Thicknessed!

I attacked the back and top plates with the freshly sharpened planes. Wow, what a difference. Scary sharp method definately works. What a difference. I finished up planing and scraping.

Sharpening blades

Since I didn't have a stone I decided to try the "scary sharp" method off sharpening my blades. I bought different grit sandpaper and had a local glass company make me some glass panes. I used spray adhesive and glued the grits on the glass. I let it dry for a day and then proceeded to sharpen my plane blades.

Planing the back

It's time to thickness the back and top. Thickness sanders are expensive, and powered thickness planing will shatter the hardwood less than 1/8". That's ok, I want to hand plane this myself. First, I rough cut the shape of the guitar 1/2" oversided on the bandsaw. Second, I took a measurement of the thickness before I started hand planing the top. Third, I planed, and planed, and planed. I got some pretty serious tearout in places and this is where I decided that my plane blades were dull. Unfortunately, I didn't have a large enough stone to sharpen the blades easily. So, instead of creating a bunch of problems that would be difficult to fix I shelved the thicknessing for the day.

Plate joining

So I've got my materials ready. Now it's time to join the back and the top. I used a hand plane and improvised a shooting board to join the two halves of the guitar back. I followed Cumpiano's directions and the back passed the "candle" test. If you don't know what the candle test is I'll tell you. When you get the back joined and hold the two pieces together there should be no light shining through the joint. I then made a simple pressure clamp and used the weight of a large hand plane to hold the wood down while glueing. Don't forget to put newspaper underneath the wood so it doesn't stick to the table. I followed the same steps to join the top. Now, on to thicknessing!

Go-Bar finished

I finished up my go-bar deck. Turns out the deck railings didn't work.
They were extremely wobbly. So I got some all thread and electrical conduit. This thing is sturdy... and HEAVY.

Thickness Gauge

I made a thickness gauge out of a cheap dial indicator from Harbor Freight nd some scrap MDF. I need to move the dial indicator down so that the nail and indicator needle are in the middle of the opening. You'll see more of the thickness gauge later.

Tonewood

Woo hoo! Wood has arrived. Ordered the top and back of my guitar from Colonial Tone Woods. Steve, the owner of Colonial, is great and very helpful. I will definitely be ordering from him again. So here's the pics.

Yet more mold.

I picked up more MDF, Titebond, some 3/8" lag screws and washers (for the go-bar) and a small paint roller from the orange Borg this morning. When I got back to the house Iunclamped the mold from yesterday an set it aside and then cut the last 2 pieces of the go-bar. I chose 2 pieces to be the top and started glueup. I got the small paint roller to help spread the glue. Too spongy. It soaked more glue than is spread. I trashed it and used the cardboard piece, to which the roller was attached. Once glued, I clamped up the boards and set them aside to cure for minimum of 30 minutes. While the boards dried, I hand sanded the guitar mold. I checked it with a try square and the mold was within 1/32". I hope that is good enough. It took me about 30 to 45 minutes to sand the mold. Guess what! That just happens to be the amount of time to wait to take off the clamps on the top half of the mold. I took off the clamps and repeated the gluing process for the bottom. I decided to follow Stewart MacDonald's template for a go-bar. I use MDF where they recommend plywood. The top is 2 3/4" pieces and the bottom is 4 3/4" pieces.

Mold Part 5

9. Repeated the gluing process for the second half of the mold.
10. I weighted down the first half of the mold with the clamped up half. Now, just wait 24 hours for the glue to cure.

Hopefully, tomorrow I can sand the inside of the mold and finish up the go-bar.

Go-Bar

I wanted a go-bar. And I had some time to kill, so I decided to make one. Earlier, when I was at the Borg, I picked up some synthetic porch railing. Why synthetic porch railing you ask? Because they are extremely sturdy and on sale for $0.50 a piece. Look at the picture to see what I am talking about. I had some MDF left over so I cutup 4 pieces at 24"x24". I need 2 more pieces. Guess there is another trip to the Borg soon. The upside is that it took about 45 minutes, which meant I could undo the clamps!

Mold Part 4

Got a new sheet of MDF today. Started re-making my mold. After talking with the guys from the OLF (thanks guys), I decided to take a different approach for this mold.
1. I created a template from a piece of Lexan. This time though I made the template for the outside of the guitar instead of the inside. Once I had the template made I filed and sanded it smooth. 2. I used my Ryobi circular saw to cut out all 8 pieces forthe mold. Once I had them cut out I stacked them up.
3. The pieces of the mold need to be aligned for later.The OLF guys recommended using a dowel to so they can be taken apart and re-assembled. Unfortunately, I only have a cordless drill. It would be difficult to get the hole for the dowel perpendicular. I have a dowel jig, but the problem is that the mold was too big to use the jig. So, I improvised. I used the dowel jig to drill a hole in a scrap 2x4. Then I took the 2x4 and placed it where I wanted my dowel on the mold. It worked out pretty well.
3.5 I cut the 5/16" dowels and slid them into place. This is where lesson learned #2 was applied. Now it is time to put the template on and trace out the pattern. Wait... what is that! DOH! I forgot to clamp the template to the mold and drill through that too. Now what? I decided to clamp the template to the mold and drill through the template. Unfortunately, since the hole was already drilled into the mold there was no backing support for the Lexan. The first hole went pretty well, but the second chipped pretty bad. All in all I got it working.
4. Now I have my template ready. I traced the template on each layer of the mold. When that was completed, off to the bandsaw!
5. I tried to stay about 1/16" - 1/8" on the inside of my line.That way I can clean it up with the router later. The process went much quicker than trying to cut all 4 layers at once.
6. It is time for routing! I bought a template bit for my router. The bit has a 1/4" on the shaft with a 1" under it. The idea was to trace the template with the bit and clean up the mold one layer at a time. It ALMOST worked.
6.5 Turns out there is a about a 1/16" to an 1/8" gap between the bearing and the blade of the bit. That would not have been a problem, except that the Lexan is only 1/8" thick. Because of that gap there is a lip that is left at the top each piece of the layer. I had to find some way to raise the Lexan 1/8" and still let the bit track properly. I discussed it with Chicky, and we came up with a solution. I just so happened to have a scrap of 1/8" Red Oak plywood. I traced the template onto the ply and cut it out on the bandsaw. I drilled out the dowel holes and I was in business.
7. I routed the first layer using my template and red oak ply spacer. When I had the first layer complete I used it as my template for the other layers.
At this point I repeated most of the previous steps for the second half of the mold. Now, on to glue up!
Notice the two little grooves on the inside? Look at the picture on the right, there are two router grooves where the template shifted right at the end of a cut. They are extremely shallow and if I decide they will be detrimental to the mold I will fill them and sand smooth.
8. I set out the layers for the first half of the mold. I spread Titebond II over top of the 4th layer and on the bottom of the 3rd layer and then pressed them together. I repeated the process for the remaining layers. I then drove the dowels into the mold and made sure the dowel stuck out on both sides. I clamped the mold and set it aside for a while. Titebond II instructs you to wait a minimum of 30 minutes before unclamping. Since I only have enough clamps to clamp up 1 mold I had some time to kill...

Mold part 3

Another day, another trip to the Borg. I picked up a 1/4" bandsaw blade, oneof those drill sanding drums, andsome 1/4" - 20 x 1/4"set screws. I came home, installed the new bandsaw blade and made sure the blade was square to the table and tightened up the new set screws. I started cutting the second half of the mold. Oh man, what a difference, It cut like a hot knife through butter. So, after cutting with the bandsaw took the mold to the sanding station. Oh, my sanding "station"? You want to hear more about that eh? Well, just check out the pictures of the mold. Anyway, I could NOT get the mold smooth like it should be. I posted a note on the OLF and asked those guys about the "precision" and "smoothness" of the mold. When folks get paid for their "beautiful" guitars you tend to listen to them. After the discussion, I have decided to redo the mold. Back to the Borg for a sheet off MDF!

Creating the mold part 2

I went to the Borg again to pick up some Lexan and an X-Acto knife. I started out by making the template. This time I used the bandsaw, hand plane, and files like I did the first time. The template turned out well.

The next thing I wanted to tackle was the mold. I unclamped the mold, traced out the template and setup my bandsaw for the cutting'. Oh man, was this trouble. I didn't have a fine tooth blade. Nor did I have a narrow blade. Half of the mold is 3 1/4" thick. It took me over an hour to cut half of the mold. I kept bogging down the bandsaw. Not only that, since I did not have a narrow blade could not make fine radius cuts. So I had to cut some by hand with a coping saw. All in all the half mold did not turn out too bad. I got discouraged and did not finish the second half. I will have to find some way to sand the radii on the mold. A spindle sander would be nice, but I think I will find one of the drill sanders. Give that low cost solution a try. After I cut out the first part of the mold I setup the second part for cutting. I will do some research on blade options before I cut the second half.
Looking at the bandsaw turns out a set screw that holds a blade guide is missing. That would really explain why the blade skewed when I tried to cut. See the pic with the yellow arrowto see where the set screw should go. Stupid set screw.

