Q&A / comment catch-up

In my online absence I've collected quite a few comments and questions, going back all the way to the end of 2014.
First off let me just apologize for letting it go for so long.  Next, I need to thank everyone who has taken time to check out my site here and especially those of you who have left comments. The feedback has all been wonderfully positive and inspires me to keep up with the site. Thank you so much!
As for questions about instruments, I'll go through some more general ones first, then get into the more specific ones.

To begin with, I have to announce that I am NOT taking any commission work. The one instrument I was hired to build through this blog almost ruined luthiery for me completely. I was really unhappy with the final product and felt like I had failed my client and myself. This was a huge part of my neglecting the blog (along with the shift to piano work).
A full post on that instrument is coming soon.

Here's a sneak preview of the headstock, which is actually one part of the instrument I am happy with.

Another commonly asked question is if I have plans or blueprints for any of my instruments.
Allow me to get a little art-defensive right now... No. Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered beyond belief that anyone would want to build something based on something I've built. I definitely want to encourage anyone who is interested in building string instruments; and it's true that going off of existing plans is extremely helpful especially when just starting out. But, I feel as though designing is part of the building and learning process, and it comes down to pulling out a pencil and paper and going at it.
I have used existing plans or instrument designs as a starting point for instruments I've built, but I tend to re-draw a lot and make the instrument look like mine rather than something that's already out there.
For instance, the Baroque guitar I made was traced from Stradavari's guitar plans. All the aesthetic designs got changed from the original, though.

Another example is a guitar I built for a friend. He really wanted to me to make him a guitar but he also really wanted a Telecaster Thinline. I got as close as I felt I needed to in order to capture the sound and feel he was looking for without just doing a copy.

The thing is, there are already enough Fenders, Gibsons, and Martins in the world; do we really need any more?
Again, please don't take this as me being proprietary or secretive. I just have strong personal opinions about creating original instruments. Also, I'm pretty lazy and don't make proper blueprints. My planning usually ends up on numerous scraps of paper and re-drawing everything out to print copies does not interest me.
That all said, I am more than willing to answer questions and share experience, ideas , or measurements about any of my instruments.

OK, onward!

A number of people have asked about buying some of the instruments on my blog, especially the charango. Well...again I'm going to claim my internet ineptitude as a big part of ignoring that issue. I don't like conducting business online. I know, I should go back to the 90's with that attitude, but I'm still not ready to take that step. I do intend to sell some of my instruments (I sure ain't playing them); I just need the right outlet to do it.

The charango is a bit of a different story. It is another of my instruments which I'm not satisfied with how it turned out. It's just too quiet! I think I need to thin the top somehow. Unfortunately some spots on the inlay are already dangerously thin, and I fear sanding through if I just work from the outside.

At some point I plan to try improving the sound (maybe it just needs better strings). Until then it's not really for sale.
In the future I may figure out how to sell my instruments online, considering that going to local music stores might not be an option for quite a while.

Since we're on the topic of the charango, let's start there with some of your questions.

Looks nice. Did you by chance record an audio/video of how it sounds? 

on el charango

Yet another thing I'm not rightly equipped for. I intend to make some sort of recordings of as many of my instruments as I can. The recording quality may not be the best until I have better gear. I should probably do a before/after recording of el charango if I do end up working on the soundboard.

Looks great! Why is the sound hole oval? 

on small scale steel string guitar

The small guitar, el charango, and quite a few other of my instruments have oval soundholes. I guess I was inspired by really old Gibson guitars and mandolins. I always thought they just looked classy. Except my ovals go with the strings rather than across the strings like Gibsons. The thought behind that was to focus the soundwaves coming out of the hole right onto the strings and, I don't know, energize them? That's probably bathtub science but it makes for a good justification to use oval soundholes.

The inlay material you used were all natural stuff or man made material as well? If man made, when sanding it down at the end to make is flush - after the epoxy, dont the man made face gets scratched and destroyed? 

on my greek bouzouki

The bouzouki inlays are made from abalone, pink and gold mother-of-pearl, black pearloid, and green swirl acrylic. Yes, when the epoxy filler is sanded down, all of the inlay material gets scratched. I will typically use a sharp scraper to get rid of the excess epoxy. This creates way less surface scratching. After that only very fine grit sanding is needed (600 then 1000). Sometimes I'll buff out the inlay on the buffing wheel as a last step.

Dear Joel, I am simply amazed at and appreciate so much, the explicit way and Detail you have indulged in to articulate all the different steps of your reconstruction. Question 1: What is a "tuner"? Is that the metal liners of the frets? Question 2: Why in the world can a luthier not glue wall paper into the bowl and just leave it natural Wood the way it is? ( I will never get this part of the Greek touch, but go ahead and try to explain it to me.) What is now missing is for you to Play a hasapiko or zeibekiko on your Bouzouki and put the Video on your site! Thank you for the wonderful Bouzouki blogspot. 

Nik. on my greek bouzouki

I suppose by "tuner" I meant tuning machine. As far as the reasoning behind the wallpaper glued inside lots of Greek bouzoukis: the inside seams of bowl-shaped instruments can look pretty rough, especially if veneers are used between each of the staves. If you consider how much time is put into the outside appearance of fancy bouzoukis, then why wouldn't you want to make the part you see through the soundhole look flashy, too? I just did it to follow tradition, I guess. Plus I happened to have that paper which matched my inlay design so well, I couldn't not use it.

Would the diaphragm out of an air horn work as a resonator? I have some old truck air horns I was toying with building one of these out of…thanks,

Ted W. on resonator violin

I hadn't thought of that but it seems like it might work really well. If you did go with the air horn diaphragm I'd be interested to know how it turned out.

