Andyjr1515

It was time to glue the fretboard to the neck: And then to turn my attention to the bridge. Usually, on an acoustic you fit the bridge once the top and back are both fitted. But to do that, you have a special long-reach clamp that fits through the soundhole. And this soundhole is just too small. And so I will fit the bridge while the back is still off. So to get that ready, I need to cut the saddle slot. On a nylon strung acoustic, you generally don't have the intonation issues to the same degree as steel string and so the bridges on classical guitars are generally square to the centre-line. For good measure, though, I will use a 3mm thick piece of bone to give me at least a modicum of adjustment if my understanding is wrong! I made a small jig out of some scrap wood to use with my Dremel precision router base to cut the slot: Yup - that will do Next task is prepare the surfaces and glue it in place If ever there was a 'measure 15 times and glue once...it's fitting the bridge' I am using a couple of pieces of cocktail stick to use as positioning pegs: And then masking tape over the whole area, bridge positioned with the cocktail sticks, scored round with a scalpel and peeled off where the bridge will go: You can never have too many clamps! : And - here is the voice of experience - a peel off of the tape once all the squeeze out has squeezed out but before it hardens! And on a question of scale - those are my small clamps

One of the jobs before I can put the back on is to sort the fit of the neck while I have easy access. It will be a glued joint but I will also use a bolt and insert, for additional security and to ease these next steps. Having got a 'starting' neck angle and fit, I double-sided-taped some emery cloth onto the body to improve the fit by loose-fitting the neck and raising it and lowering it a small distance to sand down any high spots. The sanding marks show you where there is contact and whether all surfaces are level or not: Next job was to fit a bolt hole in the neck block and an insert in the tenon: Then, bolting the neck on, I could work out the neck angle fretboard alignments and fine tune with some 'flossing' strips of emery until: - the neck angle lines the fretboard up OK with the bridge - and the side fit lines up the fretboard dots with the centre line of the body: A final bit of flossing for a decently tight fit:

Looks splendid, Mick!

Progress is a bit stop start at the moment with life's many distractions, but a few steps forward this morning. I got my 'I can't remember where I bought this and it's not perfect but actually does a pretty decent job' purfling/binding router jig out and attacked the top: Both channels done and just waiting a razor-blade trim of the whiskers: For both the purfling and binding I will use my preferred method - a la veneer - of PVA on both surfaces, left to dry and then iron them on with a small travel iron. The purfling didn't need pre-bending and I just went ahead with ironing it on - I'll take photos of the method when I do the binding. The binding is ebony (or was it rocklite?) with a teeny white stripe: I won't actually fit it yet, but I have started pre-bending the binding for the top as the bending pipe was still handy: I've also started sorting the end graft - it will be a simple one, really just joining the top and back binding and thin white lines. I have sawn and chiselled the end graft slot: The top and bottom binding won't be fitted until the back is on and channel routed. Then, all being well, the end graft will tally up both sides something like this:

You're not over thinking it at all. Are you talking about the bridge plate or the bridge itself...or both? Yes - it definitely affects it...as does gluing the top to the sides, and fitting the neck with the fretboard overhang resting on the top. Generally, the tap tuning would be done with the internal bridge plate fitted. However, the bridge itself is generally not fitted until the very end - including after varnishing, etc. ! That said, with the bridge plate already fitted, the bridge itself won't change the shape or flex of the wood and so shouldn't sonically affect anything. But gluing the sides certainly will - as will fitting the neck. And fitting the strings can make a BIG difference because it tensions the top and even changes the shape of the top. So the conventional wisdom is that if the top isn't ringing to start with, then it certainly won't ring once you've done everything else to it. But if the top IS ringing at all frequencies before everything else is fitted, then at least it has half a chance. There is a lot of voodoo around the topic - a bit like 'tonewoods' on a solid guitar or bass - but the basic principle is that if the top has been made more flexible through its thickness, the position of the braces and the flex of those braces, then it will reverberate in harmony with the note frequencies. If it is stiff, then if won't and most of the sound you hear will be simply the strings vibrating...it will sound dull.

Turning my attention to the bridge plate, I only then remembered that, to minimise the stretch for little arms, I'm joining the neck at the 12th, as with a classical, and not at the 14th that the X-brace pattern is based on. As such, my bridge will be further back than a standard steel string acoustic - and therefore one of the two diagonal braces is in the way! Easily sorted - a hot iron along the length of the brace soon softened the glue enough to remove it: With the bridge plate being where it will be, I don't think I need that extra brace repositioning - I'll just leave it out. Paper template done and I'll use that to cut a slice of maple or similar for the plate in the morning:

Indeed! The reason it could be useful here is to add a bit of perceived bass to counteract the higher pitch of the v small scale guitar.

That said, it's also just another place to get a small arm stuck!

Well, not overly sure just how thin to make stuff, but at least this is now ringing out with sub-harmonics and definite bass /treble tap notes from the upper and lower halves respectively. Then the linings were relieved where the main cross braces will go that will lock the main strength-critical braces to the sides: Quick check fit, looking for gaps: And the old adage that you can never have too many clamps And tidied up: Next jobs will be fitting a bridge plate, doing the first rough-fit of the neck angle and pondering on whether to add a side sound hole or not

There's a huge amount of detail here but, in the last third of the video, he actually goes from the un tweaked top's starting point to where the sound he is after is getting close. I would be pleased to achieve the sound that he starts with, let alone where he finishes! The basic theory is that you want the top to ring at the critical frequency somewhere on the top for every note that is going to be played up the fretboard. So he listens for the 'drum' pitch and associated sub-harmonics for every note and, if one is missing, takes off a miniscule amount off the appropriate brace until he can hear it.

