Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi folks, here are some pics of my most recent.
Finally finished.
This is guitar number three.






Thats not a jungle, its my back yard!!...

Finely grained German spruce sound board,
Spanish cypress back and sides
Mahogany neck
Gabon ebony fingerboard.

Santos style of bracing pattern
Neck angle of 2.1 mm.
Finished in french polish

Thanks for looking.

cheers
Claire

What beautiful lines - the body shape, the neck heel. and the headstock. If it sounds half as good as it looks it must be a killer.

                    Peace, Paul

Very nice Claire!

Details are crisp and I like the rosette. Great job on the French polish.

How difficult was it to get a good fit on the pegs? I've yet to attempt a peghead and all of my builds to date have been machine heads. Did you have to bush the peg holes with ebony or maple?

Keep up the good work. I hope that it will give you many hours of enjoyment.


Peter

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Peter

Thanks guys....

I did find pegs hard to get right.
Its easy to set them too deep and or set them crooked.
So I used a square, double checking every 1/4 of a turn.
My legs were really sore afterwards from squatting down over and over to check the allignment, so don't do them all in one go or you'll end up in traction.....
I put the pegs straight into the neck without using a different timber to bush them, using a standard violin peg reamer.
I don't have a lathe to turn my own pegs.
You can get flamenco guitar pegs from various places, but i found that violin pegs looked much better and work fine.

I went for ebony pegs because they seem to have a better friction co-efficient than rosewood.

They're tight at first, but should settle in after about six months.

Cheers,
Claire

Beautiful guitar Claire!  The finish came out great too.

Now if you would clean up your shop it would be even better......

Seriously - superb job Claire!

Wow thats a nice guitar. I like the ebony friction pegs instead of modern style tuners. Mike

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

Lovely!

Beautiful, Claire!  Everything looks perfect.  I think I would be right at home in your shop just like it is.  Reminds me of home.

Great job on the guitar!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

That's number 3, huh? Most impressive!

What timber did you use for the bridge?

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

What did hesh mean when he said clean your shop. Looks perfect to me.

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

Very Nice!

Mike
White Oak, Texas

Beautiful guitar Claire! Looks like you took the time to do it right from start to finish. I'd love to hear what she sounds like.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Very, very nice.

Makes me want to pick it up an play!

Also make me wonder what were #'s 1 & 2?  And what will #4 be?

And I think that the shop looks completely normal.  I, too, use sedimentation as an organizational system.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Claire,

You did a beautiful job. I looks totally authentic and pristine - how does she sound so far? I have always loved the look of the friction pegs and to date have done one guitar with them with pretty good results. I played a Jose' Ramirez with pegs for many years and got tired of dealing with them.

Where did you get the Esteso plantilla? I would like to get ahold of one and build using the shape.

Great work,
Max
Brighton, Michigan

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Claire,

It's a beautiful guitar, nice job on side purflings miters at the tail. Traditional wood choice--perfect. How about a close-up of the rosette? I'm sure it plays great.

Lovely in all respects. Brian Burns sells some geared pegs that look
remarkably like ebony that you might want to try sometime, but there's
nothing like the traditional ones. Great work!

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

Claire it is simply stunning. It does make me want to pick it up an play. It is going to be a very special personal guitar. It is beautiful. You should be very proud. What's next?

You do know that Hesh is our resident neat freak don't you? Well actually that should be Neat Freak. The man has white carpeting in his shop that is still white and does not have a single glue glob on it. Ignore the man in the white gloves. We love him, but some of us would never allow him near our shops. The tsking sounds would be so painful.

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Aoibeann

Claire,

Congratulations...a very proper flamenco, well done.  It looks good and pays homage to Esteso well.

Your approach to the pegs is just how it needs to be done and it looks liked you nailed it...well worth the effort.

I offer pegs as standard but have recently been using an interesting alternative to traditional pegs that are indistinguishable to pegs.  They are called Pegheds and are peg tuners with an internal planetary gear so that the tuning is as easy and sensitive as any geared tuner.  Even closeup they are a dead ringer for pegs and are used for violin family instruments as well.  I dont know if they are the same ones that Brian Burns has been using. 

I offer them as an option and try to steer flamenco players that want geared tuners to use them instead as I really like the looks of a spanish guitar with traditional pegs.  For pegs, I use viola pegs as they have a little bit thicker shaft but the same taper.  I do it as I drill and inlay an ivory or bone button that also is authentic on some builders flamenco guitars.

Claire,

That's beautiful! I've always been partial to light wood tones. I love the contrast in the binding. Lovely! 

If only I could keep my shop that clean... 

[QUOTE=Shawn]

I offer pegs as standard but have recently been using an interesting alternative to traditional pegs that are indistinguishable to pegs.  They are called Pegheds and are peg tuners with an internal planetary gear so that the tuning is as easy and sensitive as any geared tuner.  Even closeup they are a dead ringer for pegs and are used for violin family instruments as well.  I dont know if they are the same ones that Brian Burns has been using. 

I offer them as an option and try to steer flamenco players that want geared tuners to use them instead as I really like the looks of a spanish guitar with traditional pegs.  For pegs, I use viola pegs as they have a little bit thicker shaft but the same taper.  I do it as I drill and inlay an ivory or bone button that also is authentic on some builders flamenco guitars.

[/QUOTE]

Shawn, do you buy them direct?  I notice he posts no prices on his website.  What is your source if you buy from a distributor?  Also, what is the price range, ballpark?  I seem to remember that Joshua posted something similar a couple of months ago.  May  have been the same thing.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I bought them direct.  The pricing is on the "contact" page... $120 a set.  This puts them in line with a middle grade classical tuner set and is a feature that can be an alternative to traditional pegs.  I have them on one cello and a few guitars are really like them as they do not show the gear part at all.  I have seen other geared peg solutions but they are almost always noticeable and/or ugly.

I think it is pegheds that Joshua mentioned.

I love the clean, simple elegance. Very NICE!

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments.
I think trashy is a good organisational system too....:)
If you take lots of photos of your work process you can just look through your snaps if you want to find that tool you haven't seen since june...:P

As for sound, I'd describe it as raucus and bright.....

For the plantilla, I ended up drawing several plans based upon photographs of different guitars, some of which had actual dimensions written on the photographs. Then I drew up one that i thought represented them all the best.
So, in short I did my best guess....
Alan Carruth was nice enough to send me a plantilla drawing with some measurements that whent a long way to helping out..
Thanks Alan

Cheers,
Claire

A lovely looking instument for sure; good job!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

[QUOTE=Arnt] A lovely looking instument for sure; good job! [/QUOTE]

...instrument...

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin