What kine wood? Da Koa kine wood bruddah!

So I got my package from Certainly Wood today, and I am excited to say I got a couple of fine pieces of Koa wood. This delivery seems like its the tipping point of the project now, up until now, everything I have been dealing with has been with jigs and preparation. But now, I got the wood that will make up the backs and sides of this guitar. It settled in as "Wow, I am really going to do this!" this is "Actually happening" I have to say I am pretty stoked about it. I don't think I have had a project like this in a long time that i was this enthralled by.

Now that I have the veneers, I'll have to start focusing on building my vacuum bagging system. I currently have a portable automobile air compressor that I am converting to a vacuum pump. I'll have more information on that in my next post as well as the construction of my vac system via http://www.joewoodworker.com this site has a tremendous wealth of information on a DIY vac system which I'll be following.

But for now Koa!!!

Sneak peak while at the office, ooohh ahh! However florescent light really doesn't do it justice.

This is a little bit more like it! Under incadecent light the vibrance is noticeable.

Another shot of the koa unrolled. You can see the koa has really nice figure. Will look really nice when it has a finish!

Here's the end piece of the two pieces. Not to wild about texture of that end piece. Fortunately enough I got about 11 feet worth of koa to work with!

Had to cut off some of it which will make up the sides of the guitar. At this angle, the colors are ultra rich, but could be just my iPhone's camera! Very perty wood!

Needless to say these pics really don't do the wood much justice, the camera on the iPhone leaves a lot to be desired and has a lot of problems with grain and boosting the greens too much. Almost every picture not shot outside pretty much has to have some color correction to get back to proper color. Even then there is only so much you can do. So at some point, I'll have to get a semi decent point and shoot digital cam to log the progress of my build. I'd like to get a Digital SLR like a Nikon D90, but at this point it wouldn't be fiscally responsible to make such a purchase, when there are other more important things to spend my money on. So for now something simple will have to suffice. Guess I'll have to do my homework on point and shoots.

Till next time,

Grego!

The guitar form

So its been a few days, works been a little busy, and i have been spending more time building than updating. But, nonetheless there are a few things that are new and exciting to talk about. The big one is the guitar form or mold, I has finished it! :-p

The guitar form is used in the assembly process of the box or body of the guitar. It maintains the shape of the body during the assembly of the guitar, when gluing the sides, top and back together. Using the templates I had, I traced out both the sides on Birch Plywood, I was trying to figure out how I was going to create a 2 inch offset line from the template. I remember watching a video on the Luthiers forum where someone used a 2 inch radius disk with a hole in the middle for the pencil to scribe out the width of the form. Unfortunately I didn't have this, and I wasn't exactly jonesin' to cut out a circle out of masonite either. But then the solution was staring me right in the face. I noticed that a CD looked like it was close to two inches between the inner diameter and the outer diameter. I pulled out my ruler, and sure enough, just a hair over two inches, that will work!! so using a old beat up CD I was able to trace a uniform thickness around my templates.

I managed to cut out the two masters where I took my time and patiently cut as accurate as I could on the scroll saw. Once completed, sanded, and matched to fit my templates, I could then trace out two other parts will make up the three part laminate for each side of the mold. The other two pieces were rougly cut, then glued to the master. The idea is, using a flush trim bit on my palm router, I could hog out the excess material up to the shape of the master leaving the exact same shape as the master. That way I don't have to cut the pre-glued billets of plywood to get my mold. I tried that already with six layers of MDF laminated together, and even though I was able to create the molds, they ended up not matching the template so they can't be used (lame). It ended up working really well, there was a slight learning curve with the palm router. That thing can kick if I'm not paying close attention to what i am doing. plus there was a few spots where I pulled it up at an odd angle and it cut a little nick in the final shape. Bugger! Least its nothing that will cause any problems with the shape of the guitar so I am not worried.

I didn't have to do too much sanding to clean up the final shape any. There still a few spots where I need to spot sand due to glue build up, but over all it turned out pretty well. I finished it up earlier this evening by adding the bolts to hold it all together. I picked up a 18-volt Ryobi Portable drill that I had my eye on for a while. Normally it went for 99.99 at Home D'Poe but they had it on sale for 49.99 so I couldn't pass that up. Bought the 5/16 x 3.5" bolts with a few fender washers, couple of lock washers, and wing nuts to finish up the mold.

