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DIY: Acoustic 7 string build "Gloria" (lots of pics)

38K views 180 replies 53 participants last post by  James 
#1 ·
Well, this will be a bit different from my usual build pic-stories. Aside from it being my first acoustic build, I'm going to post the pictures more closely to real-time rather than all at once at the end when it's finished. I've barely gotten into the build and already have over 60 pictures. Posting the entire build at one time would probably be way too much (and a lot of writing for me as well). So, why is it named Gloria? Glad you asked…

A co-worker friend, who is also a woodworker and musician, said he was cleaning shop and found some Cherry that had been cut from a tree that came down in hurricane Gloria. He said, "It's yours if you want it. I've had it this long and not done anything with it. You'll put it to better use than me." I was quite flattered, but wasn't sure what I could build that would have some meaning. He had been holding these boards for so long; waiting for a cool project. Then, while looking through some boxes of books I found the Cumpiano/Natelson book "Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology" I got for Christmas the other year. That was it! I'll build an acoustic from the Cherry! So, I acquired some spruce for the top and bracing, and ebony for the fingerboard and got started…


It's not the clearest board, but I think there's enough to work with…



The board was a little warped so I used a hand plane to flatten one side and found this hole.


Maybe the other side is better…


Whew! Looks ok. I finished flattening with a #7 jointer plane and finished up with a smoothing plane.


Cut the board as wide as possible and squared up the edges…


…used a marking gauge to define the cut line…


…and started cutting,


and kept cutting.


I don't remember the last time my arms hurt so much! It took about 45-60 minutes to do that single cut. At least I stayed right on the line. Woo hoo! One down, one to go. Although, it does feel a bit thin in the middle…


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF……

Ok, maybe that wasn't the right saw for the job. I'll make a frame saw, yeah, that's the right tool for the job…


Ugh…it works, kinda. It's the right type blade, but not so fast. So I used both saws and eventually cut two pieces for the back.


I told myself that would be the last time I re-saw a hardwood board that wide using a hand saw. It's hellish hard, sweaty work.


Time to do something other than sawing, like make the template and work board from the book. First, draw the template, then cut it out of pressed hardboard (masonite).


The work board is two 3/4" thick pieces of plywood glued together, cut to a little bit larger than the template and with extensions for better work holding.


Then a cork edging is made and attached to a piece of construction paper (not the work board itself). This is used to raise the edge of the plates to create the arch…if I remember correctly.


Time to start the neck.


I made a quick neck template to try and best utilize the board.



Glued and clamped, clamped, clamped!


Out of the clamps…


How about a wax-coated block of ebony to start the fingerboard?


I used a metal card scraper to remove the wax (sorry, no picture of that mess) then used the band saw to cut off the fingerboard slice.


Block plane to square it up…



…and a jack plane to level it.


This isn't the way I usually cut fret slots, but I thought it would be easier with a flat top. I was wrong. Regardless, here is how I did (and will not do again). Double stick tape is great, and if you can deal with the smell, so is spray glue.


Fret slots are cut to depth and an alignment block keeps the blade on track.


Fingerboard cut to width with a handsaw because I was concerned the band saw would have been too rough on the brittle ebony edge.


Edge is fine tuned with a jack plane on the shooting board.


Then I spent about 30 minutes trying to peel off the damn paper before trying naptha; done two minutes later.


Fingerboard radiused with sandpaper and block…


Fret slots are re-cut using the radius block as a guide and a depth stop made from piece of wood attached to the saw blade with double sided tape. This is how I prefer to cut fret slots and should have done in the first place.



Alright, time to try re-sawing by hand again. This time it's Spruce, which is way softer than Cherry, so it should be a lot easier.


The board only needed a little flattening, and then smoothing. I was really excited to watch this board clean up.


Ok, time to re-saw, mark the lines, start the cut, going well, much easier than the Cherry…


WTF!?!?!?!? !!#$%%@#%%^#$^%&($%!@! The hell with this!!!

