One and a half finished instrument

Here’s a few pics of the cavaquinho! 

Spruce soundboard, walnut back and (one piece) rim, alder neck, mahogany binding and rosette, mesquite fretboard and bridge. 



The hand on the headstock is a pre-hispanic Mexican stamp design that I found in a book. It is appropriate on this instrument for a number of reasons. But apparently  an Irish shamrock would’ve been good too, fanx ancestry.com. 



But I did say one and a half, didn’t I. Well the mahogany reso is in the finish stage. So far the base coats of shellac has been applied, these are the four or five first and they’re done with no oil on the muneca. I’ve found that after those I need oil, and with the oil the finish starts building nicely. But with too few base coats it’s a hassle to progress to the polishing phase. 



It does look quite sharp I think. 

Stringing up the cavaquinho

After stressing out over the finish for a couple of weeks I decided to leave well alone and intall tuners and stuff. First up was dressing the fret ends. 

Then I made the nut, marking the rough height with the half pencil. It’s still one of my favourite tools, so stupid yet indispensable. 



Sometimes I’ll plane the nut and saddle to minimize dust, but it is tough on the plane irons. So I used a file instead. 



The bridge pins came with a small gemstone at the top, I removed those with a soldering iron and a needle. Since I have a piezo pickup I made a step in the bottom edge of the saddle, to get it to look better at the ends. I could have recessed the piezo element a bit, or made a slot that didn’t go across, but remember I made the slot with a saw and not the router. 

Full body shots coming soon! It sounds, as they say, amazeballs. 

Cavaquinho bridge

It was time to make the bridge for the cavaquinho. Among the fretboard blanks I made from my mesquite log was the scrap piece that is inevitably left over after flipping a quarter log left and right on the bandsaw. It wasn’t even or smooth in any way so it was in for some planing action. 

First I cut a bit off with an old backsaw. 

Then I established a reference surface. In the pic is my no.3 plane but the no.5 was also used. 



Because I was lazy I chose to cut the saddle slot by hand instead of on the mini table saw. I made the groove with different saws but started by scoring with a marking knife and then deepening the slot with chisels. 



The angle was a bit of a guesstimate and I hope it’ll work. Then I made the chamfers and brought it to final thickness / height. 



The transition to the wings were carved by hand with a chisel that was almost wide enough. 



The underside is arched to match the soundboard, made so by rubbing the bridge on a concave sanding block. (The chisel in the pic is really wide but wasn’t sharp enough for carving the wings.)



Laying out with tape, ruler and pencil. Just like always. 



And clamping it in place. What I failed to show you was inserting the piezo pickup strip in the saddle slot, and pulling the cable down through a hole in the soundboard. The jack is in the endpin. 



And here the jack goes in. A miniature tele plug connects it to the piezo. I put some shellac around the hole because it’ll be there when I finish the instrument. 

Attaching neck, and a mesquite fretboard

I went hunting this weekend and when I got home I wanted to achieve something in the workshop. So I set out to attach the neck on the mahogany reso that is bound for Wales. I started out by scoring lines about 4 mm from the edges of the heel. 

Then I hollowed the heel out just a bit. It’s crucial for the next step that the middle is relieved so the neck doesn’t rock. 



I drag the neck on a sanding board of heavy metal. You can see from the trail of dust that the edges are affected more than the centre. 



And I check for alignment and squareness often. I want the centreline straight to the square, but I also take care to get the neck angle right. That’s not 90 degrees, more like 88.5. 



You may have seen my rather fancy jig for drilling the holes for the barrel nut and screw. Yesterday however I thought sod it and made the holes freehand with a cordless drill. And would you believe it, it was less nerve wracking and gave a better result. After checking the joint and alignment I didn’t have to do any tweaking. So I put some glue on the heel and screwed it on. 



But that’s not all. We are struggling a bit with a jumbled timeline. This mesquite fretboard I made some days ago, for the cavaquinho I cobble together for my mate. 



After pressing in the frets and glueing it on. Again, no adjustments or fret dressing needed. Might I be getting the hang of this..? No, begone foul hubris thought. Last time I thought I had things down it almost crushed me with a backlash from Hell and England. 

Carving bigger necks

I did get to spend some time in the shop this weekend, and I had company. For the two experimental builds it is time for the necks. The neck blanks we chose are of alder and I put a couple of carbon fibre rods in each. The rods are 12.5 mm or so, and the grooves I made on the mini table saw were just under 10. So my no. 4 plane which is set up as a scrub plane took them down. Nasty stuff, carbon fibre. 

Then I thicknessed the headstock by sawing down with my wee rip saw. I tried making a groove with a rasp first, to enable me planing it down with some plane, but reached for the saw. The plane just wanted to break off the edges of the headstock. 



And you’ve seen this before I think. The small plane that once was a spokeshave. It isn’t much use for anything else than this but it does this really well. 



