The Neck and a little goof.

I did a lot of work since I last posted, but I neglected to take pictures of what I was doing or to make posts about what I was doing. So let me bring you up to speed.
I posted about binding the Finger Board (FB from now on) so you know about that.
Then I had to install the frets. Fretting a bound FB is not easy. The frets if viewed from the end, look like the letter T. The part that sticks into the FB is called the tang. To fret a bound FB you have to clip off part of the tang so it does not go into the binding. That sounds easy and you can buy a special tool for like $60 that does this easily. I am building on a budget, so I opted to use wire cutters and a dremel to get the job done. It took about 3 nights of working to get it done and it was far from easy but I think the results are worth it.
The next thing on the agenda was to install the side dots on the edge of the FB. These dots allow the player to see the positions without having to crane his or her neck over to look at the front of the FB. Since I dislike craning just to see dots, I went about installing the side markers. Dots at positions 1,3,5,7 and 9 went in without incident. Then came the markers for fret 12. This position gets two dots. I screwed up and put the dots at the 11th fret. Oops..this is bad. Now what? On an unbound ebony FB you can hide such a mistake fairly well with some ebony saw dust and glue. Not so on my pretty maple binding. With some coaching from Ken at KMG, here is how it went down:
I had to connect the two dots (lol) and make a rectangular slit. Then I had to make a little tiny plug to put in the aforementioned slit. Both of these tasks caused great anxiety since I could easily mess up and make things worse. But I did not. I actually made the slit with nice clean edges. Then I made the tiniest plug. Also with clean edges. I also decided to chamfer all of the edges of the plug so it would be like a compression fit piece when installed and glued. I did not take pictures of this process. I am the best documentarian EVER!! Here you can see my plug in place. Its the dirty little line next to the two white dots there. What? The white dots are hard to see on the maple? Yes. I know. I changed them to rosewood plugs. I had a little extra rosewood that came for the heel cap. That gets installed later, but I measured the heel cap and I was able to take off about a 1/8th inch square log from that. I then chucked it into my drill and held it to some sandpaper while I spun the bejeezus out of it. Once the bejeezus was completely removed, it became a round log and lost its squareness. Now that it was no longer square it would be accepted by the cool kids in school. Except I cut it up and did this with it:Then I sanded the plugs flush and it looked like this: Pretty cool. Now my side dots are easier to see. More importantly, they are in the right places!! Which works well since I kind of need to see them. I am an awful guitarist. But not too bad of a novice guitar builder. In fact, I took a poll today and it turns out I am the best luthier in my house. Who woulda thunk it? Actually, I would have and did...even before my poll. Oh...and before I forget, here is my finished repair to my little dot snafu: Not bad for a total hack, eh? Click the picture to see a larger version. Yes. I am totally patting myself on the back. It looks even better now that I sanded it with a finer grit. I just don't have pics of that yet. I am a bad documentarian, remember?

Binding the fret board

The Success Kit from KMG does not include instructions, or materials for binding the fretboard. However, I happen to really like the look of a bound fretboard, so when I ordered the kit, I spoke to Ken and he included plenty of extra maple strips so I could bind my fret board. The strips are the same maple that the guitar body is bound with so everything will have a nice continuity. Binding the fretboard (FB from here on out) is not terribly difficult.
The set up you see here is as follows:
The black board is T shaped. The white board is pushed into the FB and binding which is in turn pushed into the T of the black board holding everything nice and snug while the glue dries.
Gluing the binding on.

This was the easy part.

Well...not terribly difficult ifyou know what you are doing and you have tools and experience with said tools. I have no experience, no workshop, and really had no clue how to cut off the minute amount of material from each side of the FB in order to accommodate the strips of maple I was adding. You see, the FB should have a certain width when its finished. If I add approximately 1/8th of an inch to each side with the binding, the FB will be too wide. Thus, I have to shave off about the same 1/8th of an inch from each side and then install the binding. This is a simple task for a person who knows what they are doing, but for me, not so much. I fashioned a routing set up with a fence and a base for the router to ride on and thought I was A second look at the gluing set up.

good to go. My fence slipped, which meant I took off a little extra material on one spot. Oops. Not good. I panicked and e-mailed Ken. He made me panic more since he had not seen my mistake and my description of the boo-boo was bad. After a day at work, I came home to take a fresh look at the FB. I decided to measure it against my other guitars to see how it stacked up. Turned out, I had not taken off as much as I Giancarlo checked out my set
up. He approved and
told the glue it was
OK to dry.

originally thought. In fact, I still had a bit to go in order to get the binding strips on. I decided to sand the rest of the material off instead of using the router. It ended up coming out pretty good!

