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Hi All. I’m beginning my first guitar build and I want to record it here as a blog since I love reading build blogs and I want to keep a record of how I did things anyway. I appreciate any input or advice you have. I am an electrician and my only previous woodworking experience was in high school. From my work I think I have good attention to detail and mostly patience and willingness to do things over if they don’t work right. This project is gonna be a bit slow but I am committed to keep working and keep posting.

Anyway, with that brief introduction complete, I thought I’d start with a few posts about getting ready to build, building my workbench, and collecting the tools that I have to start. This is mostly geared towards other beginners because I love reading things about tools and there are never enough luthiery tool blogs to keep me satisfied so hopefully there are other people out there who want to see my take on things.

I have access to my boss’s workshop with a bunch of awesome machines, bandsaw, drill press, thickness sander (woohoo!) and a big ole bench but I’ve decided I don’t want to be over at his place all the time, so I claimed a little underused corner of the basement (I have an understanding wife) and I plan to do most of the work there, taking parts over to the boss’s place when I need to use his tools. So I need a workbench right? Initially I figured I’d slam a couple pieces of plywood on some 2x4s and call it a day. But my wife casually mentioned that she would rather my bench not look like a piece of junk since it will be a semi permanent piece of furniture in our house. So this gave me an excuse to start researching benches online, reading books (Schwarz is awesome!) and generally obsessing like I love to do with all my hobbies. More fun than actually doing the hobby sometimes it seems! Gradually I started considering through-tenons, thick tops, fancy vises ect ect. This is all before I had touched a tool to wood keep in mind. But I grabbed some huge pallets from work (mystery softwood, they call it SPF up here) and plunged onward.

I ended up deciding on a Ruobo ish bench with a 4 ½ inch top. I found a used Craftsman quick release vise for $50 (I have no idea what it is actually worth, but the guy wouldn’t budge on price). The top ended up being about 24”by 45” which was limited by the space I had and I made it 38” high. I am 6’5” and often find countertops too low. I also figured the detailed work of guitar building justified a higher top. I laminated the top from the pallet wood and bought more construction grade lumber from HD and Laminated it for legs. Since the legs were laminated from 3 pieces, it was easy to include tenons though the top and a lap joint for the rails. All in all I think the plan worked well, but I had all kinds of trouble putting it together. The lumber was definitely not straight and I didn’t handplane all of it perfectly square so there are some cracks at the glue joints. I was originally going to put an MDF covering over everything so I wasn’t careful with the glueup, which ended up being a pain when I decided to skip the MDF. Many joints have a little shim here or there to tighten things up, which worked really well, but doesn’t look great up close.

All in all I am pretty thrilled with it. After screwing it to the wall it is rock solid and doesn’t rack at all. It wouldn’t be nearly heavy enough if it was free standing. Just having a solid surface with a vise is totally awesome. I haven’t flattened the top yet because the bench already took way longer than I thought and I want to start on the guitar! Also I only have a #4 plane and I think it will be easier someday when I have a 7 or 8. If I need a really flat surface I will clamp some MDF on top for now.

Things I would do differently next time:

If I were going to laminate construction lumber I would make sure I could use a jointer/planer and table saw. The design is not ideal for hand tools.

I would buy some bar clamps. Since I am already focused on guitar building, I wanted to spend money on that instead of the bench, but it’s really hard to do without bar clamps. I used threaded rod drilled through pieces of my top to clamp it together (worked ok actually and I took the rod out at the end) and used woodscrews as clamps in many places, but the clamps would be way easier and the screws look a little lame.

A couple of my dog holes are really crooked. It wasn’t till I stopped messing around with little tricks to make the holes straight and just trusted my experience that the holes came out nice.

My through tenons are too short. I meant to have them a tiny bit short so I wouldn’t have to plane the end grain, but they ended up shorter than I wanted. Someday I may glue in a little cap over them, and glue in dowels over the screws, but for now everything seems to work ok.

Hope some people out there enjoyed reading this. Please comment if you have some advice. Next I will post about the ragtag collection of tools I have gotten together.

Looks like it will support a guitar. Welcome

Ed

Welcome to the forum! A wealth of good information here and lots of support. Envious of your access to that shop, having the use of the high end tools especially the thickness sander will help you out tremendously as you begin your journey.