I've been thinking quite a bit around this concept and electro-magnetic amplification. I've Read somewhere that some early solid Fender had placed a coil under a floating bridge, reading the bridge movement rather than the strings. The signal was weak but any way there was a signal that allowed for amplification. There are some issues with magnetic pu:s and bowed strings. Placing the coils correctly to be sensitive to horisontal string vibration, although it's perfectly possible. However, a coil should also be able picking the needle vibrating against a resonator. Probably this would produce an amplified tone somewhat more alike the typical acoustic resonator sound. 
on resonator violin

I guess I'd agree that a magnetic coil pickup could read the vibrations of the needle, or in my case bolt, attached to the resonator. It would probably involve a specifically designed pickup and some more elaborate mounting. A piezo pickup could likewise be attached more directly to the resonator to produce a signal closer to the sound coming from the horn. I mounted piezos to the bridge just because that's what I was familiar with.

The left arm should be stretched out all the way to the back of the neck. 

violin tuner on resonator violin

Correct? Unless you play lefty? No idea.

So thank you to anyone bothering to read this far. I will try to keep things interesting in upcoming posts. Sorry for being rambly after taking forever to post anything at all. Feel free to ask me more; I may not be very helpful, but I'll try to respond as best as I can.

a long overdue update

I can't believe it's been nearly 6 years since my last post. 

A lot has happened in this time; mainly I've switched from working in a guitar shop to working in a piano shop. Leonard Shapiro Guitar Repair had been sharing shop space in Wells Pianos' warehouse building. There were occasionally slow spells in the guitar repair business; we were a very small-scale shop. During one such slow time I was basically at the point of needing a second source of income. Kieran, the owner of Wells Pianos, noticed me job hunting one day, snatched me up, and dragged me into the darkside.

I worked at both shops for almost 2 years until the building we were in got sold and we all got kicked out. Leonard closed down the shop at that point and I began building up the shop space at Wells' actual store location.

I started out by learning to string and have moved up to doing complete rebuilds. This involves replacing the pinblock, soundboard, keytops, bridge caps, and then re-stringing. 
I mostly taught myself everything as I went and more or less had to build all the fixtures, jigs, and tools for doing each part of the job. 
Here is the soundboard press being built, and behind it is the soundboard drying box. The spruce panels and all of the brace wood I make the boards out of is stored in there to lower the moisture content of the wood. On the right are clamping cauls for gluing the board into the piano.

So I'll kind of go through my rebuild process; I don't have pictures of each step so I'll need to brush past some details for now.

I start by removing the old strings and tuning pins, then hoisting out the cast iron plate.

The first part to get replaced is the pinblock. Here a new block is already installed and the soundboard has been removed.

Next the braces (or ribs as they are called in the piano world; soundboards are called bellies) are cut to rough shape and radiused on the top side. Then they are fit into pockets on the rim of the piano frame.

After the ribs are fit flush to the rim, the board blank is cut to rough outline and fit snugly into the piano. The rib locations are marked to the underside of the board where they will get glued.

The ribs get glued on in a giant go-bar press. The gluing platform is dished out with a crazy compound radius. On the right you can see the arch against the bottom of the straight-edge laid in front of a rib being glued in.

I made a rib-shaping plane from a wooden Russian hand plane I found in a thrift store.

After planing the ribs down, the bridges (which have been re-capped with maple) get located then glued onto the board. The bridges get clamped by screwing them down through the ribs.

Once the glue is dry the screwholes are plugged with dowels. Other dowels also get drilled into the bridge between the ribs. Those are glued in with maple caps.

The underside of the completed soundboard. Now it will get masked over the gluing surface around the edge, then shellacked.

Now the board gets glued into the piano using lots of clamps and the cauls I showed before.

 The soundboard is installed. Holes for the plate bolts get drilled out and the plate is set to its correct height. The plate height determines the final height of the bridges in order to get the proper string angle. 

Here they are starting to get notched out for measuring.

The bridge caps are planed down to final height and then the pin holes are located and drilled.  

Graphite paint is applied to the caps as a string lubricant.

Now comes my favorite part, the bridge notching. I carve out a scoop in front of each set of pin holes. These are the tools I use.

The bridge pins get hammered in and the tops are filed flush much like leveling guitar frets with a file.

Quarter-round is glued in along the bass side of the board along with some other trim pieces.

Now the plate is at last ready to be bolted in and the piano can get restrung.

So, as you can see, I have done quite a few of these rebuilds already. Here are my old soundboard and pinblock collections. And yes, I'm saving all that finely-aged soundboard spruce to use in future guitar-sized builds!

At some point during the rebuilding process I also most often need to replace the old keytop ivory (or plastic in some cases) with new synthetic ivory. First the old tops and fronts are removed.

 The new tops are glued on using clamping decks I made from spare clipboard clips. New fronts get glued on too.

I shape and polish the new keytops by hand. That is my least favorite part. Here the keys on the left are done.

After all that I pretty much hand the piano over to the techs who rebuild the "action", which is the actual playing mechanism such as the hammers and dampers. The action and keys are installed and adjusted and the piano gets tuned to pitch.

So that's what I've been up to for the last six years or so. I also bought a house with my girlfriend last year and that has been keeping me extremely busy as well.

 

I intend to start posting more regularly as things have suddenly slowed down a bit at the piano shop. Plus I have many more instruments I need to show off! Thanks for checking in, and I hope you're all doing ok out there.