A little acoustic for little people

Andyjr1515

Apols for not being terribly active recently!

Not a typical tortuous Andyjr1515 build thread so much as a summary of my latest build

It is a small 6 string acoustic I've been building for my two grandchildren so that, if and when they take an interest in such things, they have a guitar about their house that:

- they can just pick up and play, if they have an interest now or as they grow up 
- use as a cricket bat if they don't

The idea is to have it tenor ukulele in body size, but made and braced as a proper small 6-string nylon strung acoustic to, hopefully, sound more like a guitar than a uke and for them to be able to learn guitar chords, etc, from the start rather than start with a uke and then have to relearn everything if they eventually want to play guitar.

So the plan was:
- 17" scale
- Spruce top/mahogany neck, back and sides
- Purpleheart fretboard
- Tap-tuned X-braced top
- Tenor uke body shape, but (probably) deeper body for a bit more volume and depth
- neck attached to body at the 12th fret to keep the playing fretboard length to a minimum
- using offcuts or neglected parts and timbers from my bits box wherever possible!



And - goodness knows why - these were in my bits box!

 
And also in my bits box...a piece of mahogany.  Hmmm...I wonder if it would be wide enough for the headstock...


That's surely got to be a good omen??

sev112

Looking forward to seeing this  hope it goes well

i learned (from my daughter who is now quite an lovely amateur player and singer and songwriter) that the 6 string half size just put her off completely in her early teens.  But then I came home one night and heard my Uke being played. she had been playing it using YouTube clips and was really good.  She went from that to guitar on her own back with no difficulty whatsoever, again came home from work and could the guitar being played !  

So they seem to learn better than we do and adjust easily from 4 to 6 strings

but that’s a bystory, I’m really interested to see this one

TTony

What lucky little people!

Roland

Following with interest. I’ve made ukes for my grand daughters, and have aspirations to make them 3/4 size guitars.

Andyjr1515

sev112 said:

Looking forward to seeing this  hope it goes well

i learned (from my daughter who is now quite an lovely amateur player and singer and songwriter) that the 6 string half size just put her off completely in her early teens.  But then I came home one night and heard my Uke being played. she had been playing it using YouTube clips and was really good.  She went from that to guitar on her own back with no difficulty whatsoever, again came home from work and could the guitar being played !  

So they seem to learn better than we do and adjust easily from 4 to 6 strings

but that’s a bystory, I’m really interested to see this one

That's interesting.  If the same happens here, then they'll have to indeed use this as the cricket bat and I'll have to buy them a uke 

Andyjr1515

The build process was pretty much identical to a full size steel string.  Design-wise I made a couple of choices on no more than a hunch:

- to go 'steel-string' X-brace rather than more traditional fan brace but with the braces thinned down significantly

- to use ball-end nylons and fit a through bridge with solid pins to maximise the break angle and up-pull on what will be a fairly stiff top

As a body mould, I bought a Radius Dish UK tenor uke mould:


Here are a few in-progress shots of the neck build:

Roland

Did you consider making your own body mould?

Andyjr1515

Roland said:

Did you consider making your own body mould?

I did...and then thought, nahhhh!    

TTony

Roland said:

Did you consider making your own body mould?

What good would that be - he's making a guitar!

Andyjr1515

TTony said:

Roland said:

Did you consider making your own body mould?

What good would that be - he's making a guitar!

    Agreed.  I think moulding my body into any decent shape is beyond the world's present technological capabilities.

But talking about moulding, the sides and back were thinned to a touch under 2mm and the sides hand bent on the hot pipe:










The top was joined and thinned to around 2.6mm and the sound hole purfling channels, abelone and purfling fitted and finally sound hole cut:






The  spruce braces were radiussed in the 25 foot radius dish before being glued to the top, again in the dish, forcing the top into the desired radius:
 



And then chiselled to shape and flex, tap tuning as I went along as if I knew what I was doing:



And the top glued to the sides:


Which is always a convenient prompt for a gratuitous mockup:



   

Andyjr1515

On the full-size ones, I always have trouble getting the back to keep the 15 foot radius that the radius dish should, theoretically, give me.  Even though the maple braces are pre-radiused crossways, they almost always relax to a much flatter profile lengthways with the cross-grain strengthening strip along the centre joint not helping at all.

