Plans for Portuguese Guitarra?

[Shane Woonton]

A friend has asked if I can make her a guitarra Portuguese. I've been digging around on the web and found plenty of images but no plans. Anyone have any ideas about how I might find plans for this beast?
Cheers,
Shane

[Nick]

A friend has asked if I can make her a guitarra Portuguese. I've been digging around on the web and found plenty of images but no plans. Anyone have any ideas about how I might find plans for this beast?
Cheers,
Shane

Markus (Charangohabsburg) would be your best bet Shane, he seems to be the master of finding all things obscure & obsolete .

[Bruce McC]

Hi Shane

This is not a link to plans for the guitarra, but it may be of interest.
Apologies if you have already seen it.



http://www.musinaction.pt/media/site_do ... Part_1.pdf

[kiwigeo]

A friend has asked if I can make her a guitarra Portuguese. I've been digging around on the web and found plenty of images but no plans. Anyone have any ideas about how I might find plans for this beast?
Cheers,
Shane

Markus (Charangohabsburg) would be your best bet Shane, he seems to be the master of finding all things obscure & obsolete .

Hes also worth contacting if you're after a decent watch, pocket knife or that funny cheese with all the holes in it (who pays for holes???)

[Mike Thomas]

And there's no nutriment in 'oles.

[charangohabsburg]

Markus (Charangohabsburg) would be your best bet Shane, he seems to be the master of finding all things obscure & obsolete .

Yes, of course I did a quick search but could not find a plan either, which is the reason why I first did not respond. But now, almost being called on to deliver something... the most useful thing I had found is this description with some measures that might be useful: www.jose-lucio.com. And here the google-translated site.
I think with this information plus some good pictures, plus maybe a plan of a similarly shaped instrument like a bandurria, bandola, spanish laúd (spanish lute) or irish bouzouki etc. you can draw your own plan.

[charangohabsburg]

[...] that funny cheese with all the holes in it (who pays for holes???)

Foreigners, of course. They love them, so we make (and sell) them, they buy them. If you want I also can send you some holes, without surrounding cheese, at a special price (exclusively for ANZLF members) of only 1 $ per hole.

Chee(r)s(e),

[funkytwang]

hi Shane
Markus has done well. You probably are not going to find a beautiful plan for this sort of thing but you can piece together info to create one yourself. That's part of the fun. Try emailing some makers for info like suppliers of that elaborate tuner hardware.

I found this site of a maker who also has some youtube vidoes (pics) of a build process. http://nunocristo.com/intro.html

Paul.

[Bruce McC]

Shane

Checkout Graham McDonald's "The Bouzouki Book".
A workshop guide to building Irish bouzoukis and citterns.
It contains plans.

[Shane Woonton]

Thanks guys!

Markus, that link is great and gives me all I need.... well, except for a set of those funky tuners. That's the next challenge

Cheers,

Shane

P.S. Do you have a volume price break on holes? Buy 5 get 1 free? And are they cheaper to ship in bulk? Perhaps we could see what the demand on this forum is and do a group buy

[charangohabsburg]

I guess that asking a builder would be the most straight forward way to spot a good resource for reasonably prized tuners.

Alternatively you could ask Ron Fernández in California (scroll down for his contact info) or Dave Hynds (apparently in the UK and France).

P.S. Do you have a volume price break on holes? Buy 5 get 1 free? And are they cheaper to ship in bulk? Perhaps we could see what the demand on this forum is and do a group buy

Sorry Shane, this is already a special offer, and due to the overwhelming demand we will have to increase tomorrow even the special offering price from 1 $ to 1.50. The price step is not as steep as it may seem because the holes will be 20% bigger than before. For all the cheapskates we will introduce next week downloadable size-less holes at 0.75 $ each.

[Allen]

Graham MacDonald may be able to help you find some of those tuners. I just had a look and see lots of instruments with them, but it's rare to find anything at all for sale. Markus pointed to the only page I could find with 8 and 12 string options.

