Penny Guitars

I have actually got to take the machine heads off guitar 3 and wax the rear and sides of the headstock, it will hardly notice that it isn’t done in the pictures so it is as good as complete.

So the guitar is rosewood back and sides, cedar sound board, holly binding, ebony bridge and finger board, Corian nut and saddle, mother of pearl inlay, ash pick guard, Ernie Ball regular slinky (2221) strings and the stand is custom made from poplar.
There is no point in doing a sound file right now as it needs to be played a bit at least. I will do the sound file in a couple of days time.
I must admit that I don’t like the strings, they are too light for my taste but the guy whom this is made for likes them and that is all that matters. I didn’t like the nylon strings when I first played them and now I really like them. So who knows I may grow to like the slinky strings yet.

On all three guitars I made a mess of the nut first time. I have now finally worked out how to get the nut right first time.

Well now I am working on sharpening tools and generally making sure all the tools I use are in good condition.

I am just putting the finishing touches to the steel string guitar and will then provide a few pictures and an audio file.
I am also starting to improve the tools I am using. The side bending iron with the hot air gun is definitely not getting hot enough and that is what is causing all my bending problems. So I thought that the bending iron is the best place to start.
I pulled the hot air gun to pieces and removed the heating element. The element has a resistance of 49 Ohms and that means the power rating is 1175 Watts. The way they make these guns is they over-rate the element and to keep it from burning out they apply a fan that blows through the element keeping it stable and of course you get a nice hot air flow. The big problem with this method of using the hot air gun is that the fan is too noisy and wet wood seems to be getting the better of the hot air and hence it is just not hot enough to do the job.
I have ordered a reel of element wire to make my own heating element that provides the heat required silently (no fan). But while waiting I thought I would have a play with what I had. I measured off 4 pieces from the old element each with a resistance of 3.75 Ohms. In parallel that is just under 1 Ohm and with a 12 volt supply it will draw about 12 amp and give 144Watts. With the new element supported by lots of silver mica and stuffed into an aluminium tube it gets seriously hot and works very well.
I need to sort out a bit of temperature regulation and it will be ideal and quiet. It doesn’t sound like you are using lots of electricity when things are silent and so will allow me to do a slower (and better) job of bending sides. I just managed to bend a 4mm small piece of cherry without any problems. This will improve the standard of my workmanship somewhat.

The classical guitar was taken away yesterday, I am missing it already but I am feeling quite good about the fact that I made a guitar that someone else is playing.

Other than the pick guard and a bit more wax the third guitar is complete. Here are all three.

I now need to make two more steel string guitars and then I will make the guitar I want for myself. The classical is going off to its new home tomorrow, I am a little sad as I have really enjoyed playing it every day. I believe the guitar I will be making for me is going to be a nylon string guitar, not a classical really, more like a standard steel string design but with the bracing required for nylon strings.

I must admit that making guitars is really addictive, I am still getting a buzz from just about every step of the process.