So I had a think - and the back is small enough to use a single piece of mahogany anyway - and decided to breakaway from 100 years of tradition and change the back bracing arrangement



All the braces have been pre-radiused.  After an overnight with glue curing in the radius dish - it worked!!

 

Made a bridge from an offcut of ebony and purpleheart and fitted a back plate with some Tasmanian hardwood.   Usually, the bridge is fitted after the top has been fully finished, using a long-reach bridge clamp.  However, that isn't going to fit in the smaller soundhole so it is fitted before putting the back on:






And now the back can go on.  And time for another gratuitous mockup - this shows just how small this guitar is! 

DartmoorHedgehog

That looks really cool - love the purple fretboard.
The neck looks to be as wide (if not wider) than the normal-sized guitar though... will the little people be able to get their fingers round it if a normal guitar is too big for them?

Andyjr1515

DartmoorHedgehog said:

That looks really cool - love the purple fretboard.
The neck looks to be as wide (if not wider) than the normal-sized guitar though... will the little people be able to get their fingers round it if a normal guitar is too big for them?

Thanks!

While, clearly, classical guitars have much wider necks than steel string ones (my Flamenco is 53mm!) I did have a decent amount of pondering and googling and calculating before going for 45mm  (the nearest commercial one I could find was the Cordoba Guilele - same scale length but slightly wider at 46mm).  

My guess (as it was more a guess than anything) was that the likelihood in any case would be that a small child wouldn't venture much more than 3 or 4 string chords at first and that enough space not to mute adjoining strings was probably more important in the early years.  The other critical factor is neck thickness, where I've opted for a touch below 18mm.  To prevent any flex at this thickness, I popped a couple of carbon rods under the fretboard:




Time will tell if my guesses are OK.  In any case, I've urged their parents to treat it as 'just an instrument lying around for them to pick up and make a noise if they want to and rugged enough to use as a tennis racquet if they don't'.  

DartmoorHedgehog

Andyjr1515 said:

My guess (as it was more a guess than anything) was that the likelihood in any case would be that a small child wouldn't venture much more than 3 or 4 string chords at first and that enough space not to mute adjoining strings was probably more important in the early years..  

That's a good point. I think if I'd been making a "small person's guitar" I'd have tried to make it almost a "scale model". But thinking about your comments I think yours is a better plan.  Also means you can play it without having to sharpen your fingertips if they want help.

Andyjr1515

I used this 'budget' rig (can't for the life of me remember where from) for cutting the purfling and binding slots and saw cut for the end piece.  Made a rookie error at the back which is why I have the wider herringbone purfling!  I then heat-pipe bent the ebony bindings.

And yes - I use my veneer application method to also apply bindings and purfling nowadays - I pre-glue all joining surfaces with a decent PVA woodglue, let it dry and then iron them on.  If anyone is interested happy to explain how and why I do that

enjo

That is looking fantastic.
You should make one for yourself while you're at it. I love my little Yamaha Guitarlele, I tune it to standard and it is just fun to play!

Penn

That’s amazing. It looks brilliant. 

Andyjr1515

Thanks, folks.  Much appreciated

Andyjr1515

enjo said:

 I love my little Yamaha Guitarlele, I tune it to standard and it is just fun to play!

That's very interesting.  Can I ask what strings you use?  I've fitted low tension Martins at the moment and they are simply too floppy to keep tune when fretting at standard pitch (especially for a young beginner) - but it would be a major help on many fronts to be able to tune to standard (and the tone is certainly deeper/fuller still).  I have some high tension strings in my bits box and so was tempted to try it with those.

enjo

These are what I use:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M9DT28L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Andyjr1515

enjo said:

These are what I use:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M9DT28L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

That's great.  Colour will go with the fretboard too    I've ordered some - thanks for the info