Acoustic Guitar Build

Your woodworking talent is obvious. You are a fine craftsman, something me, and Im sure alot of us here hope to get anywhere close to your talent sometime in our lifetime.
Equally impressive, is your knowledge of woodworking tools, accessories, the correct way and reasons they are used, your patience, your eye for detail, these are things that alot of people dont have.(like me)
and in closing, your ability to build jigs to do the work is another thing all together. Accurate jig making is just as hard as woodworking.

IF you ever fly into JFK in NY, and want to hang out in Ny for a day or so, you are more than welcome to stay here as long as you give me a few pointers on the finer things of woodworking you seem to have nailed so well.
ofcourse, in return, I will take you out for the best pizza this planet has to offer, and some kosher deli, NY style.
 
Finished Acoustic Guitar

Not finished with you guys yet. It has been a while since I last posted but I have been busy. Finally got around to completing the guitar, staying up late last night doing the string setup in the peace and quiet of a late night workshop.

I must say finishing is probably my Achilles heal. Not that I am terrible at it but for good reason I have always used the Sam Maloof finishing method. Fool proof and ridiculously easy. And here on this I turned to spraying lacquer for the first time. There is a bit of a learning curve to spraying.

That said spraying takes some practice and patience. And on a couple of occasions my patience was wearing as thin as one coat of lacquer. I had to go back and redo a couple of times. In the end I have 12 coats of nitrocellulose lacquer sprayed on with my HVLP gun. Then I wet sanded it level with P-1000 grit and took it up to P-2000 grit wet sand. Where I messed up twice was on the buffing wheel so in the end I only hand buffed it.

The string setup was the final step to completing. It is not hard but needs to be done in order to do it correctly. First step is to string it up to tension and measure the bow in your neck with a straight edge. You want a slight bow in it measuring about 0.2mm. You should be able to adjust it with your truss rod. When that is complete put a capo between the 2nd and 3rd fret and measure the space between the string and the 1st fret. You should aim for around .05mm depending on how you like the action. You can adjust this by lowering your string slots on the nut, dropping the height of the nut by sanding the bottom (of the nut) or if you have to shim underneath the nut to raise it. Once that is done you go to the 12th fret and measure the space there. You should aim for around 2-2.5mm. The spacing from the first to the sixth is graduated. The low E being 2.5 and the high E being 2mm. This is due to the amount of vibration on the lower strings causing fret buzz. As I said I did the setup last night and am very happy with the action. I have it strung up with light strings.

So here are some pics of the final guitar. I will get around to doing a vid of me but don't hold your breath it may take me a while to get it done.

My spray setup: A drop curtain with the guitar hanging from above. Not the most ideal but it's what I got.
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Overall I am very happy with the final result. The guitar sounds good and plays well. The tone is bright and full in the tonal range. It took longer than expected (what else is new) but it was worth it. I learned a bunch of new woodworking skills. In body mass it is a respectable 2.2kg. (A Takamine I have is the same.)

May thanks to all of you for your support in this thread. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And quite frankly doing this project here made me much more conscience of my methods and processes.
 
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Sad, sad, sad........ this means one of my favorite follow along builds is complete:( BUT it sure was great and ended up with a great finish:) Superb job Alex, I love all aspects of it:thumb: play it well and often and am looking forward to the video:clap::clap::clap:
 
Alex, this has been a great ride. Thanks for taking us along. Your guitar is beautiful and marvelously crafted. I'm very happy to see that the tone is good. (Which I'd expect, seeing the care you put into building it, but you never know how it's gonna sound until it's strung and set up.) Someday I can only hope to make a guitar as nice. :bow: :bow: :bow: Thanks again!
 
Alex that is one amazing piece of work, this thread has been a thoroughly enjoyable read too :thumb:

I bet you will NEVER look at another guitar the same way you might have looked at it before you built your first one :clap:

So..... any ideas for the next one? :D
 
Once again many thanks for all your comments and support. I had a lot of fun making this project here. Not sure what the next one will be but I am thinking about doing a violin. First things first though, I have to make some shelves and a kitchen cabinet for the house.
 
What a beautiful guitar! :highfive:

Not to mention the fantastic job you did of documenting it for us. Thank you so much for doing that!

Can't wait to see the video and hear what it sounds like :thumb: :thumb:
 
How absolutely wonderful Alex !:thumb: What a beautiful guitar. Thanks for documenting the process for us and allowing us to follow along.

Now it's time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
 
What more is there to say it came out fantastic and i learnt a ton from this thread. You amaze me.:thumb:;)

Tom i dont consider the thread over yet....we still got hear the sound of this baby. Well wait patiently but it aint over till the baby makes sounds. Kinda like we seen the picture but does it work.;)

Thanks Alex again for all the effort you have gone to to take us along.:wave:
 
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