Nothing doing here

I took a break from building to travel to Dubai with my wife. Thus nothing at all has gotten done on the build for the last 11 days or so...aside from me traveling. Dubai is really nice by the way. I recommend visiting it if you get a chance.....if the 12 hour flight from the east coast does not deter you...or the 14.5 hour return flight. There are lots of people from England there on "Holiday" as they call it. That's because it is a much less sucky 6 hour flight from England to Dubai. In any event, if you like to travel, Dubai is a really nice place. Do not let its geographical location in the middle east scare you off. The people are very nice and English is spoken by everyone. I did not meet one person who did not speak English.
I went snow boarding in Dubai....yes, really. I went here: SkiDubai. Pretty much went just to say I did, but it turned out being cool too. I could write tons about my trip, but I wont, for two reasons.
1) This is a blog about building a guitar.
2) I am really tired since Dubai is 9 hours ahead of NY and I got back yesterday and I am still not adjusted to the time change.
So good night.

Fret board update!

I bought these really cool 3-D looking pearl stars for the fret board and I was planning on inlaying them myself. However, I realized very quickly when I was practicing, that my desire to do the job seriously outweighed my ability. Upon this realization, I began hunting for a skilled professional to do the inlay for me. I was directed to www.CustomPearlInlay.com by a member of the kitguitarforum.

Nice! Its a non-traditional

inlay pattern for an acoustic

but its mine dammit!!

Dave Nichols, the owner of Custom Pearl Inlay has been doing inlay work for many years. In fact when the CF Martin guitar company wanted to do their 1,000,000th guitar with all sorts of intricate inlay, Dave did it. But even before that, Dave did all of the custom inlay work for Martin during the '60's when Martin reintroduced the heavily inlayed D-45. He is that good. He has a guy working for him named Keif who is also extremely talented. I e-mailed Dave pictures of my stars and asked for a quote. He sent me a very reasonable quote and I mailed out the fretboard. A few days later, Keif called me to verify my instructions. An hour or so later, my fretboard was on a UPS truck heading back to me. All in all, it took about a week from when I mailed it until I got it back. It looks amazing as you can see. I highly recommend Custom Pearl Inlay if you need any of this type of work done.

Looking good!

Binding the top

I put the binding and purfling on the top last night. Well...on half of the top anyway. It takes a little time to do, and then you have to wait for the glue to dry, so I only did half. But today, I glued the remaining binding and purfling. Now I have the whole guitar body bound and purfled. The next step is to scrape/ sand/ coerce the binding and purlfing flush with the rest of the guitar body. The binding has to be perfectly level along the sides and the top as well as the purfling so that when I put the finish on this thing, it will look good. If my prep for the finish is half assed, I will wind up with a poor finish. It wont be flat and I will have a hard time getting it to look good. Here I have one half
of my binding and
purfling glued and
taped down. Lots of tape.

Making the bindings flush is done with a tool called a cabinet scraper. Its basically a flat piece of steel that you sharpen on the edges in such a way that it scrapes off little fluffy curls of wood as you scrape it along the body of the guitar. Its a cool little tool that I still don't use very well. I would sand everything, but it would imbed the dark wood dust in the light maple. That would not look good.

Here my kitten is
inspecting my work.
She approves. At least I
think she does.

I sent out my fret board for custom inlay work and it will be back on Monday. So I have to get some things done before I can put the fret board on the neck, and then put that on the body. Please enjoy my pictures.

The tape is off and
its looking pretty good!
Notice the matching rosette
and purfling. Nice!

I have gotten a lot of work done since I last posted. I did not make any updtaes here because my choices were to do the work on my guitar that I got done, or get half as much done and blog about it. I chose the former.
Let me bring you up to speed.

In my last post I had fitted the neck ahead of schedule but it all worked out. Before that I was fitting and gluing in the end wedge. Well, I have since scraped the end wedge flush with the rim and it looks great. I neglected to take a picture of it, but trust me. There are enough pics in this post anyway.Here you can see I cut the stepped
channel for the binding and
purfling. The back plate only gets
binding. It does not need
the beautification of purfling.
It does wish it had it though.

