tres cubano build 5

I've done quite a bit on the tres since the last post. 

First off, I finished the headstock face by gluing on a binding outline made of bent veneer strips.

I bent the veneers, like the ones I used in all of the inlays, with this soldering iron. I replaced the soldering tip with a brass tube, which stays cooler and won't burn the wood.

 The completed headcap is glued to the headstock and used as a routing guide to shape the head. The area that juts out at the back of the neck is called the volute. It still needs to be shaped here. The fingerboard is also glued on. Once the volute is shaped, the frets are hammered in, and the nut is fit, that's it for the neck.

 

 On to the body. I made a tail block which will glue to the ends of the maple sides. All the gluing surfaces are shaped to the outline of the tres. The curve in the picture on the right is way too extreme. It got flattened out a lot before gluing it to the sides.

The neck block came from the salvaged Fender and fits the neck already.

I had to angle the bottom edge of the block to match the arch of the back plate.

 I also completed the bracing on the soundboard. This is how the blocks will fit onto it.

 The two long braces run under the large center brace.

All the other "fan" braces are notched into the large brace as well.

 

Also, before the sides can get bent, the curvature of the back profile has to be cut. The side outline is marked off at 1-inch intervals, and then those points are plotted at the centerline. The depth of the sides is measured at each point on the centerline, then marked on the sides at 1-inch intervals.

With the depth marked at every inch, I just connect the dots and have the back curvature laid out on the sides. Here the sides are finally ready to bend. The missing chip right in the center will get bent separately and glued back in afterward. If I glued it in now, the heat and steam from bending would ruin the repair.

The first test bend was too thick and had a few splits. My second test bend went perfectly.

After the sides get bent I leave them clamped in place to cool and dry.

Now the clamps are off and the blocks are glued in.

I actually finished the tres about a week ago and it is now with its proud new owner.

I'll do one more build post before the final showcase.

 

Tres Cubano build 4

So let me begin with a warning/advice for those starting out doing luthiery or woodwork.

Don't be like me and try to work around the mayhem of a disorganized shop.

Take a couple of months, or even a year if necessary, to set up your work space properly before starting any projects. I thought the soundboard had been set safely aside while I worked on other parts of the tres. That was until a desk lamp decided to fly off my bench and fall directly on the soundboard.

 Aside from the split, there are two deep impact craters on the surface. So even if I were able to glue the board back together without the crack line being visible, it would still have obvious damage. Luckily, I have plenty more reclaimed redwood to make a new soundboard from. Plus, I have pieces wide enough so I won't need to add extra wood to the outside edges. Those added pieces really show up in this photo and just don't look nice, so really, it will be worth doing over.

I will glue this board back together and maybe save it for a less important project. 

 

Back to the line inlay I had started on in the last post. A new tool needed to be made.

I realized the black-handled chisel I use for cleaning fret slots wouldn't work for carving out the channels because of its blade length. While going around the tighter curves, the back edge of the chisel would scrape along the sides of where I had just carved, leaving the channel too wide and rough. I ground down the tip of an old broken Dremel bit into a tiny flat-bottomed hook shape. I also whittled myself an ergonomic handle for it.

The fingerboard got narrowed a little to allow for the thickness of the new maple binding, which is getting glued on here with masking tape.

 

Once I got all the channels carved out deeply enough I inlayed veneers into them. I used a soldering iron to bend the veneer strips into the spiraly curves. Sorry, no pictures of the process, but here are the rosette, fingerboard, and headcap with the veneer inlay lines complete. I still have to inlay the dots into the drilled-out parts of the designs. 

 I'm trying to keep that part a surprise for now. 

I also cut out the truss rod channel into the new neck wood and measured how much to cut off the end of the rod. Once it's cut shorter, it will need to get re-welded at the end. I don't weld so I'll need to look around for someone who does.

I got the new and thicker back maple planed down, joined, and rough cut to the outline. Here I have just routed a slot (OK, another channel!) along the center seam. The clamped-down straight-edge was the guide for my router base to run along. The strip which will get inlayed into the slot is getting glued up into layers with all those clips.

Here's a plane shaving from the center strip to show what it looks like.

 

  Here is the center strip getting glued in on the left, and the inside reinforcement strip getting glued on the right with go-bars. I wet the maple in the right photo while cleaning off the glue squeeze-out. This shows how the maple will look with finish on it. Sort of.

The center reinforcement strip is made of redwood scrap from the soundboard. After it's glued onto the back, it gets rounded (like a speed bump) with my rounded edge plane and concave sanding block.

Next the strip gets notched where the back braces go through it, and the braces get glued on with go-bars. I used that square to keep the braces perpendicular to the strip.

 The maple for the sides has also been planed flat with no more saw marks, but it needs to be thinned more for bending. Hopefully I can get the sides bent and the new soundboard to the point that the old one was at (or further)  in not too long of a timespan. 

