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Finally finished up the Hawaiian guitar I've been working on. Ovangkol body and neck, sitka top, Brazillian bridge, ebony fingerboard and peghead overlay. It's a dread-depth 000 body with a 25 inch scale. I tried a lot of new things on this one, including using Enduro Var for the finish. I learned a lot, but am reasonably happy with the way it turned out. Sounds and plays like I had hoped it would.

The guy in the peghead is Sol Hoopii, the great Hawaiian guitarist from the 20's and 30's (and beyond).

Dave

Nice guitar and the inlay is really well done.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Nice look there Dave. Did you machine buff the Endurovar? Did you find it gave a brown tint to everything?

Very nice piece of inlay too

Ed M

Nice !
The inlay work looks first rate. The fret markers look pretty cool. What type of inlay materials did you use?
How did you like working with ovangkol?
The Enduro-Var looks better on Sitka than on Engelmann. On a very white Engelmann top it made it appear bright yellow.

Two big thumbs up here!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks everybody!

"Did you machine buff the Endurovar? Did you find it gave a brown tint to everything?"

I did machine buff it--it would be a real bear to do by hand, but I used that little Adams hand held polisher. Worked great. It did give a tint to everything--really more of an amber tint than brown. Here's a picture before I glued on the bridge that shows how much coloration a 4mil finish produces.



"What type of inlay materials did you use?
How did you like working with ovangkol?"

It's gold lip mother of pearl, black mother of pearl and white mother of pearl. All engraved by hand--the fingerboard inlays are pretty much banjo style. I liked the ovangkol. I've made several banjos out of it in the past. I had to sand the sides a little thinner than usual to get them to where they felt right for a bend, but they bent very easily.

Dave

I like every aspect of it, especially the inlay and fret markers. I have an old Maybell that was set up for slide, it's from the 30's. It was my grandfathers guitar. There were several Hawaiian books in the case. I keep meaning to get back to them and play a few of the tunes. Would love to hear this one.

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That looks marvelous!

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Da kine!

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Props to you and Sol Hoopi. Check out "Hawaiian Cowboy "

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

Wow, wow, wow!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lovely. Always nice to see a lap guitar

very nice!

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Super-duper awesome!

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Never heard of a Hawaiian or a square neck guitar. Learn something new every day. Never heard of Ovangkol either. Neither did my kindle, it changed it to Bangkok, and then oven temp! It looks really nice. I like when the silk of the spruce shows through too.

Your inlays are always well done, it's pretty much expected? Yeah, that's a gift.

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Why be normal?

Ovangkol also goes by the name Shedua, which is the name I bought it under many years ago. I still have that piece somewhere, hadn't considered using it for instruments until the past couple of years when others built with it. It also goes by the name Amazique and Mozambique, so you may have encountered it under those names.
Usually the more names a wood has the less easy it is to work with or has some other problem that makes it undesirable to woodworkers. Ovangkol dulls cutters, but with the advent of cheap carbide tooling that is less of a problem.

Very well executed. Bravo on taking the time for that inlay.

Thanks all--here's a quick and dirty sound clip of an old Johnny Marvin number played on it. Forgive my playing, I'm still a banjo player after all,,,

Dave

https://soundcloud.com/user-879949308