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A very special project to me - may I?

Now for part 16 - Time to really give the fretboard some attention. Though, the road gets bumpy and I do get a little ticked - but the only thing to do is keep on keepin' on!

 
Oh man Jason i feel your pain. Glad u managed to recover the fretboard.
You mention it being rosewood isnt that very black for rosewood? Looks more like ebony to me.
Great save and i think u pretty courageous to recover so well.

Question i have and was thinking is could you not have used your cnc to cut that pearl plastic given you already have those cut outs programmed if you cut them with an offset to the cut out size and then sqaured them up with your sanding setup.
Would think the starting edges would be straighter than scroll sawing tiny bits.
This whole guitar is proving you got amazing patience.
Great video excited to see it all come together.
Btw watching previous video i was wondering as u put the sandwhich together how you were going to get the center mold out. Lol pitty someone watching live did not get hold of u.
Its always easy to spot mistakes when one is looking over someones shoulder versus actually doing the work. Good recovery. Other thing is how else could would you have done that. From where i am i was thing something was needed to hold the outer pieces in place as u clamp. And u can always cut another mold on cnc so no harm done really.

While i am at it i have been wondering do u plan on ever making more than one of these guitars? Kind of make a few more to recover some cost u put into it all?
Surely there would be a market for them given how close u are trying to be to period guitar. ?

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk
 
Awesome questions, Rob - lemme address 'em all... But first, thank you for the great feedback - it's very encouraging to hear people are enjoying the journey :)

Rob Keeble said:
You mention it being rosewood isnt that very black for rosewood? Looks more like ebony to me.
Click to expand...

Yep - it's pretty dark stuff for a rosewood. Though it's the same (or very close to) species that was probably used originally. It's got hardly any open pores, which is really rare in this stuff. It's why it's so valuable to me. Very dense stuff. The redness of it doesn't show up on camera very well. it's there, it's rather subtle, but it's there. I have a block of ebony waiting in the wings, though, just in case. I'd be fine with using ebony for the fretboard if I had to. Hopefully I won't have to!


Rob Keeble said:
Question i have and was thinking is could you not have used your cnc to cut that pearl plastic given you already have those cut outs programmed if you cut them with an offset to the cut out size and then sqaured them up with your sanding setup.
Would think the starting edges would be straighter than scroll sawing tiny bits.
Click to expand...

Yes - most certainly I could've used the CNC for the actual inlays themselves, too. The biggest reason I didn't is because I've never done an inlay with the CNC yet and wasn't ready to test my patience with that journey just yet. The CNC is great, but I can see enough slight variations that I can predict doing inlays with it will take some tuning and testing. Long story short, I'm chicken to do it that way yet. However, I know that I don't have the patience (or the interest) in doing fancier shaped inlays by hand. I tip my hat to those who are great at doing marquetry and inlay of organic shapes. That's an area I simply don't think I could do - not yet, anyway. I will do inlays using the CNC eventually, for sure. It'll probably be my preferred method for doing all my inlays one day. I just don't have much desire to develop the "by hand" skill at this time. But i did these by hand since they were simple and, frankly, wanted to see if i could do it.


Rob Keeble said:
Its always easy to spot mistakes when one is looking over someones shoulder versus actually doing the work. Good recovery. Other thing is how else could would you have done that. From where i am i was thing something was needed to hold the outer pieces in place as u clamp. And u can always cut another mold on cnc so no harm done really.
Click to expand...

I'm still pondering how I would've done it differently. The simplest method would've been to have flush trimmed the back after it was dry first - then put the top on. I'm not entirely certain the mold is necessary once the back's on, either. It may be perfectly safe to take the mold out of the picture for doing the front. Will have to experiment there, I think.

I have gotten lots of advice about making the mold hinged or two-piece. Problem is, with this shape, it can't be two pieces. The waist area of the body makes it impossible to split across the width. The horns up by the neck area make it impossible to be split along the length. It'd have to be a minimum of 3 pieces, possibly hinged at each horn and hinged at the heel. Doable, for sure, but I'm hoping the simpler methods of flush trimming beforehand or eliminating it for the 2nd gluing entirely to be viable instead.

It may also suffice to make the mold out of a single 3/4" or 1/2" thick sheet of baltic birch - this would leave plenty of room for flush trimming it free after both faces are on..

Lots of ideas ... gonna have to experiment some, I think...


Rob Keeble said:
While i am at it i have been wondering do u plan on ever making more than one of these guitars? Kind of make a few more to recover some cost u put into it all?
Surely there would be a market for them given how close u are trying to be to period guitar. ?
Click to expand...

I'm definitely going to make more guitars. More of the 335? most likely someday - but I'm in no hurry today. It's a lot of work and I'd have to really need a good reason (kinda burning up my own personal good reason for THIS build). I can't envision selling any of my guitars yet. To this day, I have only built 1.5 guitars in my life. I need a little more mileage before I will feel comfortable taking money for one. I need to know what I'm doing first.