Bending sides (especially highly figured maple like this) is arguably the most stressful part of the process. Once that step is done, it should be pretty smooth sailing for the rest of the build.
 

tres cubano build 3

Suddenly my summer got super busy with piano, guitar, and house repair work. Unfortunately the tres build got less attention as a result and before I knew it, 3 weeks have gone by with no update. 

First off, I ran into a setback with my back plate wood. I have a large stack of pre-cut, bookmatched maple plates I acquired from the guitar shop. Turns out they are pretty rough-cut and many are just too thin to use once the saw marks are planed out. This is one of the plates I started planing down, next to the two new plates I'll use. The first one is still not planed to a smooth flat surface on both sides, yet it's at about the final thickness I'd want it to be.

So, I set those aside and got to work on the neck. I began by cutting the bevel on the neck itself to match the bevel on the headstock I had cut earlier.

The two parts get taped together like this to true up the surfaces that have been cut.

The whole thing gets clamped in a vise and the cut surfaces are planed flat. 

I also just made myself a new front handle for my plane. I haven't gotten to shape it yet.

The area I plane has to be perfectly flat and square to the top edge.

The angle of the bevel has to be even across the whole surface as well.

Here I have a clamping assembly set up to glue the two pieces together. The headstock is clamped to the bench and flush to the plexi board, which is clamped into the vise.

Then, the neck gets clamped into place. I can look through the plexi board and square up the two pieces by making the guide-lines I drew on each piece run parallel.

And here is the neck in one piece, one fret shorter than it was originally.

The side of the headstock that I had planed before became the top (fingerboard) surface.

There is a thin layer of glue to clean off yet.

This is the glue joint along the back of the neck.

I have some more lines drawn on for cutting the neck and placing the outline of the headstock.

Here is the rough-cut shape of the headstock. This will be the face of the headstock and will serve as my template for cutting the outline on the mahogany.

The back side of the head got cut down to the final thickness, including the maple cap. I started roughing-in the neck shape here, but that's where I stopped with the neck so far.

On to the fingerboard; I start by drilling out the old inlay holes on the fingerboard, and then cutting some rosewood plugs to fill them in.

I line up the plugs with the grain on the board as best as I can and glue them in.

The plugs are still pretty visible after getting sanded flush.  They'll blend in better after the other inlays are next to them and the whole board gets polished and oiled.

I have a nice old paper slicer that works great for cutting clean, straight strips of veneer. I cut myself a bunch of maple and walnut strips for inlay and binding.

I also cut a bunch of lining strips. Here are a couple pieces of lining left over from an old build, and an un-kerfed lining that I'm about to cut like the old ones.

Finally, I ran out of ways to put off starting the inlay for the rosette. I cut a maple ring with the flywheel cutter, the same way I cut the rings and hole in the soundboard.

The maple ring and the maple cap for the headstock both came from the back plate I had to discard. I'll also get some other trim pieces from that plate. It did not go to waste.

The maple ring got walnut veneer glued on as an outline, and now it's time to start cutting those fine, curved lines into the maple with scalpels and chiseling out the channels with this extra-thin chisel.

Well, this is the whole reason I decided it was time for an update; I needed a break from micro-carving. So now I'm going to get back to it while I still have some free time.

tres build part 2

In the last episode I had started the rough shaping of the braces. This brace has a radius cut on the gluing edge and has been flattened on the top edge for the clamps to hold while gluing.

Here I'm planing the brace down to its final thickness using a flat stick clamped to the bench as a stopper to hold the brace still as I plane it.

Next I work on getting the soundboard joined together. The two halves need to have a perfect fit along the seam with no gaps. This picture shows how the plates touch at both ends, but there is a gap in the center.

 

This is my combination "shooting board"/light table. My jointer plane is clamped to a shelf on the side of the light table.

The plane needs to be clamped down at an exact 90 degree angle to the table. Here you can see light coming through at the top of the square, so the plane will need to get tipped forward.

With the plane squared up I "shoot" (hence the name shooting board) the center seam edges of the plates along the plane blade to straighten them. The light table shines through the seam so I can see any gaps easily.

Now that both edges are square and straight, the two plates fit together with no gaps. There is a tiny gap at the very end of the seam, but that part will get cut off anyway.

Then the two halves get glued together. Wedges on the right side push the plates into the metal bar on the left. The board in the middle is clamped over the seam to keep the glue joint flat.

The two plates were not wide enough, so smaller pieces needed to get grafted onto the outer edges with the same process as the center joint.

And here the four-piece soundboard is complete but needs sanding. I'll go through the same process with the back plates. They are plenty wide, however, so I only need to do the center seam.

Before the braces can get glued onto the back side of the soundboard, I need to cut the soundhole and the channel for the rosette inlay. I cut all these with a circle cutter on the drill press.

I haven't done any more work on the neck aside from cutting the angle on the new headstock piece.

So that brings the tres to about this point. Next steps will be gluing braces to the soundboard, planing down the maple for the back and sides, and getting the new head on the neck.