Official Luthiers Forum!

Great to see you posting again David, and to see your work.

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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.

Both lovely, David, and glad you can log in!!

I spent the day today making an updated drilling jig for a new headstock shape. Lost the whole day almost. I added vacuum this time, works great!









Brad


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I wouldn’t say you lost the day. You made a cool jig. You’re getting good at that…

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Gee, when I grow up I wanna be Brad.

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

No half measures Brad!

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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.

Delivered this to its new owner a couple weeks ago. I've never had a new guitar, especially a classical, sound so opened up from the first moment. Wish I knew what I did! Lutz top, EIR bridge, B & Ss, and bindings, cedar neck, ebony FB, Alessi tuners, FP, Hauser design with a few of my own additions. Customer was a winemaker, so it seemed appropriate to use some EIR I had with red in it, and a red wine center strip in the purfing. The owner is very happy, so I am too.

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

A few weeks ago SM offered up a free set of plans for the "Ultimate Luthier Toolchest" to anyone who agreed to receive text messages from them. What the heck, I did so. For a number of reasons, the design appealed to me so, off to the lumberyard to get a bunch of plywood.

Long story short, the plans were clearly not ready for prime time, and I guess I got to be the beta tester. I wracked up a number of errors and inconsistencies and sent them into StewMac's support line. Last I heard, they had been forwarded to the authors, but have not heard anything more.

In any case, here is (after many hiccups and curse words) the rough carcase. The shells will probably get painted - I have plenty of milk paint and marine paint left over from other projects, so will probably go one way or the other. The drawer fronts and front edges will get trimmed with cherry - there is a board in attic just waiting to do this.

I plan to overlay the top with veg-tan leather, so as to double as an auxiliary work space for my guitar and amp benches. The drawers will probably get lined with cork.

Lovely, Pat!

Dan, thanks for taking one for the team! I too signed up for the plan, but it will be some time before I can tackle that project.

I shared earlier that I updated the bracing scheme for the 00. That means I needed to also make a new brace layout jig. This thing is primarily to cut the lap on the X at the right angle, but it also trims the brace ends to the correct angles as well. Put the braces into the template, flip it over, and cut using the little 1/4” pattern bit. Works pretty well.





Brad


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My mandocello project has been pretty much sidelined for several months by general life stuff going on, but things are finally happening again. I'm inletting brace ends to fit the top and back to the sides. Should have a closed up box in short order.

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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

Is your tail-block beveled. I saw that recently on a Takemine factory tour on YT. Seem like a nice way to avoid extra sanding in the dish.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I bevel the top end of the tail block to prevent a slight pucker in the top that can show up later if the tail block has a large gluing surface area under the top. I bevel it to leave a gluing surface that matches the width of the lining. I don't bevel it until after I have fitted the top to the sides and inlet the brace ends because I want the centerline mark on the tail block to still be there to make direct contact with the centerline on the inside of the top to be able to align everything accurately. Once that's done I don't need that mark on the tail block anymore and I go ahead and bevel it.

However, I don't bevel the end of the tail block that goes against the back because the backs don't pucker since they aren't under string tension like the top is. What looks like a bevel in the photo is actually a glue line because my tail blocks are cross-grain laminated.

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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

WHere are you getting your clear acrylic templates? Waldon Music has shut down their operation

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Woah! That's the good stuff there.

First strings for my nephew's flamenco. Unfortunately we ran out of time and he had to go home before getting to this point and I'll need to fix a few other issues before shipping out.

Starting #4

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

I make them. If you have your plan in digital format I can be talked into making them for a fellow OLF’er.


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I'm lucky just to have a paper drawing ha, thank you for the generous offer!
On the subject of drawings/ plans, the LMI plans DO NOT have a full side view (no template for sides), which POs me delux.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Karl, what a fabulous idea for spreaders with half dowels. I love it.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Wow, what’s the story with that fretboard? Cant zoom in enough to make out the detail …


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Zooming in, I have to ask: Why is the N to the East? Tuners not pegs? It does look like a mountain range. Very, very nice.

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Why be normal?

The sole purpose for orientating the compass that way was because the W was chewed up

But then he came up with the 'excuse' that he lives in the west so it's pointing back home. Also he made the headstock shape a sort of abstract W. Can't see it in the pic, but to tie it off anyway.

The kid is from Boulder CO so he's surrounded by mountains. He actually designed it and cut it himself on a laser cutter and inlayed it before coming to Virginia. I was impressed though I wish we consulted a bit back and forth because the inlay was very very thin. But since we used a bolt on neck I was bale to get the angle right without having to rely on traditional classical construction by planning the fretboard angle in.

I was impressed with the job he did. He has great attention to detail but also was a bit too eager to get things done quickly. Mistakes were made. In fact it's kind of funny, I had started him on carving the neck by making cuts to depth at the nut and heel and as I was off doing other things came back and he had carved the neck down to like 1/2 in. Way to thin. So we had to do it all over. He was really upset and I had to gave him a good lesson about making mistakes. I sent him off to the sanding room to get some things done and using Smiths CA I rebuilt the neck blank in like 20 minutes, fretboard, heel block, headstock and all.

Gotta love CA. And since I built myself, as kind of an experiment, a flamenco guitar 10 years ago almost entirely out of CA I have full confidence in it. Not that I would use it to build a fine guitar but we were on a tight schedule.

I had mentioned tuner pegs to him but his flamenco teacher suggested he get machines so that's what we went with.

Again, well done. I just noticed that the fret markers are stars floating in the sky! Very cool.

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Why be normal?

I do a lot of repairs, building takes second priority, not enough room to do both. I'm building a 000-all Mahogany guitar currently. My top bracing shows an A-brace above the sound hole, the #1 cross brace is morticed over the A-brace legs, which butt into the neck block and the upper X brace legs. Those two little sticks to a lot of work.

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

David Newton
What thickness is your top. I’m currently building the same with 100 year old Cuban Mahogany…..very stiff at .9 inches and considering going a bit thinner.
Tom Armstrong

That's the way I do it too Dave Newton. The A brace is a great design I think. I also arch the UTB.




Exactly.