God I love Christmas.

I picked up a table belt sander the other day. This thing rocks!

I glued a ton of wood onto the soundboard. The more i glue on, the more I have to remove.

My hands are really sore.

Here are a few photo’s of the process of bracing the back.

I probably used too thick of braces, either that or they aren’t tall enough. They are more triangle shaped than pillar shaped. During the shaping process, I slipped a lot with the chisel and took chunks out of the back. So I have a significant amount of sanding to do. At least I didn’t slip and take chunks out of my hand… I can’t sand that out.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with witty titles for my posts.

Anyhoo, here is the rosette on guitar #1. I kind of like it.  I was a little over-ambitious with the design in the early stages, but i think it worked out well. It’s simple, but it has a little flare to it.

On with the pictures.

So I knew that i was going to have to build one of these eventually. I was just putting it off because I wasnt sure on how I was going to do it. I didnt want to spend $200 on a premade setup that was going to take up more space, so i decided to implement it into my current setup.

I knew where i wanted it and i knew how to build it, i just didnt know what kind of mechanism i wanted it to be on. I didnt want the top shelf to be up there at all times, so i was thinking some sort of hinging system.

While building the top shelf, i got an idea of a slot system. As you can see in the pictures, you can just slide the shelf in and out of the slot, no problem.

It was easy after that. I picked up some fiberglass reflector rods for $2 a piece and cut them to length. These suckers put down a lot of pressure!

The last picture is of me gluing in the back bracing on the back of the guitar using a 20′ radius dish.

Done and Done!

First off, WOW, soundboards are waaaay easier to work with than a guitar back. The wood is like butter and conforms to your every will. You actually have to be careful with it or it will snap in two.

Anyway, I got the soundboard all glued up and some of the rosette installed. Sorry that I didn’t get more pictures of it. I could probably offer up a better explanation, buuuuuttt…. I don’t really want to.

So I took a bit of a sabbatical because this walnut has been frustrating me. With my kit guitar finally finished, I have no excuse to not move forward with this now.

As you can see in the pictures, I took some pretty big hunks out of the wood. It’s surprisingly hard wood, so it’s quite difficult to repair with sanding. But I sucked it up and got ‘er done. You can see in one of the pictures that I wiped the board with Naptha, that’s what I can expect the wood to look like when its all finished.

At first, I thought I might want to put a backstrip in that’s the same color of binding that I am going to use. But I decided against it.

woohoo! I picked up a Delta 12″ bandsaw last weekend.

So I decided to wrap up this guitar finally. Christmas is coming and I figured what better time to deliver a gift to someone?

I gotta say that I am not totally pleased with my finishing job. The shellac that I used had very strange characteristics when I was sanding. Also, I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with the sandpaper that I was using, I don’t really know why.

Also, the setup is a bit wonky. The string spacing is waaaaaay too high, I tried to counter it by messing with the truss rod. That didn’t get me anywhere. So I just sanded down the saddle more, it helped.

The guitar has a fair amount of settling to do. It is still making creaking and popping noises. Hopefully they will stop in time.

Anyway, that is enough trash talking this guitar. Now for the pics.