bad omens

I had a dream last night that the headstock of the Mockingbird broke off right in the middle of the scarf - twice. That better not me some evil portents of future badness.

Mockingbird p9

I'm not feeling particularly chatty today, so here's the quick version:

The cypress just wasn't working out in the painting stage. The wood between the growth rings was simply too soft and wouldn't sand smooth - always ripply. So I scrapped the old body and made a new one from mahogany & cherry. These are the progress shots, Also included are a couple shots of the finished headstock.

Right now, the body is being grainfilled and sealed up with sanding sealer.

Mockingbird p8

Mockingbird p7

Soapbox, p3 - Warp Factor 3

And that's the end of it for now,





As you can see, both the body AND the top pieces warped over the weekend. That doesn't mean I'm through with it - I still love the idea of a pine guitar. I just have to find a better supplier than the box stores. There are plenty of construction lumber yards I can talk to about it.

For now though, the soapbox is getting laid to rest.

Mockingbird p6

With all of the contouring, routing, and drilling on the body done, it's time for a test fit of everything but the pickups. The balance isn't just right, but that could be a couple of different things: strap button placement and body weight. Personally, I lean more towards the super-light cypress body. The balance isn't horrible - it wants to hang parallel with the floor - but it could be better.

Now the body starts the paint process and the headstock gets shaped.

Soapbox, p2

I got the body chambered. Next step is the wiring channel and gluing on the top.





EDIT: I had the wrong pics up the first time. They're fixed now.

Soapbox, p1

Guitar, thy name is Soapbox, for upon thee shall I stand.






There was a constant debate on a luthier's message board about what woods were appropriate to use for guitar building. There was/is a fair amount of snobbery that said lesser grade woods were unacceptable. This was then rammed down the throats of rookie builders who came there looking for help and instruction.

Fortunately, I can think for myself.

Now, there are still certain parameters and needs that must be met. For a neck, you need straight grain with little-to-no runout, and a good amount of strength to withstand the tension. For a body, you usually want something reasonably light, but not soft. For both, you need the wood to be stable, dry, not prone to movement, and able to hold the hardware firmly.

So balsa wood won't ever be seen. Beyond that and some others like that, basically anything is fair game.

Don't believe me? Do a Google search for Taylor's pallet guitar of for Robert Benedetto's construction-grade pine archtop. They know more about lutherie than I ever will. Their statements are that it's the craftsmanship, NOT the components, that determine the instrument's quality.

So here we are, and I'm making a guitar from Lowe's pine, just to make my point. All of the wood is from the same 8' long 2x8. The neck is one I have leftover from before I started making my own. Pickups are Atrec mini-HBs. Wilkinson tuners and a generic bridge & electronics round out the hardware.

The shape is a combined from elements of a Telecaster, Les Paul, and SG. I'd say it looks pretty damn good.

The body is a shade over 5/16". The bookmatched top is +/- 1/2" This will give me a finished thickness of between 1 3/4" and 1 7/8". The body will be chambered, the top carved with at least one f-hole. I'm seriously thinking about giving the top oak binding. I'm not sure if I'll leave the back natural or paint it. The top will be finished clear. Maybe I'll look into giving it a brown-burst.

Game Board, p2

CHECKERS!!!!

I got all the oak & bloodwood checker pieces cut out, sanded, ebonized, and began their finishing. I made a total of 20 of each. This should account for the odd need to king someone who made it across without losing a piece (very unlikely) and for the pieces that might get lost (almost guaranteed).

So I promised to tell you about how to ebonize oak. You can do it with walnut also. Both work extremely well with the very simple process.

First up is dissolving a steel wool pad in vinegar.
1) Get a quart bottle of white vinegar.
2) Get a steel wool pad that's free of any foreign substances (this means DON'T use an S.O.S pad). You might need to runse the pad first, just to be sure.
3) Tear the pad in little pieces and stuff it into the bottle of vinegar.
4) Set it outside or in the garage with the lid unscrewed but sitting on top. As the vinegar dissolves the steel wool, it will create some really potent fumes that you don't want in your house. It will take a few days for it to completely dissolve. Stir it up whenever you walk by to help break up the clumps.
5) Strain the mixture through a few layers of cheesecloth, a couple of coffee filters, some old nylons... anything that will not disintegrate from the vinegar but will catch the fine particles left over.

Once you have this stuff all set and back in the bottle, you're all set to go. Sand the wood to whatever grit you need, then flood the wood with the liquid, letting it absorb as much as it'll take in 10-15 minutes. The iron in the liquid reacts with the tanic acid in the wood, turning the wood black. Once it's dry, you can sand it (lightly) with 220 or higher to take off the raised fibers. Then you're ready for a finish.

Mockingbird, p5

Here's some progress on the body. I put a 45-degree bevel around the whole thing, both front & back. This was more to aid in visualizing how/where to contour the body. I then drew in some basic ideas of where the top edge of the contouring would stop. Also penciled in lightly are some approximate placements of the bridge and pickups.

