Penny Guitars

Fitted the rosette and it took me 4 hours, the time it took sort of surprised me a little but being as I am documenting how long it takes to make this guitar I need to be accurate about the time. In fact I cut the outer diameter 0.5mm less than it should be and I especially took my time to get it right. What I do is cut the inner and outer edges with a tool I made, basically a compass with a scalpel blade, then I remove the wood between the two with a router. I made a good job of it but not a perfect job.

I have also got the bracing done and that took me 5 hours. You have to bear in mind that I am not trying to get jobs done in any particular time, I am just documenting how long a job takes.

I have also sorted out the lining, binding and purfling. I need to bend the lining on my bending iron, this guitar does not use any kerfed lining, this guitar is based on an old 1960’s Suzuki classical guitar and that has a plain lining on both front and back. The soundboard on this guitar is flat, the back will be domed.

That’s all for now.

I started on the soundboard today, I reduced it to 2.3mm thick and glued the two halves together.
I have marked the guitar shape and also an oversize marking at 8mm outside the actual shape, this is the line I will cut the soundboard at initially. This is as much as I can get done today. The next job is the rosette followed by the bracing. I am going to keep a track of how many days the build takes. Not consecutive days as I can not work on it every day. So far it has taken me half a day to bend the sides and one day to reduce the soundboard and glue it.

That is all for now.

Not having used a mould for making a guitar it is something I am going to have to learn how to use. There are many tasks that can be simplified by using a mould. I will remark on them as I come across them. It will be nice to actually make a guitar that is dimension-ably accurate.

The mould has 50x5mm drill holes of 80mm deep. I have made a number of pegs from sycamore, each one has a 4.8mm hole drilled through it and a 76mm screw screwed through the hole, the hole is a tiny bit smaller than the diameter of the screw thread making the screws captivated. The screw pegs are pushed into the 5mm holes to clamp down whatever you want. The screws automatically grip the edges of the 5mm hole they are inserted into. This is a very fast method of clamping and works really well. The idea came from the local luthier chap. Talking to this guy is like talking to an encyclopaedia of guitar making.
In the top right of the picture you can see the two halves of a wooden clothes peg, I am using these as little wedges that can be pushed between the screw pegs and the work for a bit of extra clamping pressure. I decided it was easier to use clothes pegs rather than make a whole bunch of bevelled pegs.
I am about to start on guitar 5 and I might make some of guitar 6 at the same time.