_________________
Bobby Masten

Welcome to the obsession Your bench should serve you well and access to the larger power tools should be very convenient. I'll look forward to following your progress.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Well, here is the basic assortment of tools I have collected so far. I have a few more laying around; a bunch of clamps, drillbits, screwdrivers, cordless drill, and router bits, but these are the interesting ones I think. Most are second hand, and they look pretty limited now that I pile them together but there’s still a couple hundred dollars here. This is an expensive hobby if you are starting from scratch!

I got three chisels and a #4 Stanley plane from a guy in town who collects and sells vintage tools. Not as cheap as finding them in a bargain bin for $2 each like some guys do, but there aren’t as many bargains up here as I would like, and it isn’t impossible to get screwed buying used tools. Two of the chisels are Bergs, since they were some of the only ones that I recognized the name and the middle one (1/2”) is an unmarked one that looks like a Stanley 750 but I have no idea the actual brand. I really like that handle though. The left one (3/4”) has a crappy plastic handle that doesn’t really fit the socket and keeps falling out, thus the electrical tape holding it on. I have a chunk of torrefied maple offcut I got cheap from Lee Valley that I’m someday going to make a sweet handle from (somewhere on a huge list of things I would like to do but am putting off in lieu of actually touching tool to guitar wood). The one on the right has an original handle and is ¼ inch. So far I’ve only used the ¾ inch one, and it seems to take and hold a good edge, but at this point what do I know?

The handplane was $40 I think, and considering I knew nothing about planes when I bought it, it isn’t too bad. I think I looked it up to be a type 7, but I could be wrong. It has a sweetheart (not original) iron that looks like it has hardly ever been sharpened. What I missed when picking it out was that it has a chipped lever cap (not a big deal I think) and the frog is missing a bit of metal from its leading edge. This does cause a problem because wood shavings collect under the frog and I worry that they will interfere with the blade, and also the frog can’t possibly be bedding down properly if shavings can get under there? I had many problems getting the plane to work properly and fettled it as best I could based on what I read online. As I’ve continued using it I’m realizing that the problems are mostly with me and not the plane though. The frog was screwed down too loosely and crooked so that the blade would never stay straight. My main problem was that I had the lever cap screw too loose (everyone recommends not over-tightening it) and as a result, the blade kept moving. What a pain! Now that those things are sorted though, the plane does a nice job and I am enjoying using it. If the frog really is causing problems, I don’t think I’ll worry about it as long as it does what I want.

To the left of the chisels are my digital callipers, purchased from Lee Valley for about $35 to $40. I originally bought a cheaper set but testing them out on my feeler gauges, they were all over the place, and wouldn’t stay zeroed. I became suspicious that they were just crappy, so I returned them and got these ones. They are “EZCal” from iGuaging and they immediately seemed better. They consistently returned measurements that made sense to me, stayed zeroed, and just felt like better quality. Because of this experience I have decided to try to buy more stuff from Lee Valley and try to avoid painful junk when I can. I suppose there may be tools I should have bought before the callipers, but online tutorials and blogs often give measurements in decimal inches and especially for the thickness of the top back and sides I thought it would be useful to have a good set of calipers.

For my birthday I got an apron plane from Lee Valley. I thought that it would be a good size for guitar tasks, and frankly I couldn’t have justified asking for the more expensive block plane from Lee Valley. I kind of wanted one new plane to see what it was like. It has the PMV-11 blade and so far the only thing I’ve used it for is chamfering the corners on my workbench. That was awesome though! I could do that all day, maybe I should switch careers? I’ll have to restrain myself or all the corners on my guitar will end up nicely chamfered. New trend anyone? I still have to decide if I want to put a secondary bevel on the blade. Everything came so straight and flat that I couldn’t bring myself to add a microbevel and just polished the whole main bevel. My other plane blade is probably sharper at this point though.

That’s probably enough for one post. I’ll write about a few more later, and there are still some luthier specific ones to aquire!

So I thought since I’ve actually started work (finally) on the guitar I would post about that and follow up with some other stuff later. It was starting to seem the guitar would never get started. The bench took a long time to build, and building a shooting board and a joining board took a surprisingly long time. Also, a small part of me was nervous to start working on all that expensive wood for fear of messing it up right away.

I started with joining the top and back. First I made my plane absolutely as sharp as I could. Usually sharpening a plane blade doesn’t take too long but I really took my time and it got sharper than ever. Then I got out my newly built shooting board. I started by clamping the two boards at either end, planing, and taking it apart to check the fit. Eventually I screwed pieces of wood at the sides and end of the boards so that I could take them in and out easily and wouldn’t need to clamp, as it turned out I would need to repeatedly check the fit of the plates.

