neck, and Indian Rosewood fingerboard & bridge. This is bright, clear guitar designed for finger picking. It has been strung up for about 2 weeks and is starting to settle in.
The not-so-serious guitar was done as a test. First, the sides are tapered, they are significantly thinner at the neck than they are at the back. Second, I wanted to try to use oak as much as possible. The neck, fingerboard, bridge, back, and sides are 100% oak. The top is Home Depot "white pine", whatever that is, that was left over from a shelf I had made. The top bracing is Douglas Fir, from an old floor board from the attic of my house. This one has only been strung up for a couple of days, but so far it is a pretty good flat picker. It might be a nice guitar once it settles in, especially once I get around to finishing the neck & frets.
Lastly we have the hack. This my first attempt at building a classical style guitar. I didn't put too much effort into it, using just scrap wood and not bothering with aesthetics in any way shape or form. Still, it sounds and plays pretty good. Now that I have some idea of what I'm doing, the next one should be sweet.
The "serious" guitar is flamed Myrtlewood back/sides, Engelmann Spruce top, Honduras Mahogany neck, and Indian Rosewood fingerboard & bridge. This is bright, clear guitar designed for finger picking. It has been strung up for about 2 weeks and is starting to settle in.
The not-so-serious guitar was done as a test. First, the sides are tapered, they are significantly thinner at the neck than they are at the back. Second, I wanted to try to use oak as much as possible. The neck, fingerboard, bridge, back, and sides are 100% oak. The top is Home Depot "white pine", whatever that is, that was left over from a shelf I had made. The top bracing is Douglas Fir, from an old floor board from the attic of my house. This one has only been strung up for a couple of days, but so far it is a pretty good flat picker. It might be a nice guitar once it settles in, especially once I get around to finishing the neck & frets.
Lastly we have the hack. This my first attempt at building a classical style guitar. I didn't put too much effort into it, using just scrap wood and not bothering with aesthetics in any way shape or form. Still, it sounds and plays pretty good. Now that I have some idea of what I'm doing, the next one should be sweet.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
On the brighter side
A couple of months back I tried to build an experimental guitar. It didn't work out so well. But the neck was rather nice, it is Port Orford Cedar and Wenge.
I also had a really beautiful Cedar board I picked up at Home Depot. It was one of those "I can't believe I paid a buck for this" boards.
So I sliced up my Home Depot board & planed it down for back and sides.
I took a saw to the crappy experimental guitar and managed to salvage most of the Spruce sound board.
A couple of hours later, I had a shiny new guitar.
I've been working on a classical guitar, so I used that mold for this one. As hinted above, I still didn't have enough Spruce salvaged to cover the smaller classical sized body, so I used some of the scrap from the back/sides to fill in the upper bout. The look is quite unique.
I also had to sand the top down again, the end thickness is about 2mm (30% thinner than "normal"). The bracing is Spruce & a Tacoma style pattern was used.
A little bit a Cherry for a bridge, with a Cedar veneer to help it match up visually, rounds out the wood.
The tone is bright and clear. Given that it is 95% Cedar, you can really "feel" it through the neck and the back.
Visually, it is so bright that it will be challenging to get a realistic photograph - especially on an over-cast day like today.
Jeff Elsasser now owns this one.
I also had a really beautiful Cedar board I picked up at Home Depot. It was one of those "I can't believe I paid a buck for this" boards.
So I sliced up my Home Depot board & planed it down for back and sides.
I took a saw to the crappy experimental guitar and managed to salvage most of the Spruce sound board.
A couple of hours later, I had a shiny new guitar.
I've been working on a classical guitar, so I used that mold for this one. As hinted above, I still didn't have enough Spruce salvaged to cover the smaller classical sized body, so I used some of the scrap from the back/sides to fill in the upper bout. The look is quite unique.
I also had to sand the top down again, the end thickness is about 2mm (30% thinner than "normal"). The bracing is Spruce & a Tacoma style pattern was used.
A little bit a Cherry for a bridge, with a Cedar veneer to help it match up visually, rounds out the wood.
The tone is bright and clear. Given that it is 95% Cedar, you can really "feel" it through the neck and the back.
Visually, it is so bright that it will be challenging to get a realistic photograph - especially on an over-cast day like today.
Jeff Elsasser now owns this one.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
A piece of scrap
This one is built out of the scrap left over from building other guitars. It is quite rough around the edges, so to speak, but that works in this case.
The unique aspect to this guitar is that the top (and back) is made of two different types of wood. The strip down the middle is old growth douglas fir (reclaimed 2x4). On each side of that is cedar (reclaimed siding). The back is exactly the same as the top (but the lesser-quality wood with chips, nail holes, cracks, etc was used). Standard Martin X-bracing, with old growth fir braces.
The neck is again old growth douglas fir down the middle and cedar to the sides (second growth cedar this time, leftover scrap from the "Home Depot fence-post guitar"). There are a half-dozen big nail holes in the fir - you won't find that on a "Guitar Center" Chinese factory made instrument.
The finger board and bridge are cherry (reclaimed from a hardwood floor).
The sides are douglas fir.
The theory behind using two types of wood for the sound board, beyond the obvious "that is what I had in the scrap pile", is that I was interested in hearing how it affected the tone. Fir has strong highs and cedar has strong lows. By mixing the two, I had hoped that it would be balanced but with rich over tones. I am happy with the results, the tone is definitely different than my other guitars and it is indeed well balanced. It works particularity well for finger picking.
On my previous guitars, I have noticed a problem with the G string breaking (not that it happens very often, but it has *always* been the G string). On this guitar, I made the D and G tuners spaced a little closer than you'll find on a Martin. This reduces the angle of bend at the nut. I'm not sure if that will help or not with the string breakage, but I think the resulting narrower head is visually appealing.
The unique aspect to this guitar is that the top (and back) is made of two different types of wood. The strip down the middle is old growth douglas fir (reclaimed 2x4). On each side of that is cedar (reclaimed siding). The back is exactly the same as the top (but the lesser-quality wood with chips, nail holes, cracks, etc was used). Standard Martin X-bracing, with old growth fir braces.
The neck is again old growth douglas fir down the middle and cedar to the sides (second growth cedar this time, leftover scrap from the "Home Depot fence-post guitar"). There are a half-dozen big nail holes in the fir - you won't find that on a "Guitar Center" Chinese factory made instrument.
The finger board and bridge are cherry (reclaimed from a hardwood floor).
The sides are douglas fir.
The theory behind using two types of wood for the sound board, beyond the obvious "that is what I had in the scrap pile", is that I was interested in hearing how it affected the tone. Fir has strong highs and cedar has strong lows. By mixing the two, I had hoped that it would be balanced but with rich over tones. I am happy with the results, the tone is definitely different than my other guitars and it is indeed well balanced. It works particularity well for finger picking.
On my previous guitars, I have noticed a problem with the G string breaking (not that it happens very often, but it has *always* been the G string). On this guitar, I made the D and G tuners spaced a little closer than you'll find on a Martin. This reduces the angle of bend at the nut. I'm not sure if that will help or not with the string breakage, but I think the resulting narrower head is visually appealing.
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