[graham mcdonald]

That website that Markus posted (and kindly translated) has enough info to be able to build a guitarra I would think, especially if you have a few guitars under your belt. One thing to remember is that there are two styles of guitarra, with different string lengths, the Lisbon and the Coimbra. I don't know enough about the music to understand why they are different and it may or may not be important to your customer. The tuners will be available from Ron Fernandez, who is a very nice bloke and enthusiastic about these instruments. He has a gallery on his site with a good selection of pics of high end models which will give you a good idea of how they look. One thing to remember about them is that they are built under tension, with a pretty sever arch on the soundboard. The soundboard on the cheap one I have is 370mm wide and the arch drops away 4-5mm to the edge from the centre, just arched over the transverse braces as per the pic on that website. They commonly have the sides glued directly to the sides of the heel which is tapered, so the geometry of the sides is strange as well as they are vertical for most of their length, but then follow the taper of the heel. Again glued under tension I suspect. The finger board on this one is 12mm thick in the middle with a big arch as well. The neck it self is correspondingly thinner and I think the idea of the thick fingerboard is to add height to the bridge for break angle. There is pretty well a straight line along the centreline from the nut to the bridge, so they would probably be built face down in the tradition Spanish style. I could take some pics and measure a few things if you need them.

cheers

graham

[Nick]

If you're wanting holes at rock bottom prices Shane, & seeing as how Markus is too stingy to drop his prices. I've got a container load of different sized holes I bought as a failed export order from to states. I could mail them too you by the gross (minimum order of one gross), they've been manufactured to U.S Military standards (+ _- 0.0002" in diametric tolerance) & were to be for a top secret weapons development project but the DoD decided the stuff they had already put the correct sized holes into things (buildings, the ground, Tanks, bunkers, humans e.t.c) so cancelled the whole project so I got down on the job lot as they were such a good deal!

They're imperial holes of course, being American, but I can supply a specially manufactured tolerancing tool (Made in Switzerland to cuckoo clock precision) for resizing the holes to metric. All the best Swiss cheese manufacturers use these as their 'go to' sizing tool, and the blade will last a lifetime.

It's a simple matter of holding the hole between thumb & forefinger & rotating it past the specially ground edge (developed by NASA for this specific task) and shaving until the hole meets the required size.

[P Bill]

Thanks for the links everybody, always fun learning about another instrument and cheese covered holes.

[Shane Woonton]

Graham,

Thanks so much for the info. You're right, I think there is enough on that website to get me through most of the build. I may get in touch with you a little later regarding some specific measurements on your example. They seem to have a pretty tight radius on the fretboard so I get the point about the relatively thinner neck. One question on my mind was the neck angle and your point re the break angle at the bridge makes sense. I'll draw it out and see how it looks. One question for now - what's the bridge height on yours?

I have two other projects to complete before I can begin this one and a baby due in 8 weeks so it could be a while before I get started.

Cheers,

Shane

[graham mcdonald]

Bridge height is around 16mm. Here is a pic of it with a ruler for scale. Made of bone as is the tradition. The pic will give an idea of the fingerboard radius as well

cheers

g

[Paul B]

Wasn't there also a plan in The Big Red Books?, don't have mine with me to check.

[kiwigeo]

Wasn't there also a plan in The Big Red Books?, don't have mine with me to check.

Book 3 Page 108-117. Article by Ronald Louis Fernandez. Originally published in AL #27 , 1991

[Shane Woonton]

Graham, thanks again. That bridge pic shows me a lot. And Ron Fernandez' site also helps.

Cheers,

Shane

[Cafon]

Hello everyone I know all the process of making Portuguese guitar.
Wath do you need to know?

[kiwigeo]

Hello everyone I know all the process of making Portuguese guitar.
Wath do you need to know?

Who you are would be a good start

[matthew]

Hello everyone I know all the process of making Portuguese guitar.
Wath do you need to know?

Who you are would be a good start

friendly

[Bruce McC]

Hello Cafon

Welcome to the forum and thank you for offering to share your knowledge.
The sharing of information and experiences is one of the great strengths of this forum.
As a new member it is a good idea to introduce yourself by giving a brief outline of your
background and particular interests. You may find that there are other members
living nearby that you can meet up with face to face.
I am sure your knowledge about guitarras would be welcome on this forum.

[kiwigeo]

Hello everyone I know all the process of making Portuguese guitar.
Wath do you need to know?

Who you are would be a good start

friendly

I thought it was....note the smiley.