Official Luthiers Forum!

Thanks for the tip Danny. I do like ABW but I only have small pieces. I have a fair stock of Ebony binding material on hand but I haven't tried to bend it yet. I'm hoping it is going to bend

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Working in the finish for this Curly Padauk(RC Tonewoods)/Lutz Spruce(HMT) classical. Using Royal Lac.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I have two projects this weekend that have been waiting far too long to get done.

Project 1 is to start refinishing the treble side of the first steel string guitar I built in a class almost four years ago. The back and sides are Macassar ebony with wild grain which meant the sides didn't didn't want to bend evenly and ended up with a lot of topography that had to be sanded out. That turned out to be a solid lesson in the importance of good surface prep because I ended up sanding through the finish in a couple spots. At the time, I didn't want to delay the final phase of the build by redoing the finish so I went ahead and completed the guitar. I removed the finish yesterday and got the wood nice and flat and put the first coats on.



Project 2 is the restoration of a 1979 Ibanez MC500 Musician. These guitars came with active electronics including 3-band EQ and a gain amp. A previous owner removed all the active electronics and converted it to a standard Les Paul control set up. This model was built in relatively small numbers and the ones in the natural finish are hard to come by and highly valued. I bought it cheap and fortunately the owner had inherited the circuit board and the special pots for the EQ. The wiring in the control cavity looks like a bowl of spaghetti. The circuit board alone has 14 pins with 21 wires attached, but I have a wiring diagram and an unmodified MC500 to refer to. These are cool guitars and I'm looking to getting it back to where it belongs.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Lovely!

David, that is lovely - wish it were in my hands...always something to appreciate in your design aesthetic - in this case the pick guard really stands out - very cool!

Starting a semi-hollow electric.
I hope to get the body blank and neck lamination complete today.
All Maple with Mesquite fretboard and trim.
My first design, but nothing exotic or special.
Dan

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Martin Style 14 fret 00

Rosewood Dread...

Fresh today! Going fishing tomorrow!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Gearing up to do body assembly for my first couple of tenor ukes.

My bending form is a deviation from my normal use of a standard Fox jig with side forms connected by metal bars. This one is solid, made wide enough to do both sides at once (but I fooled myself - my heating blanket isn't wide enough so the first batch are getting done one at a time.) This form is way too fiddly - I'm going to get some quick release knobs for the hardware.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Making another one of these for fun.


And one of these cause Hesh likes them so much.


That will be finished as soon as my order for MOP comes in. I've got a small cnc and can do my own head stock inlays now. Here is a sample with Corian in maple. That's about 1 3/16" square.

Might as well..
Nearly ready for sides

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I did my first guitar repair in my new, yet still unfinished workshop, this weekend. Since then I've got all the walls painted. Just need to do the trim, move all the equipment in and I'm ready to go. I just had to do one guitar repair in there for giggles. My repairs have been done in my temp basement shop for the last year and a half.

Obviously not on the bench any longer, but the OM was still there yesterday

The big one is Sitka and sapele with coco highlights. The OM is cedar and EIR with koa highlights.
The tops are from our very own RC Tonewoods. I love the little bits of character in their "student special" sets.
The beautiful fret boards are from Andy Birko.
The UV finish on the bodies is done by Paragon Guitars. Stunning work on their part!
And the pickups are DTAR multi-source. Can't figure out why these things are not more popular. The install is straightforward. The sound is natural and gigantic.