Then Johan learned to carve a neck with spokeshaves and knives. He was really impressed by it taking so little time, and I was happy for the company and that my methods suited him. 



But that poor plane from the first pic... don’t worry, the whetstones are soaking and the iron will soon be better. In fact I have a bunch of tools in need of sharpening. Tomorrow, I hope. 

Onwards, and an apology

Let’s get the apology out of the way. I fear my blog posts are the worst - the pics are messy to the point of being impossible to interpret, the chronology is jumbled and I’m not a very good example of a disciplined luthier. 

That said, brace yourselves. 

Today’s first pic is me sawing the neck block of the mock lute to height and, hopefully, angle. I’ve settled at last upon the way in which I’ll build the back. 

Then I turned to the mahogany piccolo I hope to get ready for MUMF in May. I chose to use a popsicle brace above the soundhole. I’ve done that before and it felt right. Beside lie the bodies for the cavaquinho and the mini guitar. 



Then I glued the back on the reso, and made the half uni-brace on the mock lute. That will aid me in building the back. 



I didn’t find the mahogany neck blank I thought was kicking around, but I did find a couple of Spanish cedar neck blanks in piccolo size. Cedar is way too soft to be a fingerboard, so as an experiment I’ve glued cocobolo scraps from that reso to the upper surface on them both. The cocobolo is thinner than a normal fretboard but could work as a harder surface. I’ll try one and see if it looks corny or cool. 

Bodies, bending, and more

Oooh err... maybe I have bitten off more than I can chew. But things tend to happen at variable speed in the Argapa dungeön and yesterday that speed was high. 

I started out by glueing the bridge on the piccolo. Then I glued the sides to the top of the cavaquinho. Then I bent the sides for the mock lute, and while the bending iron was hot I sort of started a resonator and a mahogany piccolo. I’ll show the pics. 

First task was drilling the outer string holes through the bridge and top on the piccolo. I put in some thin steel wire to stop the bridge from slipping around. The ruler in the pic is clamped to the neck, giving me some help in holding the bridge while drilling. 

And here are the clamps. You can see the wire at the right edge of the pic. The leather is to protect the wood. 



A quick pic of the cavaquinho on the solera, as the sides are clamped in place by the slats and the long screws, as seen in the epic post ”a hundred dollar screw investment”.



I asked Li to take a pic of me bending the reso sides. The steel and wood push thing helps me avoid burn wounds. 



And here they all are. The lute sides, the reso body, the mahogany piccolo sides and the piccolo with its bridge on. I want to have them ready for a festival in May. 

Bracing work

The cavaquinho will have steel strings, and I know this will means a higher tension. So I made the braces a bit larger than I would on a concert ukulele. 

They are made from quarter sawn spruce and the two outer ones I made lower and wider than the one in the centre. First pic shows how I rough shape them before glueing, but with the solera now free to move around (before the workshop overhaul it was mounted on a wall) I chose to save most of the shaping til after glueing. 

And my new go bars. The grey ones are fibre glass tubes from a collapsable wardrobe, sliced in half. The black ones are from a tent I found in the trash. Both kinds are stronger and more consistent than the wooden ones I used before. 



With chisels and a variety of tiny planes I shape the braces and bars. Tap tone shows promise. 

Prepping spruce tops

The mini guitar and the cavaquinho will be quite similar, walnut back and sides and spruce tops. The walnut was thicknessed in the drum sander but I won’t miss the chance to hand plane the spruce. It just gets so much better. 

I ended up taking the tops down to just below 2 mm, the instruments will have a greater string tensions than a concert ukulele so I’ll need to think about bracing soon. 



Spruce is soft so I threw on a wash coat of shellac to protect it from dings and scratches, and went on to making the rosettes. Johan did the heavy lifting on the one for the guitar, the groove is 2 mm wide and houses four layers of mahogany purfling strips. When the superglue had set I took it down with a Berg chisel. 

Blocks

My workshop is in disarray. A new workbench is on its way but before that I have a hard time finding the motivation to clear up. Every time I have used a tool I hang up eight on their dedicated hooks, and there’s still a four inch layer of tools covering the bench and all other surfaces. 

But some things get done. I’m building an electric guitar for my friend Lars, and am in the process of glueing up the body blank. Pine from my own back yard, seasoned for years. I plane the edges of the boards and glue them up one by one. 

When I ran out of longer clamps a length of rope came in handy. 

And here’s my son planing wood for neck blocks. It’s so much fun building with him, I have to act cool though so my enthusiasm doesn’t scare him off. 

Here they are. Johan wants to tweak the shape of the rim a bit before glueing them to the top, I’ll do that on the hot pipe but wouldn’t fret if it was only me. 

And here’s a shot of the double neck electric. Almost done, obviously.