MIMF

I think it might have been David Russell Young back in the day who suggested using a hair dryer to heat the inside of the back prior to gluing the braces on to remove some of the water from the inside and "pre-stress" it against a humidity rise. Back in the 80s I had a humidity cave-in wit...

Happy 21st!

LMI has one for about $11.

Thanks Alan. One more question - I'm assembling some sides and I've never done this before. I'm not set up to use hot hide glue. Any chance the dreaded liquid hide glue would work for this application?

So the cloth tape has a certain thickness, plus that added by hide glue and shellac. So how does one glue the lining over that without having gaps on either side of the tape?

Regarding what Darryl said about not sawing the wood thin - I remember the old Luthier Mercantile web site discussing their claro walnut (trying to explain high cost)- they had to cut it into 2" slabs and let it dry, then resaw it, otherwise they had potato chips. On the other hand I resawed a ...

I have a 1969 Bozo Podunavac jumbo guitar - the bridge has two thin bolts through it with nuts under the spruce bridge plate. Two pearl inlays over the bolts, and it looks original (I've had it since 1977). Sounds great.

Regarding the California Air Tools compressor, I have a 1HP oilless Californai Air compressor that is so quiet I could have it running in the dining room while having my morning coffee. Thye claim that air brush artists like it for that reason. Not the cheapest, but I really like it becasue of the l...

I think mine are more like 3.75" to 4." I use narrow cauls and slide the sides up and down in the mold just enough to glue the linings and profile them. Just another way to do it.

Interesting discussion on the use of the wood for a one piece neck. My first guitar had a curly maple neck with a stacked heel, and even though I did my best to match the grain and curl, the stacking showed (a lot). Didn't care on my first, but I haven't repeated it. Actually, The 3X4 neck blank wil...

Roger, I gave that some consideration, but it's top quality curly koa, and I think one-piece necks made from that are rare. Mario, thanks for the insight, this will be my next build.

I've got a guitar set of curly koa with a 3 X 4" neck blank cut from the same log. I've been sitting on it for about 15 years but am finally ready to build with it. But, the neck blank is cut in such a way that a one piece neck from it will be flat sawn rather than quarter sawn. I know one can ...

I got my fingerboard done at a friend's machine shop using CNC. I gave him the two scales (treble and bass sides), and the fret spacing for each side, and he used a 0.023 bit to do the slots. He did it as a favor to me (I built him a guitar), but I imagine it wouldn't cost much if you don't want to ...

Jason, I think used 25.5 and 24.5 for my scales. I don't have any particular problem with the neutral fret at 12, I have just thought that it might be more playable have the neutral fret near where you hand sort of pivots as you go up the neck. But I haven't tried a guitar with that setup.

I made a fanned fret acoustic 15 years ago and still play it. I placed the perpendicular fret at the 12th, but if I had to do it over I would move it down a few frets to get more balance in the fingering. However, I still think it plays great. I used my regualr bracing and found it covered the bridg...

Michael and Peter, after all these years sawing off the neck and converting to bolt-on doesn't sound bad. But...first build, and in addition epoxying the neck on, I epoxied the fingerboard. It was 20 year old top grade black ebony 30 years ago, so I don't want to plane it off. Can I remove the epoxi...

I built my first starting in 1983 using Sloan's steel string book. No neck angle, mortis and tenon neck with dowels locking it in (and epoxy, was scared to death that the neck would come loose). No concept of humidity control, so planed off the braces after the top potato-chipped and redid. Changed ...

Me too!

There is a cool photo in his book of him loading a dolly with Brazilian rosewood lumber at the local wood dealer (or maybe it was right off the boat dock, I don't remember). He said he picked through the stuff and only took the most uniform quarter sawn pieces. I can't imagine how much really figure...

Thanks to all for this discussion. I manually routed number 12 this weekend using the same old Dremel and hand-built jig that I've used for all of them. Three passes with a #115 bit. Each time I tell myself I will get something fancier, and came in today to ask which one is best on this forum. I gue...