Pop Goes the Rosewood!

I know it's unfashionable in some quarters to get too enthusiastic about East Indian Rosewood, but after applying a first coat of epoxy pore-fill to the back of this guitar, I feel justified in getting just a little bit excited. Let's hope it sounds as good as it looks!

Cheers
Pete

Software for Luthiers: New Version of Luthier's Workbench Released

Luthier's Workbench is a software application built with the instrument builder and repairer in mind.

It's been some time since I released a new version, due mainly to the fact that recent changes have not been particularly significant. However, there have been enough of them now that it's high time I made the effort to release an update.

Click the image for a larger view.

Adding to the motivation for doing so is a recent support call that related to a user's inability to save changes to the application database. He had been able to add and edit records previously, but error messages suddenly began appearing, seemingly for no reason. Before I'd had time to investigate, the user saved me any effort and discovered for himself that the attributes of the folder in which the data file is stored had somehow been set to "read only" at some point.

He was able to resolve the problem himself without difficulty, but to avoid the problem altogether, I've made changes to the program logic in the new version so that the folder attributes are explicitly set to "read/write" every time the application is started.

You can see a summary of the changes incorporated in the new version HERE. 

For anyone who hasn't encountered this software before, here's a summary of its capabilities:

For the Builder

* Record woods, hardware and finish materials for your instruments.

* Record dimensions, weights, deflection measurements and resonant frequencies for any instrument part.

* Record standard model features as well as popular options such as soundports, bevels or fanned-frets.

* Assign prices to each model and build option offered to automate calculation of instrument prices.

* Enter finish schedules and notes to serve as a valuable reference for future builds.

* Use the Image Gallery feature to link images to individual instruments.

* Store address and contact details for all your customers and suppliers.

For the Repairer

* Build a price list for the repair services you offer as well as parts either sold directly or used in repair work.

* Automate the preparation of quotes by selecting from your list of repair services and parts.

* Print quotes, invoices, receipts, job sheets and build specifications.

* Keep track of quoted jobs, incomplete and completed work, as well as jobs requiring an invoice.

* Identify unpaid invoices.

* View customer build and repair job histories.

* Compare income and expenses and keep track of Sales Tax/GST/VAT.

* Filter income and expenses by a date or date range.

 You can download a free, fully-functional 30-day trial version HERE.

Cheers

Pete

Progress - Slow, But Relentless

Despite my slow progress, I'm pretty happy with the way this one's shaping up and amazed - yet again - how completing the gluing of the bindings restores the resonance that's lost when the channels for the purfling and bindings are routed.

Cheers
Pete

Binding and End Graft Preparation

I attach the black and white side purfling strips to the ebony bindings with Titebond 3, a glue that's much more resistant to heat and moisture than the regular Titebond I rely on for so many other guitar-building tasks. The clamps I use when gluing kerfed linings to the sides come in handy for this task too. If only I owned enough to prepare more than one binding strip at a time - tedious! Once the glue is dry, I scrape off any beads of glue and level areas where the edge of the purfling stands proud of the ebony bindings.

Ebony can be stubborn to bend and prone to breakage, particularly if there's run-out present in the binding strips; I always take the pessimistic approach and bend a few spares. In an effort to minimise breakages, I spray them with Super-Soft veneer softener the day prior to bending, and heat the bending blanket to a higher temperature than I'd use for more compliant woods. Although a little spring-back isn't the end of the world where bindings are concerned, I run them through two cycles of heating and cooling to help set the all-important waist bend. On this particular batch of 12 binding strips, I'm pleased to report that all 12 survived intact.

The use of ebony bindings might pose some difficulties in terns of bending, but it does at least provide some latitude when it comes to preparing close fitting joints. I do my utmost to achieve perfection, but usually miss the mark to a greater or lesser degree; fortunately, imperfections are easily disguised with ebony dust and a drop of thin CA glue.

A short length of binding to which I've glued and mitered a piece of purfling is a useful aid when it comes to fitting the end graft. I carefully trim the ends of the end graft using a disc sander, frequently using the binding fragment as a substitute for the actual bindings as a means of checking progress as I sneak up on the final length. Only when I'm completely happy with the fit do I glue and tape the end graft into place. I know many builders trim the graft and miter its corners after it's glued in place but, as much as I'd prefer to avoid the situation, I like having the option of discarding a poorly prepared graft before I've committed glue to it. With the end graft successfully sized and glued in place, I can remove the appropriate length of side purfling from the actual binding strips, then miter the purfling ends to achieve a tight fit where they butt up to the end graft corners.

The point at which the bindings meet at the tail of the instrument is most commonly dealt with by simply butting the ends of the bindings together, but I find I'm more likely to achieve an invisible joint by introducing a matching 45 degree bevel to the end of each piece - commonly known as a scarf joint. The scarf joint is cut in such a way that the end of the binding glued on second wedges tightly under the end of the first. I treat the purflings in the same way. At their full length, the purfling strips extend well past the end graft, so I leave them intact and the location of the scarf joint therefore ends up somewhere other than the half-way point. It's perhaps because the joints aren't where you would expect to find them that they seem much more difficult to detect.