I also borrowed a router from a friend and went to work cutting the "rebates" for the binding and purfling. As I mentioned, purfling is partly there for decoration and partly there to protect the edge of the guitar. Same goes for the binding. There are many options out there for binding and purfling. I went with a herringbone patterned purfling that is commonly found on a Martin HD-28 which is a $2500 guitar that still uses a plastic binding. On my guitar, instead of the plastic binding, I am using a flamed or curly maple binding. Binding with wood like I am doing is a little more difficult but looks so dang good!!
Here is a shot of the rebate on the back
plate. You can also see
my side port in this shot.
I used some thin maple
to bind the edges of the port
just to make it look pretty.
And because I can.

Cutting the rebates is a daunting task because the guitar is not flat. If this was just a box with 90 degree angles between the top and sides and back and sides, it would be pretty easy to follow the curves to rout the channels. But its not. In addition to it not being square, the angle of the rim to the sides changes as you go around the guitar. Routers are not designed to make this kind of cut. Click here for a great explanation of this fact. At least not uniformly, which I needed the cuts to be. KMG makes an attachment that they send with the kit that addresses this issue. Ken, the owner, can explain how the attachment works much better than I can, so click this link to read all about it. KMG Binding Attachment.

I am now up to the installation of the bindings and in these pics, you can see that I have installed one of the back binding strips. That's why there is a truck load of blue painters tape all over one edge of the guitar. The rubber band is around the waist of the guitar because I needed some extra pressure on the binding there to keep it tight to the side. I told you wood binding was more difficult than plastic. Plastic just bends right in and you only need tape to hold it while the glue dries. The rubber band is there because the guitar
said it makes her look thinner if
she wears a belt. Women!!

Now I just have to install three more binding strips and two purfling strips and I am done. Well...not exactly. I will have plenty more to do. I have to scrape the bindings flush and that is sure to take a bit of time. But I am not out to win a race with this build. Originally I was racing, but when I realized I was the only one in the race, I knew I could go as slow as I wanted and still win. I am totally winning!

Fitting the neck

Over the weekend I got a little bit done. As you can see from the pictures I fit the neck onto the guitar. I shouldn't have been able to do this yet. You see, in order to fit the neck onto the body, I had to open up a little channel for the tenon to fit into. In the KMG instructions for the part where you cut the slot in the top for the truss rod, it specifically does not tell you to open the channel for the tenon. But I did it. Why? I do not follow instructions very well. That and I think I know things I don't. For example, I do not know how to build a guitar. I am slowly learning, but I do not yet know. Therefore it is imperative for me to follow to the letter the instructions and not to go charging ahead.
You might be thinking, "Why is it such a big deal that you cut that wood?" Well, I will tell you. Its a big deal because now, when I rout the channel for the binding, I wont have anything for the router to ride on in the area where I foolishly cut the tenon cap. Oh well. I am just making this harder on myself, right? I wish I had not made this harder for myself. At least I got to put the neck on and take these pictures. Please enjoy.
Picture number one is the neck on with no fingerboard. Exciting, isn't it?
I am excited about it. Now it looks more like a guitar!





Picture number 2 (over there---->)
is my guitar with the neck and the fingerboard on. Nothing has been glued yet.














Picture number 3 (look right ---->) is my guitar again with the neck and fingerboard on, only better than the other one because its not as dark. That is not the fingerboard I am going to be using. Its an extra one. But it is a close approximation of what its going to look like. The real one will have custom fret markers. You will get to see them later. Just take what you can get for now, OK.
The neck fit almost perfectly on the first try. Normally with other kits this is not the case. Ken Cierpilowski makes good stuff. I only had to sand a tiny bit to get it absolutely perfect and the problem was probably something I caused. That's all for tonight folks. I hope everyone had a happy Halloween yesterday. I did!

Installing the decorative end wedge

Now that the box is closed, I can install the "decorative end wedge" in the tail of the guitar. The end wedge serves a few purposes. One, as its name implies, it is decorative. That is the only use I am sure of. If you scroll down to the last picture you will see how decorative it is..and let me tell you...its freakin' decorative! It also covers up the joint between the two sides at the tail block, so if you didn't get it perfect like I did, you wont ever see it. Originally I had planned on adding little purfling lines next to the end wedge. They are also decorative.

