First build - work in progress

[Gilmourisgod]

On the subject of straightedges, I recently broke down and bought a machined aluminum tube sanding beam, supposedly accurate to a couple .001" over the length. I took it to a local hardware store to compare with tools they had on hand, and realized that even the raw aluminum and steel angle stock is extremely straight. Go modern manufacturing! All of the machined aluminum levels they had for sale were also dead flat and straight. Bizarrely, the painters shields, which is just a thin plate of stainless steel with a plastic handle, was incredibly Straight, and a 24" long one is about $6.00! I have it in my head to get one and notch it at fret locations to check fingerboard flatness. I have an old cast aluminum level I inherited, checked that too, and its dead on relative to my beam. Id like to make a sled like yours, the aluminum angle is pretty expensive in my area, got some old steel bedrails that might work.

 

[I-Am-The-Slime]

Looks great! I also ordered some ebony FBs for my build, I'm hoping not to have to go the router route (especially since I don't own one). I can't wait to see some finish on that walnut!

I did put a small volute in my headstock-scarf-joint design.
For those reading along:

I'm not sure of the real-world functionality, but in my mind it adds some support and increases the length of the joint. We'll see how it comes out come carving time...

Those chisels look like they've seen some action. There's just something about toying with an old tool that you know has had many an adventure in its past; but enough about that. Seriously though, I have a lot of respect for old-school craftsmen that knew and handled their tools so expertly (same goes for expert modern-day power-tool craftsmen, I suppose). I have found it takes a great deal of time to get to know and fine tune a hand-tool such as a planer. But, once you've got it, it is so much faster to be able to just reach for a tool and go for it than to get a power-tool set up and prepared, especially in the light of the singular operations of a hobbyist (in my very limited experience, of course ).

Good luck with the neck, will be keeping a close eye on your progress.

 

[Frederiek]

I was quite surprised about straightness of some things both positive and negative The granite slab I have for leatherwork that I always believed was dead flat actually isn't, neither is a big machinist square (so thankfully that wobble was in the metal and not in the wood ), but the aluminium profile of the local home depot store was. It is quite expensive here too, depending on the shape and size of course - I bought some L-profile that costed 10€/m. I have some beams of an old table I could use but I don't want to risk ruining the wood because of being cheap on the rails. It's a one time expense as it can be reused for many things anyways. Good idea for checking the fingerboard, I'm making a fretless this time but I'm keeping it in mind. I suppose it could work just as well with some neatly sawn wood but I wouldn't know how to get it like that to begin with

I'll take a picture of my drawing later, I have about the same thing in mind but taking the volute from the neck and not the headstock (it will be super tiny as it's almost to its final thickness already). As far as I know a volute does not make sense at the position you drew as it isn't at the typical breaking point (would it be a one piece headstock), but a longer glue joint wouldn't hurt of course. My question is, as I'd add it mostly for looks, will it look nice in that place? Would this alternative work?

Ha indeed... my grandfather and his father both were carpenters. It's funny that in a way they speak through the tools, especially since I was born after they died - it's almost like I hear someone saying 'I told you so!' when I was regrinding a chisel to remove a rather odd shape only to find out it was there with a purpose.

And I agree. Although I actually have access to a superb prototyping and metalworking workshop at university (I spent a lot of time there during my study) I'm being kind of masochistic for wanting to be independent and so I do everything at home. I have a 6 m² workshop which is a pain at times but it's rewarding to know that it is actually you who made something and not a machine. Those skills that you develop from properly using hand tools are a huge advantage in my experience, it gives you a better feeling and insight for materials and constructions which in the end can be simply done faster with machines. At least that's what I'm telling myself when I'm wishing for a spacious workshop and all kinds of machinery :')

 

[Geoff St. Germaine]

Your design is really nice and the work looks very good! I'm looking forward to seeing this progress.

 

[SLivinghouse]

Those skills that you develop from properly using hand tools are a huge advantage in my experience, it gives you a better feeling and insight for materials and constructions which in the end can be simply done faster with machines. At least that's what I'm telling myself when I'm wishing for a spacious workshop and all kinds of machinery :')

I'm starting my first build as well and I often have that debate in my head while working. I agree that some things are just faster and better with hand tools. For example, after cutting the truss rod slot with the table saw I spent a long time trying to line up a hole with a drill press for the adjustment barrel at the end of the rod. After a few abandoned setup attempts to get a perfectly aligned hole, I grabbed one of my chisels and did it by hand. Done in two or three minutes and with much better control. I have a few tools from my grandfather as well. All of them are quite well built. Then again, that Festool router looks pretty nice...

