Technical Hiccup . . .
The first part of today’s blog cannot be completed because my camera has stopped working . . . probably because I dropped it last night at the Snowdrop in my astonishment over Jerome’s playing. I have some photos on Phil’s camera which I will download at some stage and include them here. My story picks up from mid-morning when I nicked down the Cliffe High Street (as they say here) and bought a new camera – looks like I have the hassle of an insurance claim ahead of me.
Head Stock Veneer Revealed . . .
Although I had done a few things earlier, the story in pictures starts from where I took off the clamps holding the ebony head stock veneer – you will recall that I glued it all down before leaving yesterday. It is looking good, as is the rest the guitar, although the head and neck will look very different by the end of the day.
Interim Job . . .
While waiting for instruction on next major task I started to prepare my bridge . . . which is the part which holds the saddle and makes contact with the sound board. The bottom radius of the bridge needs to exactly match the curvature of the sound board (20’ radius), so I first of all planed it roughly to shape and then sanded it to shape using a special radius sanding block wedged in the vice.
Rounding the Fretboard . . .
My next ‘major’ task was to round off the guitar end of the fretboard. While this might seem a very simple job like trimming and sanding, this area is one of the spots the eye falls when looking at a guitar and any discrepancies will be immediately noticed. The trick is to find the right balance between keeping the entire neck lined up correctly AND making sure the rounding ‘touches’ the rosette in the same place on each side . . . and it seems that every 0.5mm counts!
Today’s Visitors . . .
Sometimes Richard’s workshop is like standing at Clapham Junction station . . . especially seeing it is the first ‘studio’ at the northern end of the building. People pop their head and politely ask ‘is this a bookbinders’ or ‘is this a pottery? We all feel like saying ‘does it look like one’, but we don’t! And then there the guitar related visitors . . . a young woman came in with an old small guitar given to her father by his father. Richard estimated that it was made in the 1920s and judging by the rosette design it was probably from Eastern Europe somewhere. Richard has agreed to do some minor work on it after the course has finished.
And then there was the story of the day . . . a bloke came in with a story about his mate’s guitar that had been thrashed by one of his girlfriends – when she found out about the other!! She wrote some lovely things about his parentage and other reflections of his character on the top of the guitar, broke all the strings and generally left it looking very shabby. We all agreed it was a terrible thing – it would have OK to trash his car but definitely not his guitar!
Trimming the Headstock . . .
The rest of the day was primarily devoted getting the headstock and neck cleaned up and ready for more processing. First the headstock - the band saw quickly got the excess ebony out of the way (remembering put it wide side down on the band saw) and I made a rough cut around the outline of the curved section at the top. Next I needed to clean up the sides with the block plane and then the top using a circular sander mounted in the drill press – going from course to a fine grade for finishing. As we were nearing the completion of this job Richard asked some questions about what kind of tuners would like to have – I am sticking with the standard ones.
Trimming the Neck . . .
Carrying on the general area of the neck, the next job involved routing the sides of the close to the fretboard . . . again a very simple job with the right router jig and blade. And as the excess wood is slowly coming off the neck the whole thing is slowly beginning to take the right shape.
Now the Hard Part . . .
Rounding the playing surface of the fretboard is an exacting business . . . the lower part of the fretboard (nearest the head) is rounded to a radius of 16” (that’s inches in case anyone didn’t know!) and from about the fifth fret up the radius gradually changes to 20” – and it needs to be perfectly level along the length of the fretboard. There is one more complication . . . the upper section of the fretboard nearest the guitar body needs to very slightly dip away so as to account for the thicker strings. So, with all of that firmly planted in my mind I set out to achieve the longitudinally straight compound changing radius surface with local variations!
After protecting the guitar body with some cardboard held in place with masking tape, the large plane is used to start planing at the edges and slowly getting the excess removed. Fundamentally this involves planing the outside sections first and gradually coming in towards the centre – initially to a 20” even radius all along the neck while keeping it perfectly straight. The 20” radius sanding block (a block with a curved inside) is used to get a nice clean finish – taking extra care to not round the edges.
Once that radius is established then the process is repeated to a 16” for the first five frets closest to the nut (the far end of the neck) while be cautious to get an even transition between the two curves – and then whole is thing is sanded through the grades up to using a superfine 1000 grit to get a nice polished finish.
I naturally attached the neck to the guitar so I could admire my handiwork for the day.
The Others . . .
From what I could see, Patrick primarily focused on his neck – including routing down the back and inserting the frets.
Phil also inserted his frets, put locating dots on the top side of the neck and continued working on his body.
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