Creating the mold part 1

September 30, 2006
Today I started creating an outside mold. Kinkead, and most of the folks on OLF use an outside mold. So I cut up 8 pieces of MDF per the Kinkead book. 4 pieces of MDF will create 1 half of the mold. So here's a pic before glue up. I used Titebond II for glue up. I spread the glue on each face with a foam staining brush. I need to get one of those roller things that Norm uses. After glue up, I put my quick release clamps to use. Titebond II says that it has to set for at least 30 minutes. So, after thirty minutes, I removed all the clamps, put the mold in the floor and put a Sun Sparc Station 20 on it for weight. I repeated the process to glue up the mirroredhalf of the mold. At this point I set the clamped up mold on top of the old computer. Then put a couple of bricks on it for weight. I let the mold set overnight.
At this point, I had not made my Lexan template of the body. While the glue was curing on the mold halves I thought I would cut out the Lexan template. I repeated the process for creating the template I did at the beginning, with one exception. Instead of cutting out the template on the bandsaw, I decided to try using a jigsaw to cut out the template. BIG mistake! The jigsaw ended up melting the Lexan. And the part of the Lexan that didn't melt shattered. Oh yeah, that was my last sheet of Lexan. I'll try again tomorrow.

Template continued...

I like to keep my brain busy while watching TV. So, while watching the Falcons do the best they could to lose to the Saints, I decided to draw out one more guitar body. I dug around on the internet and found some dimensions for the length, upper/lower bout, and waist of a Gibson Advanced Jumbo (AJ) question #3. The re-issue AJ is one of my favorite guitars (I wish I owned one). I love the way it sounds and plays. So, I thought why not base my guitar on the AJ dimensions. I used the length and the other dimensions I found from various net sources for the AJ. I used the ratio for the vertical location of the bouts and waist that I had calculated for previous attempts. Following the process described above I drew out a half template on construction paper, then traced that and created a full body cutout. The full body cutout I ended up with came out really nice. I am going to make a dread!

Template Layout

Today I started following the process laid out in the Cumpiano book. I gathered my measuring instruments, a large piece of construction paper, a piece of Lexan and got started. Cumpiano suggests making the template out of MDF, plywood, thin aluminum, or even cardboard. I saw a website (probably OLF) where someone had used Lexan/Plexiglass because they could see through it. I thought that was a great idea and decided that would be the material I use for my template.
1. I marked off the vertical length of the body.
2. I measured the height of the waist at 6 7/8" and marked it on the vertical.
3. I measured the horizontal of the waist at 4 7/8" and marked it.
4. Now it was time to mark the upper bout. Cumpiano provides a horizontal measurement for the upper and lower bouts but not a vertical one. So I had to guess. And that leads to question #1.
5. I guessed at 3" for the vertical of the upper bout. I based this measurement off my $160 Alvarez dread. And I then marked the 5 7/8" horizontal.
6. I guessed at 14 1/4" for the vertical of the lower bout. I based this measurement on the Alvarez too. And I then marked the horizontal at 8".
7. Now it's time for the curves. But then, Cumpiano threw me a curve. He says basically to "freehand" the curves. Wow, really? Ok, I guess I can do that. And that leads to question #2.

So after an hour, literally, of trying to freehand beautiful guitar curves I grab the Alvarez and try to get an idea of how the curves should look. I spend the next two hours refining the curves out and getting them just perfect, or so I thought (tha is called foreshadowing). I was ready to create my template. So I grabbed a piece of clear Lexan that I had picked up from the Borg and placed it over my drawing. I took a decent size nail and sharpened it to a fine point with a sander. Then, I traced around my drawing etching the Lexan with the nail. This was easy to do because, well, the Lexan is clear! I took the Lexan over to the bandsaw to cut out my shape. This is where lesson learned #1 happened. I finally got the Lexan template cut out and cleaned up Tip #1. I grabbed my newly constructed template and ran upstairs to show my lovely wife (hereafter known as "Chicky"). Remember that previous foreshadowing? She looked at it for a minute. Said it was nice, then she said "Hold it up to the Alvarez". That is where my "freehand" mistakes were glaring. Chicky suggested that I create a full size drawing on a piece of construction paper so we could see the whole shape Tip #2. Once, I had the full shape of the guitar I started wondering about Cumpiano's dimension for the waist. I decided I may have to change the waist measurement for myself. After much comparison it turned out that my lower bout was too high, and my upper bout was too low. I measured the Alvarez length, and the verticals of the upper, waist, and lower bout. I computed the ratio of the Alvarez and the drawing I had constructed. For the upper bout I was about a 1/4" off. For the lower bout almost a full inch! Time to rethink this and go back to the drawing board. Using my newly calculated ratios I redrew the guitar. Chicky and I agree it was much better...