A Neck Takes Shape

There are aspects of guitar building I don't particularly look forward to, but they are a necessary part of the whole, without which the finished product could not exist.

Along with carving the soundboard braces, shaping the neck is surely one of the more enjoyable tasks. What the two processes have in common is that hand tools are a necessary part of the equation, and success is dependent upon intense concentration and an elevated sensory awareness. I could concede that there's a lesson to be had from that observation and attempt to lessen my reliance on power tools and machinery, but the sad fact is that I acknowledge my limitations and accept that for many steps I really do need mechanical assistance!

How about you, fellow builders? What are the best and worst parts of the guitar building journey for you? 

Cheers
Pete

Finishing Necks - a New Approach

I've been keen to try a new approach where finishing necks is concerned, and have opted to experiment with some oil finish products on a couple of the necks I'm currently constructing. Gloss finishes certainly look classy, but many players express a preference for a matte or satin neck finish that doesn't "grab", as some gloss finishes are prone to do.

Like many other aspiring builders, I finished my first couple of guitars with Birchwood Casey's Tru-Oil. It's easy to apply, relatively benign, and seems impervious to moisture once cured. What's more, it's readily available locally - always a plus for someone like me, living in far-away Australia. I recall reading of tests that showed it doesn't penetrate the wood surface deeply, which adds to its appeal for those builders unwilling to make the leap into sprayed or french polished finishes.

Despite Tru-Oil's attractions, I've recently investigated some alternatives and purchased small quantities of the products pictured above. A local gunsmith told me preferred the Livos product rather than Tru-Oil, and I've read reports by builders in the solid-body electric world who have used the Osmo product with great success. I guess it's best that I find out for myself!

The manufacturers' web sites describe how each of these products penetrate the wood and dry within it, rather than on top of it as Tru-Oil does. If I was finishing the body of an instrument, this would ring alarm bells - particularly where the soundboard is involved - but where necks are concerned, I'm not at all worried about the oil penetrating the wood surface; in fact, to my mind, this characteristic could offer advantages. Although I'm not expecting significantly different outcomes, I plan on trialing each of the two finishes to satisfy my curiosity once and for all.

As a nod to convention, I'll spray a gloss finish on the headstock face and the heel cap before I fine-sand, then oil, the remainder of the neck.

Product links:
Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil

Osmo Polyx Oil
Livos Ardvos Universal Wood Oil

Cheers
Pete

Headstock Binding Completed

Given the effort involved in binding a guitar headstock, I'm curious as to the upcharge a professional builder might reasonably apply, and whether a fee acceptable to the buyer could adequately compensate the builder!

Not only does my chosen headstock shape dictate that one of the sections of binding must conform to the tight curve at the extremity of the headstock, but mitering the individual binding pieces prior to gluing requires painstaking attention to detail. I know many builders cut these miters in-situ with a sharp chisel, but for better or worse, I choose to use my disc sander to do so prior to gluing them in place. As they're fitted dry in the first instance, I have the luxury of being able to discard any pieces whose miters don't meet my standards, with the need to start all over again acting as a strong incentive to get them right on the first attempt! With a light touch, and a patient approach that involves constantly checking for an exact fit, I'm able to produce tight fitting miters using this method.

Before I can think about mitres, however, I need to prepare the sections of ebony strip. The first step is to glue a black/natural purfling to one edge of the binding. I do so with the help of the clamps normally reserved for gluing kerfed linings, as the photo below shows. For the straight sections of binding, regular Titebond is adequate, but for those sections that will be bent into a curve - excluding the piece that fits the tightest curve and is treated differently - I like to use Titebond III, which is better able to withstand the heat involved in shaping the strips on my bending iron. Unless a piece of ebony is particularly reluctant to bend, I find they can usually be coaxed into shape without the use of water.

Gluing the black dyed and natural maple(?) purfling to the binding edge.

Maple veneer glued to what will become the inner face of the bindings.

Test fitting the first of the mitred corners, minus glue.

It goes without saying that accurately positioning the binding pieces as they're glued and taped into position, then tightly butting up the adjoining piece as it in turn is glued, contributes to an acceptable outcome. Call me strange, but when carrying out tasks like this that demand my close attention, I find that tidying up my work space before I begin unclutters my mind as well as my workbench - the Zen of guitar building in action perhaps!

One concession I make these days is to acknowledge that the tightly curved section can more easily be fabricated from two thin pieces of ebony rather than a single full width piece. As anyone who has attempted to bend ebony into a tight curve on a bending iron can attest, this makes life a lot easier. Once glued, scraped and sanded, it's almost impossible to detect that this section of binding has been laminated. To begin with, I run two pieces of ebony binding through the drum sander until they're half the desired binding width. The pieces can then be bent on the bending iron until they conform to the curve without the need to be forced into position. Once I'm happy with the fit, I laminate the two pieces of ebony, adding a layer of maple veneer to what will be the inner face as I do so.

Because this section of binding is fabricated from two layers of ebony, it's not possible to edge the piece with a strip of black and white purfling prior to bending as I did for the other pieces. Instead, I wait for the glue to dry, then clean up and glue one of the edges to a piece of black and white veneer sheet that has been prepared earlier. Once the glue has dried, the surplus veneer is trimmed from the inner and outer faces of the ebony strip, duplicating the look of the other binding pieces.

Completed headstock

Cheers

Pete 

Preparing the Headstock for Binding

I tell myself with each guitar I make that I'd save myself a lot of trouble if I left my headstocks unbound. Nevertheless, despite the fact that many of the top makers choose to omit this feature, and still manage to produce the kind of elegant, beautifully appointed instruments I aspire to build, the Macassar Ebony headstock overlay on my latest guitar was always destined to be bound in ebony, with a thin maple line inboard of the binding for the sake of contrast. Were I building guitars commercially, there would surely be an added incentive to leave the edge of the headstock overlay unadorned, perhaps offering the bound look only as an option - for an appropriate upcharge of course!

