Anyone Made Guitars Entirely by Hand?

[D_W]

Thanks, Chris. I asked George about his side bender (he made a lot of the same style of guitar at one point because he had a steady stream of buyers).

I figured I'd probably find somewhere around 750 watts of lighting for a bender if I was going to try to make a form bender, but it might make things a bit iffy with MDF (due to the heat level).

http://www.cybozone.com/fg/wilson3.html

(this webpage is sort of like a travel through time backwards - it's from 1996. George gets cranked about it because he's a toolmaker who makes musical instruments, and they're a very small slice of his portfolio. Anyway, I admire this bender, but I don't think I'll be able to get him to give it away. There must be a lower-skill version of this that doesn't involve 3/4" aluminum for a frame). I think George said this bender has 3 300 watt bulbs in it.

There is something appealing about trying to do it with a pipe and a heat gun, though.

Not sure about the binding. Haven't gotten that far yet in thought.

 

[richarddownunder]

Well, I'm just investing in one of these. Pricey, but I have used one before and they are good quality...https://luthiers-bench.com/

Cheers
Richard

 

[D_W]

Looks nice! About the same price as the stew Mac option here. I ordered one of the Asian versions with temperature control after seeing the guy in the link bend aside in 10 minutes. I can't justify building a form even if it takes me an hour. I think I can make a backer out of flashing.

 

[whiskywill]

There are two online sites which discuss acoustic guitar making in depth:

And http://www.luthiercom.org/phpBB3/index. ... 90de820db3

 

[D_W]

https://s9.postimg.cc/efdzxrven/20180510_183900.jpg
https://s9.postimg.cc/5kd5n841b/20180510_183912.jpg

Cherrycasters -two to start. Only deviation from "real" ones is that I think they'll be set neck with the truss rod on the peghead end.

I have a nice piece of QS curly cherry (already cut into necks now) that's been hanging around for 10 years that will make for a nice neck.

I see the standard for telecasters is to have the rout on the back side of the neck for the truss rod, but I don't like that, so I'm not going to do it.

It would be easier to make them bolt on, but they'll be easy enough to repair with the neck set with animal glue. I like the heel that's on the merle travis signature "tuff dog" telecaster, but would never dream of paying $5700 for such a simple guitar.

The mrs has about 150 hours of summer projects lined up for me, and I also have a panel plane in the works, so the build might be slow.

No power tools or sandpaper thus far. It's so much nicer to work that way.

 

[D_W]

OK, I give in around the sides after cutting this blank out and contouring. I'm going to sand them into uniformity before scraping off the sanding marks. 80 grit PSA roll belt on a hard block.

It would be nice to have a good contour spokeshave, but all I have is the woodjoy cigar style shave, and it's really not that great on hardwood 45 mm wide, so I didn't use it on the second body. Just a brazilian nicholson rasp and sawblade scraper.

I'm still somewhat afraid to use power tools for the cavities for fear of ruining a body. The templates that I got to build with are actually supposed to be router templates, but they're as cheap as templates that are designed just for taping and more substantial. Anyone making these for money would quickly use them as they're supposed to be used, but it greatly increases my chances of making garish errors.

LN's flat bottom spokeshave works a treat cleaning up the saw marks and doing all of the initial contouring (and squaring of the contour to the top) on the flat and convex areas. Their curved bottom shave has too large of a radius to be useful for guitar bodies, and I probably wouldn't spend the money just to do a few of these, anyway.

 

[D_W]

Follow up comment, I spent a couple of hours yesterday cutting the binding channels on a telecaster body (the tight areas are tough!).

No problem with the truss rod groove in the neck, but cutting the binding channel entirely by hand on cherry leaves an unacceptable quality job, so I've given up and bought a bearing bit set for the binding channels.

 

[richarddownunder]

For the record, I have just received my bending iron from Luthier's bench https://luthiers-bench.com/products/bending-iron . I got the bronze version. It weighs ~6 kg and is very well made, extremely solid with a painted cast base a solid old-fashioned thermostat switch and mounted on an oak platform. It will last a lifetime (or two), I have no doubt. A top quality tool by any standard. I'm really impressed (as you can probably tell ).

Cheers
Richard

 

[D_W]

Glad to hear that the iron is working out.

I got a cello sized iron from china that is thermostatically controlled, and it's surprisingly good. I haven't bent any sides yet because I'm working on my kitchen, but I did use it to bend some curly maple binding and it worked very well.

Not finished as well (the post) as the one you showed me, but a pleasant surprise.