1909 flamenco guitar

The workboard, the back & sides, & the top.

Small flamenco guitar bending form

Side bending form with template.

Next to build, a solera or workboard for assembling the guitar body.

K Bear - shellac tools

The materials needed to put a glass finish on a guitar are simple and cheap.
Equipment includes; glass jars, a piece of wool, cotton cloth like clean white t-shirt, grain or denatured alcohol, and shellac flakes.
The shellac flakes are mixed with pure alcohol to make the shellac at a rate of 1 oz. by weight to 8 oz. alcohol.
After six sessions of rubbing on the shellac, 3/4 oz of shellac has been spread evenly over the whole guitar.  After the guitar is finished, less than two ounces will have been added to the guitar's weight.
No electricity is required to apply this finish.  No aerosols are released into the air.

Jose I template & bending form construction

These will be cut out and glued together to make a side bending mold.

The side template is copied onto a piece of lucite and cut out.

French polishing the guitar

 After a couple of sessions, the guitar starts to get shiny.

 The bridge location is masked off.  Later, the bridge will be glued to the bare wood patch.

French Polishing for GuitarmakersFrench Polishing for Guitarmakers

Mixing shellac flakes, 1 lb. cut

A one pound cut of shellac is 16 ounces by weight of shellac flakes dissolved into one gallon of pure alcohol.  That's a ratio of 1 to 8.

So one ounce of shellac flakes dissolved into eight ounces of alcohol is a 1# cut.

The next project will be a replica of a short scale Ramirez flamenco guitar.  It's not a real big deal, but I first resolve the drawing to the dimensions written on the drawing.

Headstock Inlay

K-Bear, the Kermodie, pearl inlay.

Waiting on the shellac flakes

The frets are installed, the fretboard is glued to the neck, the neck profiled. 
Next to do;  sand, level, and seal everything with shellac.

Acoustic guitar bridge and saddle and bridge positioning

The saddle slot is cut and the saddle is fit to it. 
Then the fretboard and bridge are laid out to the scale, which is 25.4" from the nut to the front of the bridge.


Then the locations of the bridge pins are marked.


When the fretboard and bridge are attached to the guitar with double sided tape, everything looks proportional.

Acoustic guitar bridge shaping

The bridge has been shaped.  Next is to cut the saddle slot, but first the width of the saddle has to be measured.

Shaping the guitar neck

There is a little volute under the neck at the nut which has a thumb shaped hollow.

A hand shaped heel gives some character and uniqueness to the instrument versus something machine made.

Cutting out the bridge blank with a coping saw.
Afterwards, running it through the sander to get 3/8".

The rough bridge on the working drawing.

Neck final fitting

Today the neck was bolted to the body by putting a 1/4-20 insert into the heel and running the bolt into the heel through the inside of the body.  Then the heel is fitted to the body using a chisel, a rasp, and some sandpaper.  Also, the alignment of the neck to the body assures that the centerlines of the two are th same. 
The fretboard is then planed down to match the neck profile.

Here's a closeup of the head with the Kermodie bear inlay laid on.

Slotted & trimmed fretboard

Even though it was Mother's day, I was able to cut the grass and cut fret slots and trim the fretboard to length.

Fingerboard Shaping

This fingerboard is pau ferro.  It is being shaped into an eight inch radius curve along the length.  A plane with a serrated blade is used to start along the edges.  You can see that the big shavings are at the back of the pile.
Using an eight inch radius sanding block as a guide, a cabinet scraper is used to refine the curve and level out the gouges left by the serrated plane blade.

When the curve is mostly shaped, rubbing the sanding block on the fingerboard leaves shiny marks on the high spots.  Using the cabinet scraper and 50 grit sandpaper on the sanding block, the fretboard is done, ready to be slotted. trimmed, and fitted to the neck.

Guitar neck truss rod and reinforcement

A low tech, but good way to route a channel into the neck.  Two identical tables with one edge flush with some oak pallet blocks.  the neck is bound between the tables using bar clamps.  A guide on each side of the router keeps it in the channel with no chance of the bit wandering.

The second photo shows the heel of the guitar neck.  A spline is glued in to help keep the heel stack from separating.  Also note that the grain of the blocks in the heel are alternated so the grain is not in the same direction.

The third photo shows the taper of the guitar body, which, in my opinion, gives the instrument more presence when it's played.

In the last photo, you can see the taper of the neck.  The bump at the back of the head of the neck is going to be carved in a diamond shaped taper, which is a feature of some old Martin guitars.

Building an Acoustic Guitar neck

Here's the result of a couple/three hours of work.
The tenon is cut, the mortise, the neck is trimmed and contoured.  A rough fit, but the guitar is pretty squared away and looks like the proportions are right, mostly.

Neck

The neck is made of Spanish cedar.  As shown, the neck is roughed out and ready for the headstock veneer and the slot for the truss rod as well as the tenon that fits into the body mortise.
The head veneer is glued on.

details

Cosmetic flaws like a gap in the binding can be dealt with in many ways from filler to removing and re-attaching.

transition

The body, completed with maple binding.




Next to do, fretboard, neck, and bridge.



The Pau ferro fretboard and bridge match the Bubinga well enough.