Chloe the Classical

As the second week of working on the classical guitars comes to an end, we finished up boxing and binding the bodies. This week doesn't show as much progress as the first week seemed to, but on Monday we should be well into the work on the necks.

Here are the sides of my classical guitar with the kerfing installed and sanded to its final specs. The side braces are also installed now as you can see. these braces are really only there to stop a crack from running far up the side of the instrument. They have no real affect on the tone.

Here is the top with all her lovely braces. Only the three large, parallel braces on either side of the sound hole are tucked under the kerfing. You can see the pockets cut into the kerfing which will accept those brace ends. This helps prevent brace ends from popping lose, a common issue with old instruments. So here's to putting guitar repair men out of business! Which gives me a new product idea... A time-release termite capsule!

You can also see on the top of the end block a bevel has been cut. This reduces the area glued to the top plate and allows the top to move a little more freely while still maintaining a structural backing for the side seam.

In this picture you can see that we have cut the perfling and binding slots with the router. This is only about a five minute job if you have a decent tool setup. Or you can do it with a poor setup and spend three hours truing up the depths. Also a hole has been cut in the shoulder of the guitar which we tell our customers is like a little sound monitor: A secondary sound hole just for the player's benefit. But really it's to provide cross ventilation for the hatching termites that will mysteriously come out of the woodwork, so-to-speak, in exactly three months after their purchase.

This is my instructor, Dave Scotto, who is busy attacking me with a hopelessly dull chisel. I love his name because I have so creatively fit it into the Davey Crocket theme song, which I sing at least five times a day now in his presence. I think he appreciates it.

Here is the guitar getting all ready for the big fiasco of gluing bindings and perflings. It's the only time I wear an apron in the shop; I've found it beneficial to be wearing your glue rag while doing this procedure since it seems to hold still better for gluey finger wiping when it's tied to you. This is where I usually back my argument to God that we could have used three hands. At least that way I'd have pictures of the gluing process. instead, I have just the before, and the after. Actually I don't even really have an after shot. I only have a picture of it after I have also filed and sanded back the excess binding material. After they are glued, the bindings overhang both directions by a good .060" and must be brought back flush through a strategic mix of files, sanding paddles, razorblades, the aforementioned dull chisel, and some good, strong Lipton black tea. The tea just makes the experience more bearable.

Here's kinda an overall picture of how I left the guitar on Friday evening.

The bindings have been brought flush with the sides and faces of the guitar and the body is ready to have a mortise cut to accept the neck at a later point.

If you were of the mind, you could click this image to get a better view of my perfling miter joints. They came out pretty tight. Sorry the picture's not in great focus.

And here is yet another not-so-good picture. I've been playing around with the manual focus option. You can see a knot in the side there that gave me a little trouble with the side contour. Since the sides are book matched, this knot is on both sides. I sanded out most of the issue, but it's something I'll need to practice more at a later date.

That's it then for now. Next week, I should have lots of progress to show you on the neck.

Take care,

Brian