Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

I have been making the contemporary classical bridges as shown in The Book for my falcate classical guitars for quite some time. Mostly with no issues. Each time I make one I consider removing one of the bridge laminates by installing a 1 mm spruce bridge patch laminated to the top with a sheet of c...

Modal Tuning example on a falcate braced 0012 Steel string. I built the guitar hoping to hit 95Hz, 180Hz, 226Hz. When the guitar was strung up I ended up with 97Hz, 186Hz and 250Hz. The top was a little low to reach my original goal. If I tuned the back down to 226Hz I would be well below 180Hz so I...

I hate to show my ignorance but is elastic modulus the same as Flexural modulus in this use or is just closely related? Trevor when you mention visco-elastic behaviour of wood, I am inferring that you are describing why a flexural modulus test diverges from elastic modulus test while testing wood pl...

More mass make it harder to move the top, thus slowing down its response. Adding mass does not increase stiffness on its own. Lowering braces reduces mass but by a larger factor reduce stiffness. Change in mass is a linear effect where change in braces height or top thickness is a cubed effect. The ...

Thanks


youtu.be/T8QkoEhlm-M

Here is a guitar I have been working on for a bit. It is my first guitar after two eye surgeries to get decent vision in one of my eyes. I took off building for nearly a year due to poor vision. One of the joy of turning 70. Now my vision is pretty good and I am again enjoying my time in the shop. H...

No real knowledge, but I always thought tradition. Finish Classical but not steel strings. I sort of cheat with steel stings and wipe on refined linseed oil (small bottle bought at art store). It wets the grain but is very thin.

Great looking guitar congratulations.

Timely for me as I was within a day of drawing out a caul for my falcate forms allowing me to clamp them like you do. Luckily I have had no issues bending the laminates.

I agree with Wayne that the crack can be glued down. Your picture caught my eye; how thick are your sides? I bend at around 2 mm actually .075-.080".

I struggled with this for awhile, now I do not even think about it. Use a shooting board if possible; even still it is hard. First thing that helped me is understand where my weight was on the plane. When starting a cut the back of the plane is cantilevered off the wood so the weight needs to be tow...

I understand the issue. That is why I cut and split the trees I need to make my instruments. It took me awhile before I was able to master resawing the billets with my hand made saw. I feel bad that I am not able to make my own steel and do rely on steel stock. But I am comfortable still calling my ...

I cannot see the fix. Along the grain I generally use super glue to glue in patch, finishing with rerouting the slot. I have lots of practice fixing these types of issues.

Just looking at your numbers, and I think you get this, Looking at the addition of mass replacing 1g of wood, in my experiment above, with 1g of Carbon Fibre / Epoxy is a red herring, rather look at the deflection 27 to 20. a giant change in the deflection thus stiffness using a material that does n...

I took Trevor's model tuning class after reading The Book and incorporating much of what I had learned into my build process. I also at the time I took the class had built a lot of guitars with the processes I developed after reading The Book. I found the class very rewarding. It was well structured...

I found that the bridge itself is a very stiff cross grain brace of the lower bout in a classical guitar. My classical guitars are falcate braced without a lower transverse brace. I get a 10 Hz rise in the top resonance frequency when I glue on the bridge. I get a drop on my X braced steel string gu...

Barry Daniels wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 23, 2023 3:22 am

I put a layer of cheese on my current build but it did not tell me anything. What did I do wrong?

You need the microwave amplifier for your Chladni patterns.

Very informative post! Thanks

sounds right to me nodes are points of no displacement vs antinodes where the most displacement is.

I am starting a new classical guitar. At the Guild of American Luthier convention I bought some Pacific Rim Tonewoods sonic graded tops with the Density and young modulus and Q provided. How well do they match up? Actually pretty well: Density 422 kg/m3 vs 411 and elong of 13.67 GPa vs 13.8 GPa. Whe...

I have made a handful of falcate classical guitars. Never as large as a Dreadnought. First question I would have is will you have a lower transverse brace? I do not. If you do not have a lower transverse brace and you have a thinner classical top than your steel strings the falcate braces should be ...

Those are fairly nasty looking VA plots, Martin. Lots of background noise or something else going on? I'm running mic output into laptop via a preamp....might have something to do with the background noise. Ive also got smoothing turned off. Guitar was lying on its side with neck on a neck rest so ...

Just throwing mud against the wall ... I build both slot head classical guitars and guitars with peg tuners. The headstock angle on my slot heads are 9-10° but I use 15° on the guitars that I use pegs to tune as they terminate the string higher. Headstock/neck angle is 15degrees. Strings leave the ...

Just throwing mud against the wall ... I build both slot head classical guitars and guitars with peg tuners. The headstock angle on my slot heads are 9-10° but I use 15° on the guitars that I use pegs to tune as they terminate the string higher.

Weird, did you check for loose components on the tuning machine? I assume you checked the nut as well? I sometimes temporarily lift the strings with tape at the nut to see if the sound goes away.