Gluing up the laminated cutouts

Laminated side, ready for trimming

The triming process with my handy colt

Half way there, trimmed flush with the center

Other News, while I was working on this form, I also recieved my portable DC air compressor which I will be converting over to a vacuum pump to vac bag my back and sides. I found a really good site on vacuum bagging veneers and a lot of DIY write ups on bagging systems. very informative and a lot of good ideas for how I am going to approach the vacuum process. I'll probably have a post on the pump in the next couple of days or so.

Also, I finally ordered my veneers from I should be recieving my shipment on Monday. I settled on Koa for the backs and sides using Quarter Sawn Mahogany as the interior veneers. As far as the top goes I am still looking to use Redwood. While this is my very first guitar and I should stick to the traditional materials, I still like to experiment. From what I have read, redwood gives you all the good qualities for both Cedar and Spruce. Plus I like the look. I think my final decision whether I go with redwood, or spruce will fall upon when I get my veneers and see what the koa looks like. So far, thats pretty much been holding me up from buying the top wood as well as bindings and purflings, I want to make sure what ever materials I end up using will at least be aesthetically pleasing. But I did think that maybe I can use the excess peruvian walnut from my neck wood to resaw bindings. It has a real nice chocolaty color to it and I think it would look nice agianst the Koa and redwood. Plus it will tie in the neck better to the guitar. We'll see.

Anyways thats it for now, till next time.

Greg

The Dish!

Over the weekend, I managed to bang out the compound radius dish that I mentioned in my last post. I figure I'd share the fruits of my labor, with ya in the form of a few pics. Originally I had planned to put up more, but the pics I had taken, didn't seem all that great. Plus I am a little lazy right now and its a bit late. For that reason, I'll keep it simple for now and when I have the gumption to add more elaborate images. I'll do so.

So Finally I get to put to use the go bar deck I made (aside from being a table stand for my scroll saw). The construction of this dish is pretty straight forward. Its an oppostie form of what the sound board and back shapes are. That in consideration, instead of convex braces, concave radius braces that share the same radius as the braces that will be used in the guitar are used to form the shape of the dish. I used standard 23/32" sanded plywood as the brace material, and two 1/8" hardboard(masonite)cutouts to form the dish. I used my 3d skills to figure out a more accurate sloping transition from brace to brace using mesurments that I had made off the plans. So instead of using the standard 7' and 12' radiused braces as what was called for in the Selmer book, I figured out my radiuses by find a radius where points at the edge of the sound board where brace ends are located and a center point of the brace all reside on the radiuses circle. May sound confusing, and maybe I am a little exhausted to coherently explain it properly, but in math if your given 3 points in space, you can typically find a circle that will fit them, giing you your radius. Once I had those all figured out, I printed out cut-out guides and placed them on the plywood using contact cement. I also created a brace that runs down the center of the the dish, which also helps form the "pliage" of the soundboard. All the other braces would cross this brace to give the deck its compound curves. This is where the go-bars came into play. I used them to conform the hardboard to the curves of the braces. In the picture shown, is the final step of the gluing process where I am adding the second cutout of hardboard to reinforce the board that was glued to the braces. Also notice I came up with a nifty trick of using some of the left over plywood stock and created some cantilever style go bar that are pressing in the radiused cauls near the apex of the pliage. Its actually a pretty nifty clamping system and i might actually make some proper cantilever bars for other clamping jobs.

So here is the end result, its kinda hard to see the actual radius of the dish from this pic, so I'll take a few with a ruler so that you can see the arch that is created and how that arch changes over the length of the body of the guitar. Also I have my centerline and pliage line marked out on the face of the dish, so that when I go to use the dish for shaping braces or what not, I have a good idea where everything is placed withing the contours of the dish using the templates I made a while ago. I also made sure there was a bit of a lip on the dish so that there is a ledge for the guitar mould to rest on when doing jobs that require both.