Mockingbird, p4

After talking with some other luthiers, I decided NOT to drop the truss rod in from the back, but to slice off a piece of the neck and continue construction with it being a separate fretboard. There are a couple of pretty good reasons for this:
1) Construction will be easier.
2) The glue line on the purpleheart sides will be virtually invisible.
3) Dropping it in from the back would leave a channel in the flamed maple that would have to be filled, probably with PH or maple. A maple filler, even if flamed and taken from the same board, would leave very visible glue lines. Neither PH or FM were acceptable visually to me.
4) Glue joints are typically stronger than the surrounding wood, so a pinstriped fretboard will (probably) be stronger than a solid one. This means the truss rod won't pop through the front.

The bottom line reason for doing this is to keep the pinstriped fretboard/neck visual. Everything was really mental wrestling with how to put in the truss rod while keeping the appearance of a "one-piece" neck. We'll see how it works out pretty soon.

The first pic here is the scarf joint being glued. The second is the neck blank our of the clamps with the fretboard & truss rod sitting on top.

Avatar = Pocahontas

Time for the first soapbox.

I can't claim an ounce of originality from this. In fact, I completely lifted it from another site who lifted it from someone else. Welcome to the internets! Anyway, this sort of thing bugs me. Hollywood recycles stories all the time. Look at any given chick flick - they all have the same basic plot. This one, however, went above and beyond the call of duty. The re-written sumary below says it all.

You can click on the image for a larger and more readable view.

Game Board, p1

I've been wanting to make a scroll-sawn chess set for a while. Since I got a book on how to do just that for Christmas, I did some planning and came up with plans for a full game board and set.

The board for checkers, chess, and othello are all the same size, so it makes sense to me to use the same board for all three. The board will be mounted in a box-like frame with drawers to hold the pieces.

The board itself will be 2" squares, making the board 16x16. This number was come to based on the chess pieces being 1 1/2" at the base. The board will be bocote, a Central American rosewood, and some other white wood, either maple or basswood. Right now, I'm leaning towards basswood because it has very little discernible grain. Bocote is very pronounced, so the basswood won't compete with it at all. Maple would be pretty grainless as well, so I'm currently torn.

The chess set itself is likewise only half decided. The dark pieces will be sapele. I'm also considering basswood or maple for the light set, but if something else presents itself I'm totally open to it.

The checkers and othello sets will be +/- 1 1/2" disks. To make these, I got a hole/circle cutter from Woodcraft. Because the pieces the disks are being gut from needed to me clamped down, a jig was needed.





1/4" MDF, #8 machine screws, and a few washers & wing nuts make everything line up and clamp down pretty nicely.

The checkers set will be oak & bloodwood. The oak will be ebonized, so I'll have the traditional red & black set. I'll explain how to turn the oak black when the time comes. These two woods seemed like the obvious choice to me.

The othello set was a little trickier to come up with. First, the pieces needed to be double sided, which means gluing two woods together to make the blanks. The only decision is which two woods? Traditionally, othello is black & white. I didn't feel it really mattered which two woods were used. Were one dark, the other is light. If one is heavily grained, the other is plain. In the end, I chose zebrawood and paduk. The colors are different, the grains are opposite, and I had enough on hand to make enough blanks. I think having enough on hand had more to do with the choice than anything, but that's what happens.

Over the next few days, I'll be cutting the checkers & othello pieces and finishing them up. I can't start the chess pieces until I get the scroll saw back from the shop, and I can't do the board until I get some bocote, which I'll get when I pick up the saw. And that is why woodworkers have a number of projects going on at the same time.

WIP: Mockingbird, p3

Here's the body blank cut, routed to the template, and planed to thickness, and the neck blank planed level.



One more shot, just because.

WIP: Mockingbird, p2

Here's the neck blank after it was glued up. I think these pics are hilarious. When I was making the neck blank, I surfaced the boards in the planer prior to glue-up. For those who don't know, PH is gray/brown when it's first worked, but turns purple when exposed to UV light. I glued up the pieces, then set it outside to drip in the grass. When I took it in and took the clamps off, you could tell which side was towards the sun and where the clamp heads were.

WIP: Mockingbird, p1

Here's my first attempt at making a Work In Progress series here. I don't quite have all the nuances oh how the post editor works yet, so this entire thing is just me going & hoping it'll all work out.

So anyway, I've always loved the oddball body shapes. BC Rich is one of the companies who's real bread & butter are oddball shapes, and they do it very well. The Mockingbird is my favorite from them, so it's time for me to give it a whirl.

A few months ago, I came across a local lumber yard who has a pretty good selection og American woods, and for a pretty good price! I saw some cypress there, thought about it for a few minutes, and decided to go for it. The wood was only about $2.50-$3.00/BF, so if it doesn't work out it's no big financial loss. Cypress has been used in classical guitars forever, so the tone can't be horrible. It's VERY light. I'm a little worried about neck dive. That's just one more bridge I'll cross when I get there.

Here's the rundown of what's planned/executed as of today:
Body
mockingbird shape
2-piece cypress
painted yellow
heavily contoured

Neck
normal bolt-on
purpleheart/flamed maple 7-piece lam
no extra fretboard - it will be the top of the laminates
Yes, this means the fretboard will be pinstriped!
black dot markers
tiltback 6-in-line headstock

Hardware
custom-wound RestorationAD PAF humbuckers with purpleheart bobbins
purpleheart pickup rings
chrome hardware
Kahler Flyer trem/bridge
Kahler locking nut
3-way, 1V p/p, 1T p/p (wither a tap & phase or 2 series/paralell)
possibly a mini toggle (phase)