The wedge taped in place so I can mark its
outline
on the body with pencil.

They would have been mitered at the top and bottom of the wedge to meet the purfling that went around the rest of the body. But in the end, (pun not intended but I am glad it happened) I decided the purfling lines did not go with the rest of the binding and purfling I am using, so I scrapped that idea and just installed the wedge au natural.

After I traced the outline, I then scored the
lines with
a razor knife as deep as the wedge will go.

Not using the additional lines also went with my theme of, "Holy crap, I don't really know what I am doing! Why am I going to try to make this more difficult for myself?" Here is a picture of a beautifully purfled (is that even a word?) end wedge with the purfling going around the wedge: If you click on the image it will get bigger and you can see how nice it looks. I chose this picture because it is an excellent example of what I wanted to do and didn't. I also used it because the red purfling really stands out. Yes...the red line is the purfling and it is what I have been talking about. I "borrowed" this picture from a company called Luthier's Mercantile International, Inc. They sell everything you would need to build or repair guitars. Check them out. They have some cool stuff. I bought the back strip that I used on this guitar from them. It was like $5 bucks. You can see it in one or two of the pics on this page. So that's where I am now. I am very tempted at this point in the evening to do more work, but I am tired and I don't want to mess anything up.

After the lines are scored, I used a
chisel to remove the
wood between the lines.
Here you can see the back
strip I mentioned.

I am testing out a new format for the blog. I put the pictures in the center with captions instead of at the side. Its easier for me to caption the pics rather than try to make what I am writing fit to the correct picture. Now, I can just space out the pics and as you read along, you can say, "Ooh! Look at what Tony is doing here! What the heck is he doing here? Or just skip the pic and come back to it when you finish reading the fascinating crap I have written. Let me know if you like it this way. And by you, I mean my three relatives and one friend who check it.

The wedge is in. I cleaned up the glue that
squeezed out and she looks
good. Now I have to scrape
it flush with the rest of the
body since I left it a little
proud of the sides.
(proud is wood worker
speak for "higher than" and it is used
because it saves so much time
over saying
"higher than" that an experienced
wood worker (or Amish guy)
can make an extra foot stool
each day.)

I still have to scrape the wedge level with the sides and trim off the overhang, but those are pretty quick tasks. I will have those things done before I move on to the next step which in the KMG manual is to tweak the fit of the neck to the body to make sure it fits correctly and that all the work I have done up till now has not been for nothing. Of course, if I really did screw everything up, at least I will have the neck bolted on so I can smash the guitar like John Belushi in Animal House. I don't think that is going to happen though.

The box is closed!!

As Brad Pitt said in "7"
WHATS IN THE BOX???


In the movie, its his wife's head.
Here, the answer is nothing, but.....
I closed the sound box!! Its really starting to look like
a guitar!!I am quite impressed with myself. If you
look into the sound hole, you can see the back braces
and all the other innards of the guitar! Prior to
tonight, when you looked into the sound hole, all you saw was...well, whatever happened to be behind the guitar.
Most often it was the floor...err..I mean my work bench.
Now you see the back plate in all its bracey glory!
Good times man. Good times.




I actually glued the back last night, but it remained clamped until tonight. I also trimmed the back flush with sides. As it comes, it is over-sized and you have to trim it down after it is glued. Not only did I glue on the back, but i glued it on correctly, with the back strip perfectly centered. I have to say it again. I am very pleased with myself thus far. I have never built anything this complex in my life. On top of that, not only am I actually building it, I am building it well! Sorry for the lack of humor tonight, I am just not feeling the funny. I am thinking of all of the aural I am going to get from this guitar!! WHOAH!!
Did I just say that? I think I did!
Please enjoy the pictures of my mostly completed sound box.
It still needs the binding and other stuff, but its a sound box and could be a guitar as is. With a neck. And tuners. And strings. And other things...but you understand.


The top picture is of the completed sound box.
Notice the completeness of it.

Picture number two is of the completed sound box.
Please take note of the completeness of the sound box.

Picture number third is of the other side of the completed sound box. Please note its other sided completeness. Also note the sound port is much cleaner on its edges. That is because I cleaned it up yesterday. Remember? I got all side tracked talking about Bob Vila and Norm Abrams. I hate those guys and their skills.