(One week later)




Holy shit is this thing awesome! I was so excited that I forgot to take pictures of the boards after re-sawing. So, here the back and front plates are being glued up…(yay…more pictures of watching glue dry)




While the glue cured, I went back to work on the neck. Cutting it to length…


…and squaring it up with a block plane. A sharp blade is mandatory for getting clean end grain shavings.


Routed the truss rod…


…and cleaned out the end to allow the truss rod to pass through.


Laid out and cut the tenon cheeks.



Then glued thin strips of maple, with its grain perpendicular to the neck grain, on the sides of the tenon to provide some reinforcement against the barrel bolt pulling through the end grain. Glue bear looks on with approval.


Bolt holes are drilled in the tenon.


Neck side profile is drawn…


…then cut using the band saw.


The head is flattened and squared with a block plane.


To cut the neck and head to width/shape, it is attached to the cut away part with double sided tape…



…then cut out at the band saw. Tuner holes were also drilled.



The heel profile is drawn using the band saw throat plate (it was handy).


On of the heel side "ramps" is cut using a chisel and plane…


…but I found it quicker, and more accurate to use a saw.


I made a template for the heel curve out of this maple…


…and traced it on to both sides of the heel face.


Then used a rasp and mini-spoke shave to shape it.


The neck profile is rough-shaped with a spoke shave.



And finally, I got back to the working on the plates. Here they are cut to shape…



…and planed to thickness.



That's where it is as of last night. Lots of pictures, and it didn't start looking like a guitar until way at the end! Hopefully you've found it interesting! The pics will be posted in real time (within a day or two) from here on out.
 
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#60 ·
Not including making templates, the work board, tools and re-do's...somewhere around 80 hours. That's a rough guess going back and figuring about how much time there was for each task. I'm sure the next one :)eek:) will go quicker.

The back is placed on the sides, aligned to center, the brace locations are marked on the sides and the side lines are marked on the braces. Flip the back over and mark another line on the braces equal to the thickness of the sides. This second line is the required end of brace. Carefully cut along the line with a saw…


…then chisel a notch down to the line (pencil line shows edge of cut)…


…then use a chisel with the bevel down to remove the end piece.


Clean up any remaining fibers with the chisel and a scraper.


Next, notch the kerfing for the braces. Use a straight edge to connect the brace marks on the sides from left edge to right edge (the straight line represents the brace edge). Measure the height of the brace ends and mark that on the vertical face of the kerfing. Using a saw and freshly sharpened chisel, carefully remove the kerfing down to the brace height line.


Test fit and cautiously adjust the notches until the back sits well.


Mark the center grafts at the tail and neck blocks. Cut and chisel as with the braces. Breathe a sigh of relief as the back is fully seated for the first time.
 
#64 ·
I'd say 80 hours isn't bad going at all for the amount of work you've put in and the learning curve.
Awesome project. Thanks for sharing it with us :yesway:
Thanks! I'm glad to share. It has been giving me even more appreciation for luthiery. 80 hours...only two regular work weeks...it feels a lot longer than that. :D Having not built one before, I'm not sure how close I am to the end, but it feels a long ways away.

Sandpaper is double-stick-taped to the back brace radius caul (the 2x4 with the curved cut) and the side-back edges are sanded to match the radius of the back. This will align the two surfaces so there will not be a flat spot around the perimeter when clamped and glued.


The brace notches are deepened slightly after the radius sanding, and then it's time to glue on the back. To clamp the back to the sides, the book recommends using car (or truck) tire inner-tubes, but, I didn't find one locally so I just used two bicycle inner-tubes. First, cut out the segment of tube that has the air stem. Now cut the tube lengthwise along a seam line so you have a single strip of rubber, then cut the strip lengthwise again into two equal width pieces. Tie the ends together and you've got a long clamping band. The more clamps you have, the shorter length of rubber strip you'll need. I used three of the strips tied end to end.

Before gluing the back in place, its edge needs to be cut flush with the sides so the overhanging piece doesn't snap off when being clamped down with the rubber strips. Erase any previous marks on the interior face of the back then put it back onto the sides. Use some *** clamps to hold the back down to the side and use a pencil to trace the perimeter onto the overhanging edge of the back. Take the back off and cut the overhang off using a band saw.

