Fence, part 2

One of my favourite guitars is the "Fence" guitar. It was a wonderful, warm sound that is reminiscent of a classical guitar.

We recently went on vacation to Hawaii, so I wanted to bring a guitar for Bully Soares, my buddy in Honolulu. Bully prefers a classical, so making another "Fence" guitar seemed like the logical choice.

The body is all cedar fence boards, with douglas fir bracing. The neck & bridge are black walnut mill ends (I picked up a whole arm-full for $4). Fingerboard is spare Madagascar rosewood I had laying around.

Hopefully this one will age as well as the original fence guitar...

Door frame

This one is a beauty. The photos do not do it justice - the wood has a gold-flack shimmer to it that cannot be captured in a still photo.

Carrying on the tradition of using recycled wood, the top, back/sides, and neck of this one is made from an old mahogany door frame I picked up for a couple of bucks at the ReBuilding Center (http://rebuildingcenter.org/).

Like the previous guitar, it has a shorter scale (24", IIRC), a pin-less bridge, and a hardwood/graphite composite core instead of a truss rod. Since there is no truss rod, I was able to make a thick finger board yet keep the neck very thin. The finger board (purple heart) is strong enough to float out above the sound board.

Both the top and back are 20' radius, which creates a significant drop towards the neck. I used an electric-guitar style neck mount with a cut-away, and sanded down the corner of the body to make it especially comfortable to reach the high notes (see photo to get the idea).

Fingerboard and bridge are purple heart (left-over scraps from a friend), sound board bracing is douglas fir (my favorite home depot 2x4), otherwise everything is mahogany.

Now owned by the Arrizon family.

Not dead yet

My oh my it has been a busy year or two. I have built several guitars, but never got around to posting the pictures. I've also done some rather significant repair work including a complete failure of a sound board (post coming soon to a blog near you).

So here is some of the back log.... hopefully more coming soon.

Playing with new ideas

Every now and then I'll grab a pile of scraps and try something new with it. In this case, I tried a couple new ideas:

* shorter scale
* no truss rod in the neck, it has a hardwood/graphite composite core to keep it straight
* pin-less bridge
* old-school style head

Turned out to be a playable guitar, so it ended up in the hands of Max Young