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I'm in! Took me a couple days to get my ducks in a row... was waffling about what to build, then the latest American Lutherie arrived with plans for a Stahl No. 6, and something about that really grabbed me.

A little about me - I live in the Thousand Islands region of uppermost New York. My closest neighbors are on the other side of the River, but Customs and Border Patrol is between me and them...! I've been starting to build a guitar since 2001, when I closed my canoe shop in anticipation of moving to San Diego. We ended up on the Right Coast in the end. I started building a Martin Dreadnaught, but came to realize that I didn't really want another one (already got one). I was going to build an OM before the Stahl showed up. Also started a couple of electrics, and might even finish my first Telecaster in the next few months. Don't have to go back to full time work until mid-May so hoping to get a lot done this winter. Oh, I also build wood canoes and timber frame buildings, and am a tool junkie. Anyways...

Full size drawings for the Stahl won't be available from GAL for a few weeks, so I scanned the centerfold, scaled it, and popped over to the Boat Museum and printed a couple copies on their large format printer.

Top wood will be spruce of some sort, I presume Sitka (all I know for sure is it was hand-delivered to me in Albany by a friend from British Columbia via ViaRail and Amtrak - he stayed long enough for a pint or three, then headed back again). Sides and back East Indian rosewood, mahogany neck, Macassar ebony fingerboard, probably EIR bridge and headstock veneer. Photo attached. Trevor Gore will be leading me by the hand on this one...

Some challenges I expect in addition to the first time build fright are making my own purfling (ala Haans from this forum) and the unusual top and back arching.

Got the body mold blanks glued up today, tomorrow aiming to get the body template and body mold made.

Glad to have you in the fray !

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
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I spent the better part of the last couple days mucking 'round with the shop lighting and other 'improvements' - it's a temporary shop, but I have to survive the winter in it!

A little progress to report - got the head scarf and heel block glued up, and the body template roughed out. Nothing terribly exciting, but progress nonetheless.

Nice start, Dan. You and I seem to be in the same camp, though I wasn't aware of
the Stahl drawings being prepared. I have a set of 0-VS plans from Ultimate Guitar
Online but may wait for the new set to be released. Thanks for the heads-up.

I've been a fan of Rick Ruskin who plays a Stahl (among others) and is currently collaborating with maker, Roy McAlister in the production and promotion of similar small-bodied acoustics.

I'm getting my ducks in the water with tooling and timbers. I, too, am learning from Trevor Gore and Gerard Gilet's books but, unlike you, my background is in metal smithing, so there will be some catching up, skills-wise.

I look forward to your future progress up-dates.

Cheers,

Sam Richards
Temora, New South Wales
Australia

Hi Sam,

This one is more the size of an OM, but with a much shallower body (3-11/32" at the tail, 2-13/16" at the heel). It is their Orchestra Special, Auditorium Size. It was written up in the most recent American Lutherie (Winter 2012).

There is a little metalworking in my background, too. I never took it very far, but I used to be a volunteer blacksmith at the Hancock Shaker Village museum in Massachusetts, and have done a little bronze casting and have started setting up a home foundry -will do more of this when the workshop gets done...

Today's progress is the body mold, shown below in the white. First coat of shellac applied just after the photo was taken, and the latch to replace the clamp will be here tomorrow.

For this build, I plan to make my own purfling and rosette, similar to the example in the AL article. This morning I mocked up my patterns, and would appreciate any feedback. The b-w-b will be 0.020 dyed and natural maple, and the red bloodwood. The original guitar had plastic bindings, I am thinking about curly maple. (note the spacing in the mockup may not be exact - its a quick and dirty). The middle strip elements are at a 60 degree angle, and the black may be black walnut. Width is about 0.018" or a hair under 3/16"



Here is a photo from AL of the original:

Made a purfling scraper from the frog assembly of an old Stanley no. 4 (had a few extras kicking around) and a chunk of white oak scrap from one of the braces of the timberframe shop I am building. DId a quick and dirty test with a bit of sugar maple and so far, works well. The idea came from the November 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking, in case anyone wants to look it up.

Baby steps, but progress nonetheless

That's awesome!

_________________
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement.

sweet idea ! thanks for sharing that .

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Time for an update. I've got my top and back plates thicknessed (by hand plane) and joined. I've been working on the rosette and purfling concepts.