 

[Frederiek]

Thanks! Well indeed... although I will always defend handtools, this router is an absolute dream. I allowed myself one expense, thought about what would be the most versatile tool, and I've always wanted a router anyways so I bought myself an early Christmas present My motto often is 'bleed once' and I found that particularly wise for this type of machinery - I've always been scared of routers because I felt they were so unpredictable. But not this one!

Coming up: about how I try to impose my will on warped wood

 

[Frederiek]

A very quick update here. I worked on the headstock - cutting the scarf joint (which is 10 degrees by the way) wasn't exactly easy but with surprisingly little work I got two smooth surfaces. I clamped it the best I could for some hours, checked and reclamped. I'm not so happy with how things aligned in the end... despite having it all perfectly aligned initially it wasn't as steady as I thought it would be. We'll see how it turns out after shaping. At least the joint is tight where it will be visible, I think the side line will be covered by the headstock ears (that was the plan at least, don't know how it will be after my poor sawing job).

About the cupped boards. I thought I'd experiment on the one with the worst warp. First, I actually increased the cupping by wetting it on the concave side and putting it underneath a heavy slab of granite with my jigsaw on top. It flattened out very nicely at first, I had it like that for a couple of days but within hours it returned to it's old state but worse. Maybe this was just too short. I repeated it without any success for the better part of the holidays but without any success - it even bent up so strong the 50 kg on top would lift up slightly. Then I tried wetting the concave side and blowing hot air on it with my heat gun and then clamped - didn't work at all. I tried using alcohol on the convex side, as I thought it'd dry out that side faster so it would shrink and bend back - made it far, far worse. Then I tried using a hot clothes iron on the convex side. First on another smaller piece of walnut with a slight cup, and I was thrilled to find out it worked out perfectly! This piece however, being small and thin of course, was very straight grained and my top wood is crazy... so no success on my top. It was scary because it actually sounded a bit crispy. So now I have tortured this wood enough. I will wet and squish it once more so that I can plane one side flat (the now concave side I'd say) and then glue both halves fully onto the two body halves before joining the two pieces. I had a less wasteful method in mind but I don't see that happening.

So folks, what do you recommend doing next? My plan: glue on headstock 'ears', plane the front in preparation for a piece of the top wood, roughly sculpt and thickness the back (or at least draw it as I want to have it), prepare and glue on the headstock veneer, and then route out the truss rod and carbon fibre rod channels. Or would you rather first do some shaping before the ears? Because I can also see that you'd want a continuous line from the sides of the neck into the headstock rather than straight perpendicular lines. I have in mind to use a stripe of walnut again, about ½ the thickness of the ones in the neck, and another piece of maple. What do you think?

In the meantime I want to cut the fingerboard to size and shape (no radius yet) - I will prepare the body first and only after I have routed the back to fit the neck and routed the front to fit the fingerboard glue everything together.

 

[I-Am-The-Slime]

Trials and tribulations

In my mind, adding the ears before shaping makes more sense...

 

[SLivinghouse]

I think do the routing and the CF rods since you want to do that early while all of the surfaces are square.

 

[Frederiek]

While it would make lining things out easier I don't really need all surfaces to be square, I would like to use my router setup, not on a flat surface but in a portable workbench, because it would allow me to route through the headstock top at once. The idea behind shaping the back of the headstock first (and gluing on ears too) was that I would know how thick I would have to make the top. I'm removing more material than I expected to get everything flat and even between each step and I thought this would be a safer option. Thanks again for your comments!

 

[Frederiek]

I thought I'd try taming the top boards again. Although the glued whole has warped all over the place I can still say I successfully glued them together. We'll see how it turns out cut to size and planed.

Some work on the fingerboard (sawing ebony is no joke). Nearly gave myself a heart attack. Instead of marking the outline I took the width of one side to the outer string. Only because I drew an extra line to be on the safe side when sawing I didn't completely F it up, but there was literally one hair left to sand out the sawmarks. So now it is perfectly to size, disaster avoided. And I have some leftover for a ukulele

Put on some ears... Leftovers from the neck reused. Still need to flatten this to remove the hideous glue line (the joint is perfect but it moved a bit from clamping). Luckily it will not be visible at all after gluing on veneer, and the ears cover the side of the joint too.

