Octatonic's guitar buildery thread

octatonic

As some people know I'm at London Metropolitan doing a lutherie degree.

I wanted to have a thread where I can post about this so here we are.

I'm in the middle of two parlour guitar builds at the moment.

One is ladder braced with cherry back and sides, spruce top, mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard/bridge.

Everything is being done by hand- sides are thicknessed with a plane, binding with a chisel etc.

The other is the same parlour guitar design but X braced & done on machines.

I thicknessed the soundboard, back and sides on a large industrial thicknesser & various other processes that are more 'modern'.

The idea with doing two is to compare/contrast the difference in how they are made for my end of year report.

I am fairly far along with them and won't recap everything but just give you an idea of what I did day by day.

Today I inlaid the rosette on a spruce soundboard.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1398577_410052069124580_872552905_o.jpg

It was rather fraught- took a lot of work to get the right fit and constantly checking with the dremel tool to see if I had cut too deep or not.

More to follow.

octatonic

Finished rosette, after planing down the excess :

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/1040236_410476785748775_336451781_o.jpg

Turned out quite nice- better than I thought I would.

The spruce top needs cleaning up but it is pretty much ready for bracing.

octatonic

Snother pic:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/966008_410476902415430_1571791657_o.jpg

ddlooping

Looking forward to this, thanks for sharing.

octatonic

Thanks mate.

Oh I should say that the pics are hi-res so feel free to click  on them and you can zoom in close and see how accurate I am being (or not).

Today I also started bending the cherry ribs on a bending iron.

It fucking sucks and it will take a long time to get right.

WezV

octatonic said:

Today I also started bending the cherry ribs on a bending iron.

It fucking sucks and it will take a long time to get right.

i did my first set (walnut) recently and loved it. not perfect but it went very well for a first attempt.   cherry should be pretty friendly 

axisus

octatonic said:

As some people know I'm at London Metropolitan doing a lutherie degree.

Envy ........ I would love to be doing that. Now if I could just ditch my 5 dependants .......

Looks fascinating already!

Kebabkid

What a great and skilled thing to do/learn Octatonic.

Good luck with that and I look forward to the posts!

octatonic

Thanks guys.

Today was side bending day.

It was a real nightmare- I got most of the way there and then fucked it up around 3pm and spent the next two hours fixing the problem.

This is where I got to today.

It looks a lot better than it actually is up close.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1397193_410887395707714_1364977436_o.jpg

ThePrettyDamned

Bloody hell, you must have the patience of a saint!

I'm really enjoying this thread by the way. Have a wow. If I was not so focused on becoming a doctor, I'd love to study that.

octatonic

Thanks TPD.

Patient, yes I suppose I am.

It is still bloody frustrating and time consuming - if left to my own devices I would use a Fox bending jig, rather than a bending iron but the course demands we do at least one using an iron.

I will never do this again though- it isn't better than a jig- it is really hard work and for no real improvement over using a bending jig.

Cherry isn't the worse thing to bend though, it has been thicknessed well- down to 1.9mm.

Rocker

I often wondered how guitar builders bent the wood, now I know.  Thanks Octatonic for the pictures to date and looking forward to more over the next few days/weeks.

octatonic

The process is quite simple.

You use the bending iron (in the left of the picture), after having wet the wood, which is at the right thickness.

It is slow, hot and quite tricky though.

I swore a lot today.

WezV

don't take this the wrong way.  Its more a query on why you disagree with so many established builders.

I dont have any formal qualifications but i do have 15 years reading up everything i can about guitar building, (12 years building electric guitars and more years fixing all types of guitars)...  and i have never heard anyone complaining about bending wood as much as you have here. I have read every book and most of the internet discussions that exist on the subject(only just started making acoustics properly but I already own 9 times as many books on the subject as i do electric guitar building)

I have read loads about the different bending techniques and even invested in some very nice blueprints for a fox style bender... but a hot pipe seems to work well for me.  I have only done one practice set and one real set  and quite a few binding sets but for me  hot pipe is working well.  i love feeling the wood flex as it gets up to temp, i love the control

I am using a 3"diameter  thick walled aluminium pipe and a blowtorch.  very close to irvine sloans book.  Its not perfect but its working well.  and my first proper set was done in a couple of hours.  aluminium looses heat a bit quick but as long as the blowtorch keeps going it works ok

 I like  kinkeads book.  He uses a bending iron and also shows that it allows him to do many different shapes on a whim...most of the acoustic making books focus on bending irons.  even bob benedetto (30k archtops) shows this method as the primary one but also mentions LMII style bending machines.  I guess this is because its the easiest way into acoustic building and i guess thats why i wouldn't want to put anyone here off the bending iron technique

 i have no doubt a bending machine is more accurate but learn to love the bending iron, learn to love radiusing fretboards,learn to love thicknessing wood,  learn to love hand carving a neck - learn to love making guitars by hand - then use more tools/jigs/even other builders to help as needed.  there is a reason they insist you have to do at least one guitar this way and i am surprised it has not lead you to want to do more

octatonic

Hi Wez, 

I'm still learning but side bending isn't a lot of fun so far- it could just be that piece of cherry or maybe I don't have the knack for it yet- I don't know really. 

Maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic, it isn't the worst thing I've ever done, but I am having trouble with this bit of cherry as it is quite flamed and hence prone to twisting. I put it in the mould over night to see what happens, it might not be as bad as I thought it was when leaving the workshop yesterday. 

Regarding the bending jig- I'm all for automating processes to a certain point but I won't be able to bend kerfing on it so I won't be selling my iron just yet, also the ergonomic instrument will need to be bent on an iron due to design factors. 

I was just having a moan, really. I as disappointed that I made huge mistake with it once it was almost done and had to spend a lot of time to not quite fix the problem. It is a learning process though, I'll get better with it I'm sure. 

Almost all the UK builders I know use the LMI or fox bending machine to bend their sides though. Eggle does it that was, as does Nick Benjamin and a bunch of others. I visited Patrick Eggle a year ago and he said something to the effect of the creative side of guitar building interests him more and bending sides by hand is a mostly a waste of time.

octatonic

No real pics this week.

I took a couple but it is just me getting closer with the ribs.

They are done now and in the mould with sticks to force the ribs against the back of the mould.

I had a bit of a crack on the inside of the upper half but most of it will be trimmed off.

Onto the neck and tail block now.

octatonic

Actually one pic from the other day.

I put another back and sides through the big thickness sander- the 'Sandmaster 3000' which kinda sounds like a bad 1970's sci-fi film.

It is an amazing bit of kit.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/1401881_414013818728405_1499269446_o.jpg

WezV

can i send you some wood to thickness sand

octatonic

WezV said:

can i send you some wood to thickness sand

Haha- it is amazingly quick.

Unfortunately I'm not allowed unlimited access to it.

octatonic

The internals:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/886443_414031635393290_1797007813_o.jpg

octatonic

Today was fun- I glued my end block in.

Anyone who wants to build a guitar, there is only ONE way to do this and that is to use a plane.

DO NOT use sand paper- you will round the edges off (I know, I did it)

Major sense of accomplishment being able to plane a curve- it was really tricky but I got the hang of it.

Here we are all glued up:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/q81/s720x720/1422543_416657991797321_702143713_n.jpg