The top went very smoothly. I took maybe 15 minutes, carefully identifying where the plates weren’t meeting and concentrating planing the high spots. Holding it up to the light above my bench, I saw no light coming through, and proceeded to glue the two halves together. I used the method in Cumpiano with a straight board on one side and wedges on the other. It worked really well, although I forgot to make sure the plates were perfectly even where they met and there was a tiny offset in some spots at the seam. The boards are almost ¼” thick though, so the difference will even out no problem.

When I tried the same thing with the back, it didn’t work so well. I spent at least 4 hours all told trying different things to try to get the fit right. In a moment of madness, I tried using my router against a straight edge. When the straight edge clamp was too loose, I took a little gouge out of the edge. Even after reclamping and rerouting, the joint was worse than before. Luckily I have plenty of extra width. Then I went out and bought a level, to which I glued some sandpaper. This, along with some planing got me close. I had been candling the joint on the window, so I held it up to the light above me and saw no light. I realized that the joint I did for the top probably had gaps too that I would have seen if I had held it up to the window. So I got as close as possible and just glued it up. I’m pretty sure the back joint is better than the top joint, and I know some people purposefully leave a gap or ‘spring’ to the joint. We’ll see I guess. There was just nowhere else to really go with it. Next time I think I need a longer plane. I am writing this after having thickness sanded the top and back, and everything looks great, except for a spot at one end of the top, which will mostly be cut off and the rest will go under the fingerboard.

Your jointing story is giving me flashbacks What ended up working for me is making a 13" long wooden plane with a very small mouth opening, super sharp blade, and chipbreaker right at the edge of the blade. Even works on rosewood back sets with curved grain where half the time you're going with the grain and half the time against. But the plane must be absolutely flat. I have to re-flatten mine periodically. A Veritas or Lie Nielsen plane would be less finnicky, but also expensive. If I had it to do over, I'd get a Veritas 5 1/4 or fore plane (the choice depending on what else you plan to use it for).

Springing the joint works on softwoods, but high density hardwoods like rosewood don't compress at all. The joint has to be perfect. But if it's not, add a solid wood backstrip inlaid at half the thickness of the back. Makes a good cheater reinforcement for the joint Together with the cross grain reinforcement inside, the original crappy joint is fully enclosed, and unlikely to come apart.

Well, I was planning on a maple backstrip anyway. I'll keep an eye on the back joint as I thickness it. So far visually it looks super tight, although I don't know if a weak joint is something you can see. If I know that there is a problem I will cut the joint apart and redo it. But it's hard to make that decision when everything looks really good. So for now the plan is to move onwards. I am probably going to have it close to finish thickness tomorrow. I'm guessing by then it would be hard to reglue the joint so I will have to make a decision as I get it thicknessed down.

Well, the build is going at a glacier’s pace, but I thought a quick update was in order, if only to keep feeling like I’m moving along. As mentioned in the previous post, the top, back and sides are thicknessed now. Using my boss’s drum sander proved to be an ordeal. First the sandpaper belt broke, and I had to figure out how to replace it. Then it turned out that the belt on the platen was too loose and the wood would stall part way through its run through the machine. With limited dust control, the dust would build up and glaze the belt a bit. And the drum was off by about .010” from one area to the next. So I got the thicknesses close and I will finish off with my random orbital sander and some 80 grit.

Here are my thicknesses now:

TOP: 0.125” at the thinnest spot. I have no real way to tell the stiffness of my top so I’ll take it a bit thinner, but won’t push it too much. I’m planning to get some help shaping my braces from a local luthier, so hopefully if I’m too thick, we can adjust things then.
BACK: 0.127. I’m planning to take it to 0.110” and just hope that works.
SIDES: 0.095”. I think I’ll take them to 0.085”.

Now I’m making templates and moulds. I’m going to try to make my template from ¾” MDF, and I’m going to try to do it with my jigsaw and router. After the stress with the drum sander I would rather use my own tools when I can. I am also trying to figure out how to make radius dishes. I saw a tutorial on making them by using ¼” mdf and a bunch of little shims to create the dome shape. This appeals to me since my router is a bit small for the task otherwise. Here’s the link: http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/sho ... ave+higham
I’m a little worried that go bars will punch through the mdf though. Any opinions?