Worked on the small bits (I love this); knobs, truss rod cover and pickup cover. Found a way to effectively destroy my drill press, but it works reasonably well. I just eyeballed the shape and correct the roundness of each knob by hand. Cocobolo and ebony for the cover, cocobolo and buffalo horn for the knobs.

And then some routing, with aluminium stock and a copying ring in my router. I love my new router. Never had one before so I can't compare but this one is a dream to work with. I did the square parts with a chisel, a small block will be inserted over the nut. I wanted to make a pretty rounded access hole but I found it unnecessary at this point, maybe once I get the veneer on. Of course a mishap in routing, I'll fill that up with epoxy and sawdust. It's only 1 mm deep and it will be covered by the fingerboard anyways. Still makes me cringe though. One rather large error; I used different reference points to make the setup to route the truss rod channel than for the CF rods, and therefore the rods are nicely perpendicular but the truss rod is off by 0.5 mm (looks way worse in the picture but that's from the angle of the picture). The CF rods are fairly close to the truss rod, since they are quite deep and would be in the way of the slim neck profile I have in mind. Hope this works, I decided not to worry too much about the truss rod being slightly off centre.

My first plan was to first glue on the headstock veneer and make a setup that allowed me to directly route through it, but I got impatient and here's why I shouldn't have glued the ears on yet.

After rounding off the end of the fingerboard it came to me I really needed a template of it to be able to route the top later on so with a heartrate of 180 bpm I used the nearly finished fingerboard as a template to create one. No risk, no fun.

So that's it for now! Any comments are much appreciated. What should be the next step you think?

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Progressing nicely! I cant imagine the trussrod location is going to make any difference with an error that small, I can't see it in the photos. Those knobs are gorgeous! I have tried (and failed miserably ) to make wood knobs, the holes off center, they break, etc. I made the same mistake on headstock wings, just looking for something to glue on before it was really necessary. In general I think its best to keep everything straight and square until the last possible minute, or at least that worked best for me. Is that a Festool router? Saw a hint of green in the photo. I'm shopping around myself, the old Craftsman I have is just junk. I'll probably play it safe and get a Porter Cable.

 

[Frederiek]

Yes it's a Festool, I thought if I'd buy a tool to do such critical work with it'd better be a good one. Also, I'm scared of tools this powerful being a bit unreliable, vibrations and all. I'm sure much simpler routers can do the job just as well in more skilled hands, I just didn't trust my own. We have a nice saying for how this router looks compared to everything else in my workshop; als een vlag op een modderschuit. Like a flag on a mud barge.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Ha! Good analogy. They are very expensive here in the states, but a lot of finish carpenters use them, the Festool dust collection system is particularly good. I think vibration is my big problem with the Craftsman routers, any bit longer than 1" and it vibrates like hell. Anyway, it's the Luthier, not the shop that matters, Some people on TB producing really high level work in very little space, You included.

 

[I-Am-The-Slime]

Looking great!

 

[rwkeating]

The picture where you put the block over the truss rod looked very familiar to me. It looks like you are doing what I did. You may want to check out this thread where I explained what I did wrong.
Solved: Help with LMI double action truss rod install (wood plug for end) ?

 

[Frederiek]

Many thanks for educating me on this! I was going to put the block in only 1 mm deep but the temptation to whack it in deeper is real Also you made me realise that it would be neater to shape the wedge so that it creates a snug fit for the truss rod, like this (I have the green but not the red part covered):

I did make the wider part for the nut slightly longer than the nut on both sides so that it can move when tightening. Does it make sense like this? Would you use anything else to keep it in place? I've seen people using a drop of silicone to do so.

 

[PDX Rich]

You have some excellent skills. Thanks for posting your progress!

 

[Hopkins]

Festool in my opinion is over engineered and under built. They are not enough tool for the price.

 

[rwkeating]

Referring to your picture; my point was to put the red part in and not the green part. Like this:

Some people suggested not putting in either, but I don't understand how that would work and I never got any more clarification on that. It seems to me without a part there, the rod would just slide out. I'd love to get more input on this.

As far as silicone caulk, I used a little on the bottom of the channel, not to hold the rod in, but to avoid a rattle. The rod I used has a rubber tube covering the threaded part, so there was no possibility of the caulk stick to the threaded part and jamming it. Many people have said to put the caulk in the middle of the channel, but by experimenting I found my rattles were coming from the ends so that is where I put the caulk. I've done it this way with 2 instruments and have had no issues with rattling.