Here is thicknessing a strip to glue up the rosette log:



Just glued a couple of maple strips to the plywood base at the right thickness, then plane away until more comes off.

Here is the glued up log for the rosette with a few slices taken off (the purfling and back stripe will have a more complex repeating pattern):



Just finished the first attempt at gluing up the rosette:



I've got a feeling that this will be a failure - too much gaposis trying to get the middle strips to wrap around. I've got an idea for round two, stay tuned!

I was right, serious cases of gaposis and humposis!



Hey! I can see those knowing looks being passed amongst the more experienced here! Still, can get an idea of how it will look...

Next attempt will be to form the rosette in a channel routed into some HDPE and flood with CA. But first, I have to make a circle jig for my router...

Your central pattern looks a lot wider than the original one posted earlier. It's extremely difficult (probably impossible) to get it to go around that circumference at that thickness. I would reduce it's width, back each edge of it with a veneer line and then bend it into a circle on a hot iron.

What if you construct this like a block drum shell or banjo rim. Cut the strips much thicker than final width. Glue them up, then route the inner and outer edges circular with a circle cutter. Seems like it would work. Unlike the examples below, you'd want to make them almost parallelograms, but where the right side is more acute. The difference in angles will dictate how man pieces/size etc. I think yours look like perfect parallelograms which is causing the, uh humposis and gaposis.


or


Maybe?

That's a different method and is applicable if you want to maintain wide tiles that cannot be bent. You can draw the outer and inner circumference on paper, with the divisions of the longer, lighter coloured pieces and where they fall as you go around the circle. You then alter and make adjustments to each larger tile as you glue them onto the paper pattern. Slightly shorter if you are overshooting the division or slightly longer if you are falling behind. The outer and inner circumference can then be cut with a router or circle cutter. It's the method that I used for this:

Sorry. Those are highly technical boatbuilding terms, used by some of us who build traditional cedar lapstrake canoes...

Thanks for the suggestions, there are obviously lots of way to approach this...

Dan

Egads! I think I've got it... It's not exactly perfect, but I think I can use it.



I went with Michael.N.'s first suggestion - made the strip of diagonals thinner (0.06") and made some new purfling strips to 0.020" Glued up the diagonals with a layer of veneer on each side and bent it on the hot pipe.

Having achieved this, I can think of a couple ways to make it more better, but for now time, time to move on!

Nice work. That'll be a cracker.

Ok, it's been a while since I updated, but not since I haven't been busy!

While waiting for appropriate router bits for routing the rosette channels to show up, I built a Wells-Karol router circle jig, got the base bending machine finished, and worked a bit on the 'lectric I started a while ago.

Everything arrived, and the router jig is done, and here are the results:



and a close-up:



There are a couple oopsies, but on the whole, I am pleased, for a first attempt... (next time I do concentric rings like this, I need to work out how to mount a caliper to my circle jig...!)

The purfling rings are Peruvian walnut and hard maple, all home-made, and the rosette is partially bound (not full thinkness) as were the original, but with maple instead of plastic.



I'll be back soon with top bracing questions!

Time for another update...

Glued up another log with a different pattern, and cut up strips for the back stripe and body purfling:



Then I made a jig for routing the back stripe channel. Would have worked well, except for my poor choice of routers. Should NOT have used the DeWalt laminate trimmer. Next time I will break the PC690 out of the router table, unless I in the meantime I find a decent laminate trimmer that will take the template guides...



Apart from being a hair too wide, and a little deeper than I was aiming for, it came out ok.



and a close-up:

Nice. I love seeing people make their own rosettes and purfling.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

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Dan, I made a copy of your purfling scraper. Works really well. How do you overcome getting the first bit of the purfling through the scraper? Will there always be a bit at the end where you start off which will be unscraped?

_________________
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

Silly me. It's pretty obvious really. You turn the wood round and pull from the other way.
wish I'd made one of these before I did my rossettes.

_________________
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

That's it!

I also put a pretty strong curve on the outboard 1/4" or so which makes it easier to get the strip started.

Shop's been quiet of late, not much progress apart from final thicknessing of the plates, and laying out the bracing.

The plans I am working from show the braces as if x-rayed, so I flopped it in Photoshop and printed out the reverse pattern for laying out the braces:



Back bracing layout:



and top bracing layout:



Still hoping one of the Larson experts I've contacted will share some secrets before I forge forward...

6 BACK BRACES? That seems like a bit of overkill.....