Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Do people pore fill bindings? I have a maple back & sides steel string on the bench and am pore filling the mahogany neck, the rosewood headstock veneer and the relatively broad rosewood tail graft, all of which have pretty obvious pores. The bindings are the usual around 6 mm deep by 2 mm width and...

Thanks for that Trevor. It is maybe time to step up from the simple version you described in the book.

I have to say how much better I found the DeWalt trimmer compared to the well known UK make that I have been using.

Thanks that was fascinating. It speaks of many years of acquiring the skills. I can barely believe that a single stroke with a plane could produce those thin veneers of marquetry intact.

Thanks for the reassurance. It was just a moment of panic seeing this slender piece of timber and thinking of all the stress it would be carrying. Alan I don't think I would even try a harder neck material! Also I am simply following the G&G methodology. Previously I was blending the tapered neck sh...

I didn't explain too well... this is the neck without fingerboard. I have a minimum of around 6 mm to the truss rod groove so that should be OK. I take the comments on neck feel but my real concern is whether it is going to be strong enough. I guess I could leave the fretboard at 6.5 to add a bit, b...

I have inadvertently taken my neck down to 15.4 mm around the 1st fret. It will get a bit thinner at the zero fret position. This a Steel string done in Mahagany. Is this too thin? Do I have to consider glueing on a veneer or is this going to work? It really feels very thin to me. I have already put...

Well I wish I'd read this a few days ago - assuming it had been written. I think that must have been what happened to me. My bindings came out less tall than the should have been. I thought I had sized them right so it could indeed have been the donut problem you mention. Bit difficult to see by ins...

Thanks Steve. It is entirely based on G&G's design with a bit of development looking at what others have done. (Oh and any reference to coal mining pit gear will earn a slap!) It's rather typical of a number of jigs one makes for the build process. You spend quite a lot of time and effort building t...

Well it is not a panacea. Routers whiring away are, at least for me, always a bit of a worry. However with this setup, using only spruce and maple back and sides I haven’t had any chip out. What I do get, doing the top corner is fuzz. Ie fibres of the spruce that have not been cleanly cut. I always ...

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I do as Wayne. It took a couple of iterations to get the router holding tower right. I use a counterweight to reduce the load the router puts on the guitar top. I have also modified the cradle so it will take all the shapes I use - have just bound one based on Trevor's medium SS and had to increase ...

That must have been very interesting; to see how your design has stood up to serious playing over a significant time period. I imagine it was falcate braced with CF so the top probably didn't move much but I wonder if it continued to compress a little? Did the saddle positions need lengthening at al...

Some very nice work there Francis, the rosette is very well crafted and looks great.

I see you are using unconventional back joint reinforcing. Is that just for fun?

As always nice looking work John. As always I am interested in the falcate bracing. You presumably beefed it up a bit for the extra strings so I wonder what height you ended up with? I wonder if you have had time yet to look at resonant frequencies, and perhaps particularly with this one, the bridge...

Yes. Muchly.

Again thanks. I didn't get the depth of groove as close as I meant to but hard block sanding as Trevor suggested did the trick. I will take it to a finer grit as suggested. It is NZ Paua. Real fancy looking stuff isn't it? It wouldn't do to use too much of it unless you are going for a real bling mo...

I have been unable to log in for a while so thanks to everyone for the advice. In the meantime my second go has been much better. After sanding the shell is a little dull, but I imagine the finish will bring that back up.

Forgive me if this is too basic a question but I am trying to use abalone for a rosette for the first time. I had to throw my first top out due to a mistake with the (falcate) bracing and didn't that hurt, but I had inlaid a layer of shell with a couple of purfling lines round it for the rosette and...

Now that I like!

I've been thinking of adding some tall jaws to my Parrot vice for dealing with nuts and saddles but that looks like a good solution. Thanks for the idea.

Images are fine from this side of the globe!

I realised that we already use a depth stop on our fret saw to cut specific depths and this could be used to do a series of cuts in a brace to be followed by a chisel. It worked well for me.

I have just been re reading this book by Daniel Levitin. While it is not immediately relevant to instrument making, for those who are interested in how we make, listen and respond to music it is fascinating. It does provide some deep background for our discussions of intonation and temperament. Alth...

No Martin thanks to you for keeping this going. Dave

Trevor you mention third party high quality collets for the dewalt routers you use. A quick search doesn’t give an obvious supplier. Without getting too commercial where should we be looking - the cnc tooling people perhaps...? I was surprised to see the specs of such devices, the best are seriously...

I am absolutely with Steve on this. The surfaces with titebond on them will not reglue properly. You are at an early stage with this soundboard. Cut down the line with the finest kerf saw/bandsaw you can find and just maybe the rosette can be fudged a little to look OK. It is my experience as an ama...