---

Great questions, Rob. Thanks for taking the time to ask. I really love the conversations this project has started with people all over the world. It's truly humbling to learn that walking out to the shop and hitting record is interesting to so many people! :)
 
As you were applying vacuum to glue the front and back on, I couldn't help but wonder why the outside air pressure didn't crack one or the other.

BTW, I absolutely love this series. You're doing really well!
 
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Bruce Haugen said:
As you were applying vacuum to glue the front and back on, I couldn't help but wonder why the outside air pressure didn't crack one or the other.

BTW, I absolutely love this series. You're doing really well!
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Thanks, Bruce!

I'm no scientist - but i believe the physics are such that i basically just proved that my skins were stronger than atmospheric pressure, I guess.
 
Coming along nicely. I was screaming at the video as you were gluing the front side on..."How are you going to get the mould off!!!". ;) Sorry you couldn't hear me. :wave: Nice recovery(s) though.
 
Darren Wright said:
Coming along nicely. I was screaming at the video as you were gluing the front side on..."How are you going to get the mould off!!!". ;) Sorry you couldn't hear me. :wave: Nice recovery(s) though.
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Lol this is what i was doing too.

Its very much like when you sit next to someone on the computer and they busy having to have their mind and body move the mouse and type and all you watching need to be doing is observe what is going on on the screen. You spot the error happening before the person at the computer can move the mouse.

Happens to me all the time when i use a projector and do big screen real time work on a spreadsheet with a client.

If i were a student at MIT i would love to do a study on this topic. Kind of shows how fast or how slow our human system can be. My guess is kids together would do the same just faster but i wonder about that.
 
Part 17 is out! In this episode, I go after the fretboard inlays once more - with some glue tests as well. I also did some test cuts of the pickup pockets to make sure they're the right size for the pickups.

 
Man, do me a favor and get yourself a mini bench to work off of on top of your other one, my back hurts just watching you work on it. ;)

Really enjoy tagging along on this, have learned a dozen or more things from your trials. :thumb:
 
That's definitely on my list of things to build. Doing handcut dovetails was the big eye-opener. Thankfully the parrot vise is lifting things up pretty good for me on this build.
 
You chose well in not clamping the bejesus out of those inlays. Unlike the PVAs, hide glues and most other wood glues, epoxies CAN suffer from excessive clamping pressure, starving the joint.

Nice recovery on the inlay glue failure!
 
In this episode I tackle the electronics access tunnel, flush trimming the body skins, routing for the pickup pockets as well as the rough-in for the neck pocket. Quite a bit of good progress!

 
Ya had me biting my nails during that flush trim. Those cool jigs did the job perfectly. This is a jig intensive business and it doesn't hurt to have a CNC either. Awesome series. Thanks, Jason.
 
As I watched this and thought about Ted's comment on jigs (which is right on the mark), it occurs to me that we're seeing only the end product of an awful lot of thought and planning. Everything, well, mostly everything, seems to go very smoothly, but that happens only when there's been a lot of previous thought and rehearsal of the process. Do you have any idea of how long, how much time you put into this build before you actually started?
 
Bruce Haugen said:
As I watched this and thought about Ted's comment on jigs (which is right on the mark), it occurs to me that we're seeing only the end product of an awful lot of thought and planning. Everything, well, mostly everything, seems to go very smoothly, but that happens only when there's been a lot of previous thought and rehearsal of the process. Do you have any idea of how long, how much time you put into this build before you actually started?
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Bruce - thought, yes. When I'm into a project like this, my mind is on it pretty much 24/7 in some capacity. Even at work, as soon as whatever task is done, my brain snaps back over to this project until I need it for work again - little 3-5 second spurts all day long. All my idle thought goes to it.

Rehearsal, not too much. You're pretty much seeing every single step I take along the way. I cut out very very little. And here in the middle it's been pretty smooth despite the inlay hangup. At the beginning, the first 3-4 parts were testing the process and I filmed that purposely because I think there is a need to shed light on what actually goes on in a shop with a project that's new to a woodworker. It's important to me to show as much of the trials and failures as possible because no project I've ever done has gone without those very real parts of the puzzle.

The adaptation in the middle when you accidentally cut something in the wrong place or the "design opportunity" when an inlay fails, etc. Those things are what i believe make us better woodworkers and I don't see a lot of that being shown by the big names in instructional woodworking videos. In my opinion, the best education is in the failures - and everybody has 'em so why not show how at least one person recovers from them.

At least that's the guiding principle for my videos - show as much as possible even if that does mean a 35-part video series. The people who know this stuff can skip and the people who don't will hopefully see how I tackle them and my hope is there's something to be gleaned just by watching the process happen instead of being classroom-style instructed on how it's supposed to go. I've never been much of a classroom type :D


Thanks very much for watching, everybody. The feedback is awesome :)
 
Another good video Jason.
I have some questions/comments though.