Hey all. I stopped posting here because it seemed like not many people were reading (seems like people mostly check out the main subforum) but I just looked and there are 1400 views so I guess I will start posting here again. What follows are a few posts that I posted on a different forum.

The mold, neck and end blocks are done. The end block that Kinkead calls for is 5/8" which is a bit thin compared to the others I've seen so I'm going to add a maple "appendix brace" reinforcement strip glued cross grain to the block. I'm really loving my little apron plane for the blocks. And I put up a new LED striplight above my bench and a nice sheet of plywood on the wall so I can start hanging my tools and such up. I picked the sheet I did because it seems to have a cool figure to it. I'll sand it and put some oil on it and see what it looks like. The mold took a long time for me. I bandsawed and rasped one side piece and used my router to copy it. It turned out a bit rough, but I spent a good bit of time making sure the neck and tail block areas were nice and smooth and at 90 degrees from the face of the mold. I also made a template for my sides because I decided to cut them close to the right shape before bending. This was a bit of a pain since no information on this is included in the Kinkead book. I ended up finding some OM plans online with a side template, reading some info on another forum and adapting the info for the slightly different shape of the Kinkead guitar. I think I actually did pretty well. I'm going to leave the sides a bit over width anyway, so the profile is just to get close. Next I will cut the sides to shape and use my orbital sander to bring them to final thickness. Then its side bending time! (gulp) Then I have to decide if I can glue the sides to the blocks. My humidity is about 15% higher than it is in the winter here and I know that this is a cross grain glue joint and maybe not the best to do when humidity is high.

Just finished rough shaping the sides prior to bending. I shot a straight edge for the guitar top, then drew the profile onto my sides, adding 1/4" so I will have an extra 1/8" to play with when I have to shape them after bending. The extra 1/8 matches the extra I left on my blocks and might be a bit of overkill, but I don't trust my bandsaw skills and I'm not sure my profile is 100% right so I will just have to take my block plane to the sides a bit later on. Everything went relatively smooth. The only thing I need is something to make a long lasting visible line on the rosewood. It's very difficult to see any line I put on.

I've been bringing sides to final thickness and removing drum sander scratches with a card scraper. I've never used a card scraper before and had to learn from scratch. I bought one from Lee Valley and decided to try to make my own burnisher. I used an old 1/4 " tap I had laying around. I made a quick and dirty handle out of walnut and just threaded the tap into it. To tap steel I figure it needs to be very hard, and the finish on it was very smooth so I hoped it would be adequate. I also cut a slot at 90 degrees to a scrap of wood and wedged in an old file to file the edge square. I used this tutorial to get it ready and turn a burr [url]http://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/a_better_way_to_sharpen_scrapers
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Here are the results on one of the sides


It actually works!

It made beautiful thin curly shavings. It was quite nice and relaxing actually, I used my calipers to measure different spots along the sides to make sure that the thickness was correct all the way along. I could actually take a thousadth off at a time. I ended up at about .084-.087 along the sides

Update time! I bent my sides. I made a hot pipe bending rig with a torch. In the picture there is a silicone mat from the grocery store to insulate the plywood from the heat of the pipe. This was a bad idea. It melted and burnt up in no time. Silicone is heat resistant, but I guess there is a limit. I replaced it with a few layers of aluminum foil and that worked way better. I practiced bending the sides using the offcuts from cutting a taper into them earlier. All in all it was a success, but I found it quite difficult, especially because I had trouble with some twisting. There is still a tweak or two to be done, and I am a bit nervous I will stuff it up now that I am so close, but that seems like the name of the game for alot of this stuff.



In the shot of the sides in my form, you can see I organized my work area and got some new tools. I bought a $50 bandsaw used which has been a royal pain in the arse but is still better than no bandsaw. I was given a #5 type 17? handplane that I de-rusted and am waiting on a new blade for. I got some Lee Valley backsaws. The rip and crosscut carcase saws. Hmm I'm sure some of the other stuff is new but I don't remember.

With the snazzy new tools, and looking ahead at cutting the dovetail mortise, I decided I needed to up my skills a bit. I took an afternoon class at the local Lee Valley in which we did the Gotshall block test which really helped my chiseling. I also decided to do a practice project to up my saw skills and did a dovetailed recipe box for my wife. I finished it with Tru-Oil to see how that experience went. Overall I'm quite happy, but there are a few flaws and things I would do different. The biggest thing is I used a random orbital sander to do final polish and sanded through in a couple places at the edges. I think If I tru-oil my guitar I'll
definitely hand polish it.