Lastly here is a pic of the backside of the dish, here you can see what I mean't as far as the cross bracing to create the complex radius of this dish. If you notice the spacing of the cross braces, they aren't even. What I did was placed each brace where each brace on the sound board would be placed. that way I have extra support in that area when it comes time to glue the braces to the soundboard. I thought about adding additional braces to cover the back braces when I was designing this dish on the computer, but figured it would be overkill and with the braces that it already has should supply ample support. Anyhow thats it for now, gotta get me some sleep!

The Templates

So it's been a couple of days since my last post. Honestly nothing much has in the physical realm has taken place. I've been busy working away on cut out templates for the lattice work of my radius dish. The beauty of being a visual effects artist is that I can design and build all my jigs in 3D to make sure that all my measurements line up and everything be as it should. I've been running into a few errors and lack of details in the book and dvd's that I have. I've had to essentially reverse engineer the radius dish using the François Charles Plans. At some point I'll create a post on all the steps I to create the dish, just need to finish creating the dish before do so.

Anyways, Templates! Yes, the reason I am posting in the first place. Shortly after I purchased my scroll saw ( same day, infact) I figured I'd break it in buy making the templates that everything here on out would derive from. Using 1/8th hardboard I was able to cut out the templates pretty easily with the scroll saw. I used print out templates like I showed in a previous post to transfer the design and dimensions to the hardboard. Using tape and spray contact cement I'd adhere the paper template to the hardboard, then proceed to cut out the shape on the scroll saw. Worked out wonderfully, there were a few close calls as far as maintaining a close cut to the design as I was and am still honing my skills with the saw. Yet the more I work with it the more confident and precise I am getting with complex shapes.

So the Templates cut relatively easy. Final shaping was done with sanding blocks and a shaving gel bottle with sand paper, which was cool because it match the radius I needed exacly to shape the curve on the cutout. I made sure to pay special attention to all the curves, making sure there were no bumps or lumps and that everything flowed nicely, that the curves matched completely up to the cut out on both halves. I'm pretty stoked seeing this early shape. Also, if you notice, I took the time to mark off all the bracing for both sides. Not only did I put where all the bracing is located, but also the thickness of each brace as well. This will help as a quick reference to make quick marks on the actual top and back of the guitar. Also will help with cutting the brace material to proper length and the appropriate miter each brace will have when it butts up to the sides.

Here is a view from the other side showing the sound board bracing. I'm not sure if its entirely visible but, you might make out the pliage dashed line between the 3rd and 4th horizontal brace. This is where the peak of the arched top is located. Well its getting late, but I figured I'd post something. Oh btw, I got my go bar fiberglass rods in on monday, I'll post pics of them while I am gluing together my radius dish.

Greg

A shave and a trim! A new tool has arrived.

Lookie what I got here, my Laminate Trimmer / Palm Router arrived today (well technically yesterday since I am writing this after midnight Sunday morning). Its a Bosch Colt PR20EVSK variable speed Palm router. This particular one is actually a factory reconditioned unit I purchased onine through CPO.Since it was factory reconditioned I only ended up shelling out around 80 dollars as opposed for the 120+ if I were to buy it brand new. Which the way I see it is a better way to go, since its the manufacture who makes the tool reconditioning the tool as if it were new, just a few cosmetic blemishes but hey, its a tool right? Its not meant to look pretty. Anyways This is definitely a usefull tool for the luthier, from routing out binding, perfling, and rosette channels, for cutting the sound hole, shaping the head stock, carving out the mortise and tenon joint for the neck, plenty of uses that may seem a bit overkill for a big 2hp router that otherwise may seem too cumbersome. Not to say that a router still isn't needed. I chose the Bosch because it seems to be the king of the hill for palm routers at moment. It gets remarkable reviews, seems more like a router than a laminate trimmer, plus its a full 1hp of power, making it beefier than the competition. Plus this particular model has 6 speed settings so I have the ability to cater the cutting speed to the material. Definitely will be a useful tool for this project.

Well gotta call it a night. Gotta get up early for a canoe race tomorrow in the chilly winter weather. Isn't Texas supposed to be hot?

