Archive for September, 2010

More #6

I’ve decided to plow ahead on #6 since I am not waiting on a heating blanket for this one. I got the mold made for it, sides profiled and bent and the heal and tail block glued on.

Tonight I’ll get the linings on and some side braces. I’ll probably do something else, I just dont know what that is yet.

#6

So I found out that I wouldn’t get #6 completely braced over the weekend. I definitely had the time, but I did not have the materials to finish the rosette, so I couldn’t brace the soundboard. I did, however, get the back all braced up. Here are pictures of that (and what I have of the rosette)

I think this guitar is on hold until I can get enough moolah ($) to order the abalone stars. Those things are expensive!

Chloe’s Guitar (#6)

So this is sort of my first commission. It’s a request from my brother to build his children a guitar to play. He has a nice Taylor Dreadnought, but it’s too big for his kids to learn on. Enter younger brother that builds custom guitars (that’s me).

I’ve been chewing on the design for quite some time now. The more I designed my own shape, the more I realized that it was going to be a total hack job. I wasn’t aware of all the subtle measurements and the like. I would’ve ended up with a crappy sounding guitar, no doubt. In the end I decided to just buy some Martin Parlor guitar plans and go off that.

The back and sides will be a nice set of Pau Ferro I got awhile ago. The soundboard will be a Lutz Spruce set that I got from RC Tonewood for like $15. The fretboard and bridge will be Pau Ferro as well (to match). I wont have much of the back to make myself a headstock inlay, so I might match the headstock to the bindings which will be Bloodwood. With this guitar I am going to implement Abalone stars into the design. Mostly around the rosette and up the fretboard.

I want to keep the design feel of this one fun and young, yet still keep the professional quality of a custom guitar.

More pictures to come after this weekend. I hope to get it all braced up by Monday.

Homegrown Black Walnut

There are some Black Walnut trees back at home where I grew up. They’ve been dead for a couple years now. I thought it would be pretty cool to somehow implement some of that wood into future guitars. I don’t think I could get a big enough cut for back and sides of a guitar (maybe a Parlor),  but I could definitely get some bindings or rosettes out of it. Here are some pictures of the partial harvest.

First, I want to thank my Great-Grandfather. I never met the man, but I’ve heard great stories. Thanks for the trees, gramps. Secondly, I want to thank my brother, Joe. I don’t get as much practice for blue-collar stuff anymore, so he jumped right in with the chainsaw and used that thing like a doctor does a scalpel. Well done!

Since my bandsaw is pretty small, I have to find a place that resaw all this stuff into usable stock.

#5 Update

I got the “nostrils” on the redheart all fixed. I did a dumb little inlay to mask it. It’s not as elaborate as I had envisioned, but the more elaborate my ideas got, the less of the wood we would see. I decided that I really like this set and I didn’t want to cover it with a big inlay.
A few pics:

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Bailie Guitars Blog

Greetings! This is a blog about my adventures in building guitars. I hope you enjoy!