Cleaning up the side port

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The top is done, sound port opened

I trimmed the top flush with the sides tonight. It was not that bad, although I had anxiety over the process because I could have messed up the top. But I didnt. I used the flapper wheel method Ken at KMG suggests.
A flapper wheel is not a wheel made from one
or a bunch of these (flapper)--------------->





Not that I would have complained if it had been.
I just would not have used them on the guitar!!
Giggidy giggidy!!!

It is a wheel made of small flaps of sandpaper

that "flap" against the thing you are sanding, in this case, the sides of my guitar. It is less dangerous than a router but more dangerous than sanding the top flush by hand. I actually used a combinatio of flapper whell and hand sanding to get the top perfectly flush. There were no flapper girls present and I did not go to a speak easy before or after flapper wheeling my guitar. As I said, I finished with hand sanding to get a perfectly flush mating of the top and rim. It looks pretty good up close. Trust me.





Here is another picture from further away. In this picture the partial guitar is posing with a box of baby wipes. There is some real excitement going on here folks!!






I also took the opportunity to bore a hole into the side of the guitar to make a sound port, also known as a side port. It is supposed to allow the player to hear exactly what the audience hears from the guitar. I don't know if it works, but I am building this guitar, right? I have heard good things about ports though. I also heard that the bigger it is, the more bass you lose from the main sound hole, so I am keeping this one small. I will have a chance to make it bigger before the guitar gets finished anyway, so smaller is gooder in this case. At least until I can hear how it sounds. I think it will be goooood! The hole is really rough here. I have to refine it with sandpaper and files and other wood worky type instruments of potential destruction. I did use a Dremel to cut this hole though. That's kind of why its so rough. I was afraid to get too close to my lines and make the hole too big. That would have been hard to fix. Eventually I plan on putting some sort of binding material around the hole to make it look nice. Alrighty...off to bed for me.

Gluing the top

I glued the top on to the rim tonight. This is a big deal because now, I no longer have a rim, a top, and a back that can all be in different places. Now, the top and rim must be in the same place at all times. Yippee!!! It is a big deal though. Its a big step towards finishing this thing!!




I wrote a dedication to my son on the inside where I signed the top. Its a tradition to sign the inside of the top before you glue it on. My wife said, "What if G does not want to play guitar? What if our next child is a girl? You are writing this stuff to Giancarlo!" I said, "Well...it IS written on the inside so its unlikely any child we have is going to see it. Plus, I can always say that I built this guitar when we only had one kid. Which is true" She still thought I should hedge against offending any future children. I did not hedge. I'm just nutty like that.
Well...here are some pics!

The top picture is of the top clamping board during my dry run. That means there was no glue on the top when I put the clamping thing on.
Here is a view from the inside of the mold. If I had the ability to take EXTREME close up shots, you would be able to see how well this clamping system works. There is not a single bit of the top not touching the rim. Every bit is tight to the rim. That's kind of important if you want the guitar to last. Capish? (That means "Do you understand?" in crappy Italian. I don't speak Italian, but what little I do know is crappy.)
There are many ways to clamp the top on. You could do what is called "roping" where you use a long elastic strip to tie the top down. You have to wrap the elastic around and around to almost completely cover the top to ensure you get it tight to the rim.
With the method KMG uses, and how I did it, I was able to align the top, tighten a couple of screws to make sure the top didn't shift, then I used a cordless drill to mostly tighten the rest of the screws. I used a hand screwdriver to do the final tightening. That way I could tell how tight I made everything and not over tighten any of the screws. It was fast and easy. I am leaving it clamped overnight...and most of tomorrow since I have to work and wont be home until after 5:00. Although I really want to open it up now to see the damn thing!! I will have to wait.

I am off to bed.

One step forward, two steps back....

I made my first major mistake. Let me walk you through what I did. I had finished bracing, carving and sanding the sound board and I was high on life and very excited. The next step in the build would be to attach the top to the sides. However, the X-brace and the shoulder brace extend into the kerfing on the side of the guitar and you need to cut little pockets for them to sit in. To do that, you have to put the top onto the rim and mark the locations where the braces hit the rim. Then you carve out the pockets. So I set about following Ken's instructions for attaching the top to the sides with rubber bands attached to the mold (which I did not think would hold it in place well enough, but worked extremely well and reinforced the fact that Ken knows what he is talking about and I am a fool.)