Greg

Go Go Gadget Go Bar Deck

So one of the quintessential tools that you'll find in most luthier's workshop is a go bar deck. This is a handy device used for gluing braces to the tops and backs as well as other gluing tasks. So they play a pretty vital role in the construction of an acoustic guitar. Luckily they are a pretty simple concept. You have a top deck and a lower deck. The items are placed inbetween the decks, and fiberglass or wooden rods are used to put clamping force on the items being glued.

Here's an example of someone's go-bar deck in use:

What makes these particularly useful is if your top or back has a radius to it. Like the image shown here, the back is placed in a radius dish to support the back and braces. when the go bars are applied that the pressure is distributed evenly. For the Selmer, this is essential because both the top and the back are arched. Since the Selmer, uses a moveable bridge like you find a violin, cello, or a mandolin, it has what is refered to as a pliage which is a fulcrum point or apex to the bend which where the bridge will reside, meaning the arch is not a uniform radius. For this reason I need to build a compound radius dish to accomodate the bend in the top (as well as the back) but befor I could do that, I needed a go bar deck that would aid me in the process of building the dish.

So after lurking around the interwebs and reading a couple of threads on forums from people who made their own decks. I decided I'd do the same and make one. Since space is a commodity that I cannot afford right now, I could not make an elaborate deck that you would find Michael Collins using in his video, or large decks that double as work benches that could accomodate 3 back to be glued at once. Since I'm only doin one guitar for now. I'll start small, similar to the picture shown above.

I was originally going to create one exactly like the picture above using threaded 5/16th threaded steel rod, washers and nuts to create my supports, however I read somewhere that it could be a bit unstable can be a little wobbly under the stress of several go bars, increasing the chance of a go bar slipping and wreaking havoc on you items or anything in the general vicinity. The suggestion solution was to use 1/2" pipe and some floor flanges to act as supports. For deck material, I used two 2' x 2'x 3/4" MDF boards glued together to make both the top deck and the bottom deck. I wanted to make sure that the decks were stiff as hell and that no possibility of deflection would occur. The only real minor set back to this design is that the space between the decks is 25 inches. This is by no means a problem just that the fiberglass rods that I ordered, are 48 inches in length to be cut down to 24 inch go bars. Meaning my rods will be a little short. No matter, I can simply use extra mdf or other material as a riser so that the rods can do there job.

Overall its a very solid structure, enough so that it doubles as a stand for my scroll saw and a rack for my clamps. Like I said space is precious, gotta squeeze as much out of ever square inch. currently I have some rubber feet on it, however if I am going to have it double as a work station for my scroll saw or any other bench tool I may aquire in the future. I'll probably put castors on it so that its easier to move around.

Also notice the box? Got my first shipment from LMI. Woohoo!

Getting Crafty

So one of the first tasks that seems to be the inevitable for building somethign as intricate as a guitar, is templates, whether for the guitar its self or the jigs that help you along the way.  Templates seem to be a necessity.  I could try to test my draftsmanship and try to hand recreate many of the templates by hand, but with photoshop and 3D software so easily at my disposal, I'll forego the hardcore traditional route with tools that are second nature to me and will offer much greater precision.
 

The pickle though is since these will be made via computer, they need to be printed. I don't have access to a plotter (printer capable of 42"+ prints)  nor do I have the inclination to find a place that has one that I can use for a fee. So I came up with the  simple solution of printing the templates in segments then attaching them together to create the final product. I figure for my purposes, this will provide a precise enough template, plus there was something kind of fun about piecing together these templates.


Using a couple of push pins and piece of hard packing foam, I would attach each piece of the template via registration marks that I added to the template design in photoshop. Each printed segment has 1 inch overlap to allot for the registration marks and any line up that may need to be done. Using one of the push pins, I'd carefully poke a hole at the center of each registration mark on all of the printed segments. Once the holes are punch. I then proceed to align each segment together using the push pins and the foam board. Once happy with how everything lines up, I take regular tape and attach the segments together. Now that I have a finish template, using contact spray cement, I'll afix the template to whatever material that I am cutting. In this case I it is a template for sound board bending heat box.

Thats it for tonight. Tomorrow I'll show off a the Go Bar deck I made.

cheers!