I didn't take pictures during the actual glue-up because I only have two hands. I should have taken pictures during the couple of dry runs, but, well, I was excited to get the back glued on! Basically, apply the glue to the neck block, heel block and kerfing, then wipe off a little bit at the edges with your finger tip to reduce squeeze-out. Place the back on and clamp it at the waist, then at the brace locations, then towards the bottom, then towards the top, alternating left side-right side each time when clamping. Now take the rubber strip and start wrapping around the body in a criss-cross pattern. Keep the strip stretched tight the whole way around and fit it between all of the clamps. I used one of the clamps to hold the start and end of the rubber strip.




About 36 hours later, the rubber strip and clamps were removed and all of the edges were made flush to the sides using a block plane, chisel, spoke shaves, scraper and sandpaper.


The end graft installation is next. One of the tricky aspects is holding the body while doing the work. Note the thick blanket below…just in case.


I mocked-up paper templates with different widths and slopes until one looked right, set the bevel gauge to the angle, scored a line with a knife and then chiseled a short trench to the line. This serves two purposes. It retains the crisp edge of the knife line and provides the saw a place in which to seat.




Once it is sawn to depth, the mini router place removes the material to an equal depth.


The graft piece is placed over the recess, the ends of the recess are transferred to the graft material and then it is cut and planed to fit. The advantage of using a tapered graft is that once the slopes are correct it can simply be wedged into place when glued.


After the glue dries, it is planed and scraped flush to the sides.
 
#68 ·
Building this acoustic has been, and continues to be, a bit intimidating to me. There are so many new variables compared to building a solid body electric that I don't have a feel for the process and the impact of design changes. The book does a really good job of stepping through the process and having online resources and fellow forum members has been a great help too. If you're decent with using tools, it's worth a try. After all, it's just wood...it grows on trees! :D
 
#72 ·
Well…yeah…I screwed up and inset the end graft deeper than the binding is thick which means a thicker binding is needed. Here's a picture of the end graft before it was planed flush to the sides.


The binding I have on hand is 0.06" and the depth of the end graft is about 0.08". However, I did order twice as much binding so I can just glue them together and get a piece that is 0.12". This is the first time I've worked with plastic binding and it's rather annoying to control; trying to glue 65" together didn't seem like much fun. I saw a binding laminator thing on StewMac and thought it looked easy enough to make something similar, so that's what I did. First thing though, the edges of the binding needed to be cleaned up a bit. They were a little rough and might interfere with gluing them together. Again, trying to sand or scrape 65" of curved plastic binding that does not want to stay in place is a pain. Fortunately, there is an easy solution. Use a piece of hardwood that is flat, square and straight along at least one edge and cut a ledge that is a bit taller than the binding, and as deep as about half the thickness. Clamp a scraper blade into the vice with its edge aligned with the hardwood and pull the piece of binding through.






The amount scraped off can be changed by rotating the piece of hardwood; the smaller the angle, the more is scraped (and harder it is to pull). Put the binding shavings in a small glass container and add in a little acetone to melt the binding into a paste which can be used to glue the binding onto the guitar.


Ah, yes, binding the guitar. There are few ways to cut the binding. Using a router on a vertical-sliding jig and the body on a carriage is probably the easiest method but I didn't want to make another jig, so I had bought the Schneider Gramil tool from LMII. From the LMII website: "We watched Richard Schneider, the designer of this tool, using a comfortable pulling action to make his gramil cuts in a top and chisel out the binding ledge in just a few minutes." Mr. Schneider must be a sharpening and chisel savant because that was not my experience at all, or I was doing it wrong. :D I sharpened and honed the blade properly (dangerously sharp) but it just would not cut deep enough.


