Penny Guitars

Not much happening on the guitar front right now, the reason is that the Gnome Desktop developers have just spent 5 years developing Gnome 3, actually they just spent 5 years turning a really good Gnome 2 Desktop into a right bunch of crap. Due to this I have been spending what time I have installing and learning about the XFCE Desktop Environment. This will probably take me a good few more days yet, so I will be back as soon as I can.

If you do not understand any of the above then you probably run MS Windows and I really feel very sorry for you.

Maybe you run an Apple and I guess you have more money to spend than I do.

So I have made four guitars and they all have one thing in common, their geometry is only as accurate as my side bending allows. I have improved my side bending considerably over the four guitars I have made but now I want the accuracy of a mould. I made the mould shape using small pieces of wood to make the required contour. I have more work to do on this mould to make it more functional but at the moment I am still thinking about how I am going to use it.

I did try cutting the contour out of a large piece of wood and soon realised that it was impossible to get it accurate with the bandsaw I have. Using small (25x25x75mm) pieces of wood glued, nailed and sandwiched between two pieces of 6mm MDF was much easier. I sanded the pieces of wood back to the contour I cut into the MDF. I marked and cut each piece of the MDF from the first one and bolted them together before sanding them to the final shape, that way they are all very accurate.

Just putting on another 40 pints of bitter, I am going to bottle about 10 pints and put 30 pints into the barrel. The bottled ones I am going to save for a good while to let them mature well. I have finished the stout I made and it was really good, a much better stout than I thought it would be. I have about 30 pints of bitter that is well matured now and tastes excellent.

I have put about 15 coats of lacquer on my classical guitar by brush, I am going to spray a few coats on and then leave it for a couple of weeks before rubbing it down and buffing it up. Here is the last picture prior to applying the lacquer.

My scratch plates form a set of cartoon think bubbles. I wasn’t too sure when fitting them but after a few hours of seeing them I really like them, they are functional as well as pleasing to my eye.
For the initial setup I have fitted a cheap set of strings and I have been playing it for a good 5 or 6 hours now, it is far too early to hear what it really sounds like, I think after a few days it will improve and after a few weeks it will hopefully sound excellent. The fact that the fret board does not reach right up to the sound hole is deliberate, personally I think having the fret board reaching right up to the sound hole is horrid, it just doesn’t look nice to me. I am going to be making a good few of these guitars and all of them will look like this one but about 20mm shorter. The size of this guitar will be a unique feature that is not repeated in all the others I make.
I have been naming all my guitars after intelligent animals. This guitar is called “The Squirrel”. Squirrels store food and as such they understand the concept of the future, also they use their front feet as hands and are capable of solving major puzzles and problems. When looking at the squirrel it definitely looks like it is part way through its evolution and is changing from a four legged animal to a biped animal. I like squirrels.

So what are the faults/mistakes?
(1) The bridge position  is very slightly out, this is noticeable by looking face on to the fret board, the sixth string is slightly closer to the edge of the fret board than the first string is. This is a very stupid and avoidable mistake, I should have checked my measurements more.

(2) The centreline of the back is slightly off to one side, this was caused by an inaccurate saw cut on the band saw and the fact that I was not prepared to throw out the back just for a few millimetres of inaccuracy that didn’t really matter on this guitar because I made this guitar for me.

(3) I made the soundboard of this guitar very slightly domed but when I clamped the sound box down to route the binding and purfling I forgot it was slightly domed until I heard the crack of a brace split. After numerous expletives I managed to get the PVA glue into the split and repair it.

(4) My side bending is not perfect yet and although the sides are mainly excellent there are a couple of slight lumps that are not easy to notice but are still considered errors of inaccuracy.

(5) As mentioned in a previous post the fret board was not clamped down as well as it should have been when gluing it into place.

I cannot think of any other faults or mistakes at the moment but I will post about more if I think of more. Eventually I am hoping to make a guitar with no errors at all.