I marked the brace intersections with the sides, and cut little pockets that turned out beautifully and fit the brace ends perfectly. The next day as I was proudly showing my work to someone, I had one of those moments where your heart sinks and you feel like the wind got knocked out of you. I realized I had cut the pockets for the top braces to sit in ON THE BACK OF THE RIM!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!

So stupid!!! The wind was completely taken out of my sails and I could not believe how stupid I had been. I knew the back of the rim was facing up. I knew I had to switch it and flip it over. I just forgot to do that before I started working on the guitar.

I quickly e-mailed Ken to ask him if my potential guitar was now a potential pile of fire wood. Ken assured me that everything was going to be OK. He talked me off of the ledge and told me how to fix what I had done. Its not even that hard of a fix. I simply have to fill the pockets I made by cutting and gluing in some of the kerfing material and then shave it back down to level with the top of the rim. Thankfully, I saved every piece of wood I cut from this kit. Ken said there are lots of things I can screw up and he can still tell me how to fix.

I do not plan on testing him.Notice how in the picture, "back" is clearly written on the mold. I wrote that!!! Idiot.

Once again, as Bill Cory of http://kitguitarforum.com/ said, "It ain't a mistake if you can fix it." The fact that I had cut through the rim was not an issue either since the maple binding I am using was supposed to cover that gap anyway.

Well...I have made some extra work for myself, but it is a learning experience, right? I learned to slow the hell down before I start working. I am now going to make a list of what has to be done on paper instead of in my faulty head. Then I can check things off as I do them instead of wondering if I did them, or thinking I had done something, and in reality I had not done it.

Back to work.

Back Strip

The back strip: Def: noun- 1)A decorative reinforcement of the joint between the two halves of the back plate. (see photo, right)
2)Something I forgot to route a channel for before I braced the back when it would have been much fricken easier.
Instead, I glued the first brace, then had an "OH Sh!t" moment. My choices were:
1) Remove the brace, clean up the spot where it had been, then lay the plate flat and route the channel.
2) Set up a complicated (for me, not an experienced router user type) system of shims and stops and rails for the router to ride on and against so I could make the channel.

Neither of these options was appealing. I decided to finish bracing the back (see the picture of my braced back plate over
there ---->)
and continue to think about what I had done. Bill Cory, the man who started the KitGuitarForum.com among other sites devoted to building kit guitars, and the inspiration for my undertaking here, has said, "It ain't a mistake unless you can't fix it."
Indeed he is right.
I chose to go in another direction. I figured that at some point in time, ancient guitar builders (people from my parents generation) probably did not have electricity, or maybe they were poor as my mother claims everyone was "way back when" and they could not afford electric routers. Whatever did these ancient luthiers do? I imagine that after rubbing two sticks together to make fire to heat their hovels, and so they would have light to work by (my mom insists that the sun never shone on her, so it must have been cloudy or the sun had not fully caught fire yet)they would have used a chisel to make the channel. That is what I did. I used a straight edge to guide a razor down each side of the channel to score the lines, then used a 6mm chisel to cut out the wood in between the lines. It worked!! I even got a really good fit! I have two spots that need some attention, but all in all, it was a great success. The pictures here are after I had scraped it flush with the rest of the back. I did not have the battery charged on the camera, so there are no in between shots or action shots. Sorry.
I am very pleased with my ability to adapt and overcome the first major obstacle in this build. I really wanted the back strip. Its not entirely necessary, but it made me happy to get it in there and it looks nice!!

DISCLAIMER!!!
The author of this post realizes that there was in fact electricity
and sun in the 1950's. The reference to that time period as
"ancient" is merely a cheap shot at the author's mother.
She is not ancient and she never complained that there was no sun
shining during her childhood. However, she will probably tell the
author to stick this post where the sun don't shine. To which he can reply, "Where?
In your childhood? I am not H.G. Wells and I do not have a time machine!
Stop trying to control me!!!" There may be some crying at this point.
DISCLAIMER ABOUT THE PREVIOUS DISCLAIMER!!!
The author of the disclaimer has no proof that the author of the post cries
when yelled at by his mommy. It was artistic license.
Or another cheap shot.
You choose.