How come u did not get tear out routing through your templates with the templates not being in contact with the surface?
I was expecting u to lay down some blue tape to protect tge surface.

Then when u were routing the edge you mentioned doing it in multiple passes and i was expecting you would use a oversize bearing for the initial pass but you described a full normal 3/4 flush trim bit.
I was shuddering as you cut those edges how did you control not taking off too much in one go.
I guess the one think thats impossible to convey in a video is the feel.
Thats a cool jig that holds the router for the edge routing.

Now my knowledge of guitars is absolute zero so please take this as a comment from an utter idiot on the subject.
I find it hard to believe or grasp/accept that the neck is going to attach to the body with only that small mortise to secure it and yet stand up to i presume the guitar being able to be picked up by the neck with that joint supporting all the disproportionate weight of the body attached.
So doew one need to be gentle with this guitar assembly after complete?
I guess i am also thinking that when strung over the human neck i presume both sides of the strap hook up to the body ?
Dunno it just seems mechanically suspect , but then i am an "if in doubt build it stout kind of character".
Would like to see some still close up shots of the edge joints now they cleaned up just to see how well the mating of that but joint between side and top went.
I recognise you building this period correct however part of me wanted to see that joint being a rabbet cut by cnc into the top underside for the edge to ride in. Lol.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk
 
Rob Keeble said:
Another good video Jason.
I have some questions/comments though.

How come u did not get tear out routing through your templates with the templates not being in contact with the surface?
I was expecting u to lay down some blue tape to protect tge surface.
Click to expand...

The main reason was that I forgot and didn't feel as nervous as when I did the F-holes. The top veneer is considerably thicker than the other ones (by at least 1/32") and if I'd gotten any tearout, I probably could clean up most of it by the final sanding phase. Plus, the pickup rings cover that whole area - you'd never see the edges in normal use (though that's not a good enough reason to go all cavalier on it, I admit).

Rob Keeble said:
Then when u were routing the edge you mentioned doing it in multiple passes and i was expecting you would use a oversize bearing for the initial pass but you described a full normal 3/4 flush trim bit.
I was shuddering as you cut those edges how did you control not taking off too much in one go.
I guess the one think thats impossible to convey in a video is the feel.
Thats a cool jig that holds the router for the edge routing.
Click to expand...

You're on the right track - it was all by feel. For the most part, the bearing only touched when I had a very tiny bit left to remove. I wasn't riding against the side unless it was feeling pretty smooth going. When taking more than about 1/8", I tend to do that. You're right that you couldn't really get the sense of feel from the video but there were a few places where I went back over the same area multiple times and that's when I was doing it by feel. The other part of this is taht the flush trim didn't need to be all that great since there's another step that will route a rabbet around this same edge. I suppose flush trimming wasn't really necessary but cutting a 1/16" deep rabbet at the same time felt a little too risky at the moment - I kinda wanted a chance to get it flushed up and then work out the details after that.

Rob Keeble said:
Now my knowledge of guitars is absolute zero so please take this as a comment from an utter idiot on the subject.
I find it hard to believe or grasp/accept that the neck is going to attach to the body with only that small mortise to secure it and yet stand up to i presume the guitar being able to be picked up by the neck with that joint supporting all the disproportionate weight of the body attached.
So doew one need to be gentle with this guitar assembly after complete?
I guess i am also thinking that when strung over the human neck i presume both sides of the strap hook up to the body ?
Dunno it just seems mechanically suspect , but then i am an "if in doubt build it stout kind of character".
Would like to see some still close up shots of the edge joints now they cleaned up just to see how well the mating of that but joint between side and top went.
I recognise you building this period correct however part of me wanted to see that joint being a rabbet cut by cnc into the top underside for the edge to ride in. Lol.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

So in regards to strength... Tone is given priority over rigidity for the most part. You don't have to be gentle, though - it's not like a Torres acoustic that is quite literally built just barely strong enough to not collapse. That one tenon is absolutely strong enough provided it's cut well and fit tightly. You've got three decent sized surfaces mating together and all three are long-grain to long-grain joints - the grain is for the most part parallel in both pieces and has the best chance possible at staying together. Also, the shoulders of the tenon help to keep some of the stress off the main joints. they move the moment arm so there's less mechanical advantage working against the glue.

As for the strap - that's actually attached to the body (basically) on both ends - one right on the heel block of the neck about 1/4" from the tenon joint - very little force gets applied by the strap there.

I can understand the urge to "biuld it stout" but in the case of guitars, that would be a bad thing for the sound of it. With this stuff it's more of a "build it stout enough" kind of thing. They're stronger than they look - which is part of the beauty, in my eyes. :)

Great questions! thanks for watching and the great feedback :)
 
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