An earlier guitar featuring a bound headstock 

I use a laminate trimmer to cut the ledge for the binding. I select the appropriate bearing and make a test cut on a piece of scrap to confirm that the resulting rebate will match the width of my ebony bindings, with additional allowance for the maple veneer. Having done so, I adjust the depth of cut so that my first circuit of the headstock will cut the ledge just shy of the full depth required. My ancient Hitachi laminate trimmer isn't renowned for ease of vertical adjustment, so I repeat the process, increasing the depth of cut in tiny increments until the bit barely removes the last of the headstock material on the bottom of the ledge.

Routing the binding rebate

It's imperative when routing the ledge that I think carefully about the grain direction of the headstock overlay and the router bit's direction of rotation, with the potential for chipping and tearout always in mind. Proceeding carefully, I can climb-cut the most susceptible areas and end up with a clean, chip-free binding ledge.

The completed binding rebate.

I'll describe the fiddly process of preparing the individual binding pieces in my next post.

Cheers

Pete

Mitre Madness!

With the aid of lutherie's most underappreciated item of machinery, the disk sander, I've been preparing binding mitres and have almost finished these fingerboards and headstocks. 

Should I ever find myself building guitars for profit, bound fretboards and headstocks will definitely be an optional extra, priced accordingly. The rewards are great, but there's a lot of additional work involved.

Cheers
Pete

Guitar Necks: A Recent Improvement

I had time to daydream about guitar building over the last few months even if I didn't have opportunities to make progress in any practical sense. Among other things, my ruminations concerned construction of the neck in terms of how I might improve the design and produce more consistent results. Finally, with the university year over, I'm in a position to turn those thoughts into actions. 

In keeping with my usual method, two knock-down bolts extend through the headblock into threaded plugs embedded in the neck tenon. Although this is a popular and proven design, I've come to realise that there's an inherent weakness: if the bolts are overtightened through the soundhole by an inquisitive or over-zealous owner for some unknown reason, there's a chance that the force they exert on the plugs could eventually split the neck at the extremity of the tenon. However remote this possibility might be, it seems prudent to provide some reinforcement. With that in mind, I've modified my routing jig so that the tenon it produces is narrower than it once was, the idea being that I can build it back up to the desired width of 20mm by gluing a 2mm layer of wood to either side of the tenon as shown in the picture below. Crucially, the grain direction of these outer layers is at right angles to that of the neck shaft which provides good protection against splitting.

I'd like to achnowledge the luthier who came up with this idea; if I could only remember who they are I'd certainly do so!

I'll report on further improvements to my neck construction methods in an upcoming post.

Cheers
Pete

Back at the Bench - Headstocks

Hopefully, this post marks a transition to business as usual after the disruptive and sometimes stressful process of moving house. As if that wasn't enough of a distraction, our newly acquired house and garden required a time-consuming facelift, but with much of that work now behind us, I can at last devote some guilt-free time to my hobbies.

Macassar ebony headplate

To ease myself back into normality, I've spent a little time working on the headstocks of the two guitars I'm currently building. Using a masonite template as a guide, I've band-sawn the headstocks to within a couple of millimetres of their final shape then accurately affixed the template to the headstock face using the indispensable and ever-present double-sided tape; a few taps from a soft-faced hammer ensures that the template is firmly attached to the headstock's face. The laminate trimmer I use to complete this job is adjusted so that a bearing on the shaft of the router bit rides along the edges of the template. Using this arrangement, it's then a relatively straightforward task to reduce the headstock to its final shape.

I've learned the hard way that when using this method consideration needs to be given to grain direction and the trimmer's direction of travel if damage to the headstock is to be avoided. Trimming the extremities of the headstock's end where they transition into its long edges demands special attention. On the upper corner of the headstock corresponding to the bass side of the neck, I guide the trimmer in a clockwise direction, effectively "climb-cutting" as the bit begins trimming the headstock's end adjacent to that corner; on the opposite upper corner of the headstock corresponding to the treble side of the neck, I guide the trimmer in an anti-clockwise direction. As an added precaution, I trim the end of the headstock before I trim its sides so that any minor chipping will be removed when the long edges are trimmed as a final step. Needless to say, different headstock shapes will require their own unique approach.

Observing the same precautions described above, I've also routed out the ledge that accommodates the headstocks' purflings and bindings, this time using a spiral-downcut router bit and the trimmer's adjustable guide. The rebate on one of the headstocks is pictured below, with the final result on the other shown for comparison. Hopefully, I'll have both of the headstocks completed before the weekend is over.

Laminate trimmer, with bearing guide fitted

Binding rebate prepared

Bound and ready for clean-up

I mentioned in my previous post that my plan was to construct a purpose-built workshop at the rear of the house. It's still an attractive proposition, but after much thought, I decided that at this point in time I'm unwilling to sacrifice what could easily be another twelve months of my life to such a major project - spare time is in short supply as it is. Another significant factor in my shelving of those plans is that once we'd found homes for the assortment of bits and pieces we all seem compelled to accumulate, a generous amount of usable space remained in the double garage at the front of the house. Importantly, with an abundance of fluorescent ceiling lights in the garage, lighting is more than adequate for my purposes. If there's a downside to my use of the garage for guitar building, it's that my partner may find her car coated in wood dust from time to time - I'm sure she'll understand!

Cheers

Pete