Corrections

I had to make two corrections to some info I put out there:

1) The rosette around the sound hole is NOT just for looks. It is actually there to prevent the wood from splitting. When you cut the hole in the top, you expose the end of the wood grain. The rosette serves to bind the end grain together and prevent any splits from occurring in this area.

2) The top of a guitar is NOT in fact domed like an egg to withstand the crushing forces of a mama chicken's ass. I was very wrong about this point and I apologize. While the guitar CAN indeed stand up to all but the most rabid chicken's ass attack (or ass-ault...lol), the doming of the top is not intended to do that. My egg analogy was my cheap attempt at humor. I apologize for that.

3) The sound board of the guitar is also not domed to withstand the pulling of the strings. The strings PULL, not push on the top. Therefore the dome has no effect on this. The braces on the underside of the sound board prevent the top from pulling off. Rabid chicken attacks notwithstanding.

I hope this clears up any misunderstandings. Ken Cierpilowski from KMG e-mailed me to let me know where my info had gone awry.

Holy Braces Batman!!

I got a lot done today. I now have almost all of the braces glued in. The only ones missing are the three little ones around the sound hole. These three little guys a called the "sound hole braces" although nobody can tell me why. Anyway, I still have to measure and cut those, but the rest of the braces are in. I even started shaping some. Shaping the braces is what gives the guitar its sound. It balances the treble, mid-range and bass. How? Hell if I know. It has something to do with the shape of the braces. I did a lot of reading on the shape of the braces. I could have gone with any number of shapes, but I chose a scalloped brace pattern. The early guitars made by the C.F. Martin Company have scalloped braces and they sound pretty damn good. The people at Martin know a little more than I about building guitars, so I will follow their lead. Ken Cierpilowski at Kenneth Michael Guitars has drawn a scalloped pattern onto the braces supplied with my kit. I am using those lines as a guideline. Ken told me to do what I like with the braces, keeping in mind they need to support the top. So I followed close to his lines but changed a few things here and there with the shape of the braces. Nothing major. A slightly higher peak on one brace, and a slightly different taper into the valleys and the end of the braces. Mostly because I liked how my way looked vs. the pencil lines Ken had. Nothing personal Ken.



Here I have started to shape the bass braces. They are also called the lower face braces.












Here is a closer shot of my rough shaping work. Trust me, they get better!! I am saving the shavings so I can make it look like I did more carving than actually took place. Plus it makes me feel like I really did something when there is a big pile of shavings.I know...I have issues. Really though, I did not save them.

WARNING:ACTION SHOT!!!

Here I am shaping the braces with a small block plane. I took this myself. Nice camera work, eh?
I would have asked my wife to take some action shots, but she was busy taking care of our child. Evidently, you need to feed them even if you are shaping braces. I on the other hand, skipped a meal. I am clearly more manly than my two year old. Plus, I can really afford to skip a few meals if you know what I mean.







Here is a close up of the braces after sanding the lower face braces. I also roughed out the scallops on the X-brace. That will look nicer in a day or two as well.
As you can see, its really beginning to look like something. I don't know what, but something!
OK...it looks like a part of a guitar that most people never see. Really it does!
The shape of the small braces that but into the X-brace is different than suggested by Ken. Not intentionally, I just shaped them from memory instead of looking at the picture first. I have been slowly making them closer to a traditional shape.
The more weight on the sound board, the more you deaden the sound since it can not vibrate as easily. Thus, you must reduce the size of the braces as much as possible without compromising the strength of the board to the point that it collapses when you string up the guitar. I am leaving my braces on the heavy side, but still lighter than most any factory produced guitar. At least that is what I am telling myself. I am going to send Ken a picture of the carved braces when I get closer to what I will call their final shape and ask his opinion. I will then ask anyone who will look at them and has any guitar building experience. Then I will take all of that input, get totally confused, drink half a bottle of Grey Goose and cry like a baby in the fetal position for several hours. After that, I may take peyote and ask my "Spirit Guide" to help me shape the braces to perfection. See the picture of my "Spirit Guide."
OK...its Native American Barbie, but I couldn't find any good pictures of Native Americans that were public domain. I really did not look that hard. I am just as good at finding peyote by the way. I also think a Spirit Guide might be an animal, not a Barbie doll. Whatever. I just need to carve these braces correctly.