Miniguitar done, Argapa 110

Back home after the vacation Johan and I put a gear in and cracked on with his guitar. In the first pic you can see the back being glued on. This also sets the neck angle by using a shim under the neck as the back locks the geometry in shape. 

Johan shaped the bridge with my Veritas apron plane. We cut the slanted saddle groove first and shaped the bridge around that. 



After making the fretboard and glueing it on, we put the bridge in place. 



And then finishing. The first coat makes a lot of difference, but the twentieth makes the instrument shine. 



Applying shellac also reveals flaws and glue spots that cannot be seen easily before, so we went back and forth with scrapers and steel wool between coats. And took our time. Johan was a natural at French polishing.  



And here we are. We are trying string sets out, and tunings. Or pitch really. Will it be E - e (not very likely), A - a, or B - b? Johan designed the fret position markers from a deck of cards. 



The first Argapa with a pin bridge! Nerve wracking but ultimately successful. 



And the headstock shape that’ll force the stamped marking down to the side of the headstock. 

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. 

Bracing and rosette work

I have had some odd hours in the workshop since the last post. Progress is steady but scattered over several instruments. The mahogany piccolo got a neck block and lining strips glued into the rim, and then I made a rosette and the soundhole in the top. 

After making the channel I bent the thin black maple strip for the rosette. Two full rounds in a spiral, with the ends feathered to zero. 

I usually glue rosettes with superglue but that stuff is nasty. So I went with regular Titebond. The acrylic caul causes the black strip to squish a bit, filling the channel completely. With superglue the strip turns rock hard right away and it’s harder to wing it. 



Then I helped Johan to carve and plane the braces for his mini guitar. He does some fine work when he wants to. 

Not shown: the reso got a neck. Johan’s guitar got the top glued to its sides. See you next weekend, I’m off to Ouagadougou for a bit. 

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. 

New shape for the concert

When we bent the sides the other day they were a bit short. That would easily have been dealt with by making the shoulders a wee bit narrower, and I’ve always thought my concert mold was a bit wide at the upper bouts. But I went ahead and changed my template, and the inlay piece for my solera work board. So from now on my concert ukuleles (never mind we’re building a mini guitar and a cavaquinho right now) be more elegant. 

Here’s the side piece for Johan’s mini guitar on the solera. What we need now is a soundboard. 

But before you can plane a spruce top you need really sharp planes. So I sharpened my no. 4 and no. 3 Stanley planes on the water stones. 1200, 2000 and 8000 grit, followed by a quick honing on the strop. 

And it worked a treat. You just don’t get a surface like this with sandpaper. 

Argapa: next generation

So. Remember that me and Johan did some heavy resawing with the frame saw a while back? Well all parts except for the tops are sanded to thickness and yesterday I managed to pry Johan from his phone for an hour. And we bent the sides for his mini guitar. 

It went really well, he got the idea and felt when the wood gave and when it didn’t. I thought I was gonna bend the sides for the cavaquinho I’m building for my friend and drummer, but I’ll do that on Sunday I think. 

Here are the sides, or more correctly; here’s the one piece rim Johan bent. 

Prepping various parts

I didn't get a pic of the actual process, as I was on my knees in front of the sander, but Johan and I got the resawn walnut down to thickness. 

We did three side pieces so we have one to break when bending, but the third back can rest in its original thickness. 

And we found some one piece spruce tops! These we didn't sand, I look forward to planing them. 

 

And that koa soprano, I sanded the sides and will glue them to the top tomorrow. 

Remember the Dust-E-Whacker..?

A couple more projects

The first of the koa sopranos is coming along. The second will take a break for now, I was thinking only one project would be good for me now.

But then my boy wants a miniature guitar, after seeing a guitalele in a store. And my friend challenged me to build a cavaquinho. And I saw a super compact travel model uke and I want one. 

So we picked out some walnut for the sides and backs for the guitar and the 'quinho, and split it in three pieces so we have one spare. My condition for building the guitar was, predictably, that Johan would assist me at every stage. Here he works the kerfing plane. 

And here we use the frame saw - so much easier being two. Li took the pic. 

And here's the result, together with a cherry board that'll be transmogrified into a wee travel uke.