Much of the position of the notches is 'Mr Martin put them there in 1920 whatsit and it was good enough for him and so it is good enough for me' To be honest, there are certain positions and proportions, especially of the nodes, that many of the 'respected' plans share and it is said that even 5mm difference in their position will make an audible difference. But there are actually a myriad of alternatives that will produce an acceptable result. And this is where tap tuning comes in. I'll try and find the Bourgeois video where their main man demonstrates what he does - and you can see and hear the difference. I can tell when I get it right, but getting it right is usually more by accident than design. I generally start by creating nodes and tapers in the 'conventional' places and then chisel away blindly and stop when it sounds OK or starts sounding (even) worse

After a few days child-minding the said special little people, I'm back in the cellar For the bracing, I am using my home-made 25 foot radius dish although, for this build, will dispense with the Go-bar deck - I should be able to get away with just clamps and cauls. The bracing pattern is going to be pretty basic X-bracing with the standard-recommended tightly vertically-grained spruce. I've taken a bit of a guess at how much to scale them down. I started with the X-brace with gluing the cruciform and then sanding the bottom curve on the radius dish: This was glued to the top with a long caul keeping the curved brace bottoms pressed against the radius dish while the glue cured : After that was set, it was time to add the other braces and sound bars. All of the braces will be chiselled to create the nodes, etc, once it has dried overnight: And here it is ready for tomorrow's chisel and tap-tuning work :

Looks good. Sounds great!

Modding is a great way of getting to understand how everything functions, what needs to be right and what you can take major liberties with to turn it into something more unique (and there's a lot of that!). It's where I and a lot of fellow builders started - and continue to do.

You are most kind, @Frank Blank. Normally, I'd jump at it but I'm afraid I'm too strapped for time in the coming months. There are a lot of good builders on this forum, though, so I'm sure someone will throw their hat into the ring

I really, really like this build. It started off well and just got better and better

All of the above. The action height will be also directly linked to your intonation issues - the higher your action, the more you are bending the strings (albeit vertically) and so the sharper they will sound. Lowering the action will reduce this effect.

Well I reckon it should be 1001. Oh, there we go

Splendid job

Well, after this...nor will mine

And bringing it up to the present state of play... To balance the purple of the headstock and fretboard, I added a slice of purpleheart to a cut block of ebony and carved the beginnings of the bridge. I also cut the fretboard end to where it will meet the soundhole: Next, I turned my attention to the decoration around the soundhole. Although you have to be a bit canny to maintain the accuracy, I actually find the Dremel radius accessory reasonable for this job: I used a 1mm bit to cut a circle at the centre and wrapped some 1mm b/w/b purfling into it after running a teeny bead of glue onto the bottom edge. After scraping the excess purfling off, I drilled an offset radius tool spike-hole that will be used to put in a second, larger offsett ring (you can just see the pencil check marking offset and outside the installed ring): And then another radius tool spike-hole in between those two to be able to cut - using a 3mm bit - a mid radius to create an offset channel for some curved abelone that, all being well, would fit in between the two other rings. It worked!! And finally, the radius tool spike back to the original hole, but at a slightly smaller radius to now cut right through and create the sound hole : And that's how far I've got so far. It's dinky, isn't it!!!! @Frank Blank might recognise the LAG next to it :

I ordered a tenor ukulele mould from Radius Dish UK - superb product but did take a long time to arrive: I also ordered a sitka spruce bookmatched pair, which I planed and scraped down to a touch under 3mm and joined: And also found in my small wood collection a full mahogany back and sides set - I have NO idea when and what I bought that for...but it would do nicely. Again, planed and scraped the sides down, this time to around 2mm and then out came the bending hot pipe. First a good dousing with water: Then on with the leather work gloves. With a bending iron, a hot pipe and a lot of patience plus plenty of spritzing is the key: One half nearly done: And now both! Once that was fully dry (overnight) I could cut the sides flush at either end and cut a mahogany tail block and neck block to glue them up: Then, having found the rubber-banded clothes pegs in a long-forgotten drawer, applied the kerfed (slotted) linings: And then that's the sides done ready for radius sanding :

As the purpleheart gets exposed to the light it will pinken markedly. Originally, I was going to put a plain ebony headstock plate over the mahogany...but maybe a bit of purpleheart there too? Got me thinking and experimenting. Hmmm...and was there room for a swift in there too? : Then add some dots and frets to the fretboard - this might work: Then back to the neck. No trussrod needed but, as it is a mahogany neck, maybe a little extra stiffness would not go amiss - so I slotted the top for a couple of hollow carbon-fibre beams: With that sorted, I could bandsaw the neck and start shaping that. Before shaping the heel, I added an extension to its length. The fretboard is just laid on top - it won't be glued on until the neck angle is fully sorted (a long time yet!): Did a bit more carving to start sorting the neck profile and, in the same way that you can't have too many clamps, you can never have too many swifts! You can tell the age of my iphone by the colour aberrations of its camera!! Starting to look like an acoustic guitar neck

Wow! Newborn or not, it's a big b****r!!

Looks good. I like those features at the back.