Then it occurred to me that the blade was not actually removing material; it was only slicing in and wedging the wood apart, and the "waste-side" of the wood was then being compressed against the body of the tool…thus it cannot move any further out to allow the blade to wedge in deeper. Thus, to go deeper, the "waste-side" had to be removed by some method. A chisel would work, but, one wrong slip and you've just ruined the top/back/sides. Hmm…what other tool could be used…hmmm….maybe a….router??? Grrrrrr….

The router bit and bearings arrived a few days later, but I didn't have time (or the desire) to build the router jigs so I figured I would cut just shy of the knife line and then finish the cut with the Gramil.


That approach worked ok, but it took a long, long time. It would have been quicker to build the jigs. Lesson learned. Anyone keeping track of these lessons? :D


Finally, the binding was installed. I started at the neck joint and worked around the body a few inches at a time applying the binding/acetone glue paste to the wood then the binding then quickly tape it in place.



The binding tape is removed 12 hours later…


Ewww….I hope this stuff scrapes off.



The binding has to sit for a couple of days before it can be scraped down so It was time to get back to work on the neck and fingerboard. An arbor press was used to seat the frets into the fingerboard.


This is the first time I've installed frets on a fingerboard without it being attached to a neck and, thus, the first time experiencing the fingerboard arching due to fret installation.


Ebony is rather brittle, so this made me a bit nervous and even more careful with the fingerboard.

To prepare for gluing on the fingerboard, the neck is clamped into the vice by its tenon and a piece of tape is placed over the truss rod. Glue is applied and the tape is removed to provide a glue-free area around the truss rod so when the fingerboard is clamped the glue does not squeeze into the truss rod.


Once again, bicycle inner tube is used to clamp the fingerboard down.


…and now....more waiting.
 
#76 ·
^+1 :agreed:
Sure! Take a bicycle inner tube (the larger the better) and beside each side of the stem, cut across the width of the tube. You now have a rubber hose. Now make a cut along the length of the hose to create a rubber band. The rubber band can now be used as a clamp similar to a toruniquet. Stretch the band lengthwise as it is wrapped and it will provide even pressure to whatever it is wrapped around.

I can make a pic-story if that would help.

One thing you could have done instead of double thick binding is a BWB or herringbone strip, that way you'd cover the wedge and it'd look really classy to boot. Not that the thicker binding doesn't look good :yesway:
Yeah, that would have been much nicer. I had some BW binding but it was way too thin to make up the difference. Hopefully the double thick will scrape down and not look too bad. I'll find out tonight!

What is your method for cutting the purfling and binding ledges?
 
#77 ·
While the glue cured for the fingerboard, the bridge got some attention. I started with a block of ebony (sorry, no picture); cut and planed it square and to thickness, used double stick tape to affix the paper template then used a mortise chisel to make the slot for the saddle. The small router plane was used to level the bottom of the slot (after making a 1/8" wide blade from an allen wrench).


I wanted to make some cool looking bridge design, but, the creative juices went dry so I went with a basic shape. String peg holes were drilled, countersunk and taper-reamed.


The edges were then shaped with a saw, block plane, rasp (used lightly) and scraper. Then it was sanded up to 320 grit, then 0000 steel wool and finally buffed to a shine. The two white spots near my thumb are small holes that collected some polishing compound. No worries.


I did some shaping of the neck, but forgot to take pictures! Basically, the neck was clamped in the vise by the tenon and a scraper was used to shape the profile. Nothing to see here….move along.

Holding the body while scraping the binding was tricky…until I got this idea:


Scrapers and bicycle inner tubes…their usefulness belie their simplicity. They worked great! The trickiest part was scraping the binding on the front and back at the top and bottom because the binding is perpendicular to the grain direction. Holding the scraper at a 45 degree angle and using a slicing motion worked well. Thankfully, all of the binding glue came off without much effort.



Curiosity got the best of me…

 
#83 ·
Thanks! It feels like the end is near. Ordering strings is now on the to-do list.

Next steps:
Adjust the neck angle as required to align with bridge.
Final shaping of neck, head and heel.
Final sanding of neck and body.
Apply finish.
Install nut, bridge, tuners, strings.
 
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