Hi Everyone who has posted here, it's great to hear your comments and many thanks for the welcome.To all of you who have said one of those days I might just build a guitar I can only say don't delay start today. For fifty years I dreamed about building a guitar and that's what I had for fifty odd years.....just dreams. It's strange how if you hadn't been in that certain place at that certain time things in your life would have been a whole lot different like.... the day I walked into my local shop picked up a guitar mag and there it was............................BUILD YOUR OWN GUITAR.............. and I'm hooked.
Next thing I do is tell my friends.......their always asking me what the latest project is............so tell them all I'm building a guitar. Can't back out of that one.
Westley ; many aspects of the construction worried me and fretting was one of them but the old adage of measure twice cut once is the best advice I ever took on board. I followed Dave King's instructions and he didn't let me down his division of the scale length for placement of the frets was spot on and the guitar plays perfectly in tune at each position. I hope to start another acoustic this spring as we now have two grandchildren and I'd like them both to have one.
Stuart; round work I'd love to make but you can't do it all.......so Drew's no kin of mine and the only eggs I can make are well and truly scrambled whilst if I do manage to get down on my knees I can't get back up.
Barry; the woods are Sycamore back and sides with spruce top, neck is a laminate of Walnut and Sycamore, headstock overlay is Walnut, bridge rosewood and edge binding Walnut oh! and the fingerboard is the same Walnut. I had the guitar all ready for the strings and went into my local music store for some lemon oil for the fingerboard the young lad in the store asked me was it a maple fingerboard and explained that you don't put lemon oil on maple to which I answered no it's a Walnut fingerboard. He stared at me and pointedly informed me it won't be walnut it'll be Rosewood. Ah the pleasure!! what a great way to get a gloat in.
When friends ask is it a kit I take great pleasure in telling them that this is a one off highly
personal instrument crafted from wood which grew mainly in Scotland.
I found a sawmill at Dalkeith Scotland with tone-woods for violin and cello at very reasonable prices. The Sycamore tree grew in Dunbar and was felled in 1996 to make way for a cement factory, the top is of Check Republic Spruce, the sawmill owner purchased the tree in 1985, local Walnut is nonexistant in Scotland so I had to make do with some German grown stock.
Humidity held me back from gluing up the guitars body. I had all the parts ready to go early July, but it was mid August before we had a stable few days humidity around 50%.
Bending the sides worried me as I had no means of bending wood and not much idea how it was done however my home made bending rig worked a treat..........hot air gun
married to a hollow metal tube kitchen table leg plus some nuts and bolts and sheet aluminium as a heat shield did the business. Perhaps I was lucky the side bending was relatively easy you just have to take your time and when the wood starts to give a little ease back and then come at it again.
Building the neck then carving it was another part which bothered me a bit and after making a mess of my first try I was lucky with my second it has a couple of boobs but I'm still happy with it.
Shooting the laquer finish had me really up tight as I had read so much hype about it and never sprayed anything before so much so that the project lay in the white for most part of a year before I finally made a stab at it. When the last coat was on and it was hanging there just looking at me, I thought......"you beaut I've cracked it and I felt absolutely great".
Sorry if this post is rather long.