In the interests of achieving a snug fit when it comes time to install the bindings, I find it's helpful to have filed or sanded a facet onto their inner corners. I do the same to the top outer corner of the binding so that the filament tape I use to secure the binding as it's glued isn't cut by the sharp outer edge when force is applied to the tape. To avoid an ugly gap, I'm careful not to round over the top outer binding edge where it will intersect with the fretboard edge. With this in mind, I round over the binding edge in this area with the neck temporarily attached.

On the guitar pictured, which has a florentine cutaway, the curvature of the plates - the back in particular - is such that the sections of binding destined for the cutaway must curve in two dimensions. To achieve a neat, gap-free fit here, I've taken inspiration from the Ervin Somogyi book and fabricated two lengths of binding - one for the top, and one for the back - that have the necessary compound curvature.

To prepare them, I held a piece of stiff card against the inner surface of the cutaway and ran a pencil around the perimeter of the top and back plates; the resulting pencil lines described the curvature I needed to introduce into my ebony strips prior to bending them to match the shape of the cutaway. To make things easier on subsequent guitars, I've prepared a piece of 6mm MDF whose opposing edges conform to these curves. With an ebony headplate attached to the MDF template, a flush-trim router bit gives me a clean edge that's guaranteed to conform to the floor of the binding channels without the need to apply force that would distort the strips and cause gaps between the binding and the adjacent purfling.

Despite the fact that I sprayed the the first pair of strips with Super-Soft and left them to dry overnight, my attempt at bending them to conform to the curvature of the cutaway failed; evidently there was some run-out in my ebony stock, and both strips broke before I'd managed to make much headway. Plan B involved preparing four curved strips - two for the top and two for the back - again using the template pictured. I glued purfling to the edge of one of each of the pairs then, with the help of my drum sander, sanded all of the strips to a thickness representing a fraction more than half the width of the binding channels.

At a thickness of just over 1 millimetre, they bent easily even without the use of Super-Soft, and I was able to laminate the bent pieces to form the two full-width binding sections required. The ebony I used was perfectly black, and the fact that the strips are comprised of two layers will be undetectable once a finish is applied.

Perhaps an overlooked component of binding preparation is the mental aspect. Along with many other (most?) guitar builders, I don't particularly enjoy the task of binding a guitar, and I delay each step until I feel I'm a state of mind conducive to producing a good result. Fabricating and fitting the bindings to the point of the cutaway, for example, requires great patience and precision, and I make sure I'm relaxed but alert before I tackle the job.

Please feel free to offer suggestions and comments - the learning never ceases!


Useful links:

Super-Soft 2
Kerfing Clamps

Cheers
Pete

Binding Complete - Well, Almost.

With spare time in short supply, any progress I do manage to make seems significant. The cutaway is not yet bound, and there's plenty of scraping and sanding to do but - what the heck - here's where I'm at!

East Indian Rosewood/European Spruce Modified OM

My Claro Walnut/Port Orford Cedar Modified OM is at a similar state of completion and, with another guitar in the form of a Claro Walnut/Redwood OM ready for spraying, I hope to have my compressor and spray gun working overtime very soon.

Cheers
Pete

Lutherie, and the Life-Cycle of the Guitar

While the beginning and end points of the guitar-building process can be clearly defined, it's instructive - not to mention humbling - to reflect on the fact that the work of a guitar builder represents only the first stage in the life of the guitar.

If we acknowledge that the luthier's weeks or months of toil serves only to produce a tool whose ultimate purpose is to produce music (hopefully beautiful music!) for many decades, then there's perhaps less of a temptation to view our instruments as ends in themselves. I certainly accept the fact that some of the guitars being built today can truly be regarded as works of art in their own right, but even in the unlikely event that my own instruments one day reach those same lofty heights, the reward I would most like to receive for my efforts would be to see them in the hands of skilled musicians, fulfilling their intended role to the limits of their potential, and contributing in some small way to the magic that music creates.

Cheers

Pete

Towards Better Tone

Living in Australia as I do, I have little exposure to the work of other guitar builders, and I sometimes feel I'm working in a vacuum, with very few opportunities to compare my own instruments with those of other builders. In fact, here on the west coast, I'm isolated even by Australian standards.

Practice makes perfect where fit and finish are concerned, and even without access to the work of other builders, I find it's easy to critically evaluate my own workmanship, identify areas where there's scope for improvement, and develop a strategy to address shortcomings. Personally, however, I find that making progress on the all-important tonal considerations is as easy as wading through mud. 

Part the problem, perhaps, is that there's no universally understood vocabulary when it comes to describing tone and, even if there were, correlating the complex properties of tone with the physical characteristics of the guitar's structure is problematic given that the individual elements behave as a single entity once the parts become a whole. The best I've been able to achieve is to slowly develop the courage to lighten my soundboard bracing.as much as I dare, in the hope that all will be miraculously revealed in a flash of inspiration. I'm still waiting.

So, fellow builders, what's the path to tonal nirvana? How do you evaluate your instruments' tone, how do you describe it, and what steps are you taking with a view to making better sounding instruments? And what does that even mean, given that we all hear things differently?

Cheers
Pete