My wife went away to her parents so I took advantage of the free time to make some radius dishes. I didn't intend to make them so soon, but it seemed like a good opportunity. I drew up a 25' and a 15' arc using a trick I read about in a book with three nails and two long rulers. I used these arcs to make rails for a router sled, and rigged it all up so the MDF disc could be rotated on a central dowel.

It seemed to work great and I was very pleased until I got inside (I went outside in the snow to avoid the dust blizzard in my house) and measured the dishes' arc. I ended up with a 17' radius and a 19' radius! I was choked. I re-rigged the 15' arc and ran the router over it again. It turned out somewhere between 14 and 15 feet. The 19' radius I figured was too small and too close to the other dish, but in order to fix it, I would have to re layout and re cut the rails. I got a bit suspect of my hand drawn arcs, so I found a PDF online of a 28' radius and went to Staples to have it printed full size. I figured that if I was off 28' by a couple of feet it would still be ok. The morning I was making the new sled for the dish everything went wrong. My bandsaw blade broke so I went to a coping saw. Then the coping saw blade broke. When I finally got started routing, the base was not engaged properly and the router took a big gouge out of the dish. I ended up just taking and extra 3/16" off the whole thing to even it back out. I figure I'll either glue the two dishes back to back, or a put a backer piece on the thin one. With great anticipation I measured the radius of the dish... 31 feet! Something is hinky about my process to have so much variance, but I'm pretty happy with 31 feet. So now I have two radius dishes and need to find some sandpaper. I would love to find one big piece for each (I'm in Calgary AB Canada) but If I get impatient I might just use some peel and stick on a roll from Lee Valley and see how that goes. Next task is the dovetail mortise in my neck block. I'll be doing a few practice mortises for sure before I hit the nice mahogany!

After three practice attempts I got brave and chopped the dovetail mortise in my neck block. Worked out pretty well. What I learned during my practice was that it was much easier to get good straight side walls if I made my saw cuts all the way through the width of the block. I guess this is the benefit of cutting the mortise before gluing it to the sides. Also I just couldn't imagine how I would secure the guitar after the box was closed to bang away at it with a chisel while chopping the mortise.

On a more exciting note, I just bought a new bandsaw! My wife gets riding lessons, and I get a new toy! It is a used Steel City 50100. It has a 1 1/2hp motor in it and is way more saw than I need right now to be honest, but my little bandsaw is next to useless and I really didn't want that frustration of that any more. Plus, now someday (probably awhile from now) I can buy the riser block for it and resaw some tops and backs. I'm very excited. It does have a bit more vibration than I expected, but I think replacing the belt will help that, and it just blasts through thick hardwood very easily and straight.

You're doing great!
Nice bandsaw also.

Still, I would advise against having a high shelf with heavy objects right above the bench where fragile guitars are being made.

Keep up the good work!

Very nice. Looks like you are making good progress.

Have you considered a bolt on neck for this guitar? Its not if a guitar neck needs to be reset - its when it needs to be reset. Its pretty easy to loosen the neck bolts and floss the joint when that day comes.

Keep up the great progress!

maybe I'll reorganize things a bit. The guitar does generally live under the benchtop though. Yeah truckjohn, I did think about a bolt on neck, but it's too late now! I think dovetails are cool (see dovetail box above). Also, I don't really understand how you adjust the neck on a bolt on. I know it must be simple, but say you are adjusting the neck because it doesn't align with the centreline of the guitar. You take a little off one shoulder of the joint and take some off the other side of the tenon, right? With a dovetail the tenon then drops a little more into the mortise, and you are still ok because you adjust the depth of the joint last. but with a bolt on mortise and tenon, doesn't the tenon get loose and sloppy in the mortise when you have to make an adjustment like this? Again, I've never done either kind, but I just feel like I can conceptualize the dovetail a bit better. Plus dovetails are cool.

The tenon on a bolt on doesn't really do much except hold the fasteners and provide depth so your fasteners dont poke through the neck. There is generally plenty of clearance around the tenon. The tension on the bolts provides the clamping force to pull the joint together.

The glued fingerboard tongue provides additional lateral support.

Adjustment is pretty easy - its all the back face of the neck heel - there is no worrying over shimming and adjusting the tenon so you get contact on both sides and a good glue joint surface.