Benedetto Archtop Build

[Ron Sommers]

I put abalone dots in the finger board, but they were too big.

How do you make them smaller? Here's how I did it.

Used a stick and some dopping wax to glue it to the end of a dowel rod.

Turn drill on and hold it up to a spinning disc sander wheel!

Presto!

[Ron Sommers]

Glue 3 layer wood (mahogany/maple/mahogany) binding on neck/fingerboard.

Neck mahogany I ordered from Grizzley (yea I was amazed too. Apparently, the owner is a luthier as well!). As a result it's lighter in tone than the body which was from guitar sides I've had for decades.

Still looks pretty good.

[Ron Sommers]

Installing frets. I used stainless steel.

How did I get those tangs to fit? Dremel tool with a diamond wheel (harbor freight).

Made a jig to slide the fret to the wheel. I copied the idea from some youtube video I forget where.

[Ron Sommers]

Shaping the neck using the blue vice.

I used black shoe polish for the back veneer as it was a striated black ebony (Grizzley) sheet.

Black shoe dye. Kind of a pain because it bleeds.

[Ron Sommers]

more neck shaping.

Finally decided to sand down the back veneer to leave the color difference.

It's rather unique and gives the back some style.

[Ron Sommers]

Here are some body pics. Sprayed on 'super blond' shellac for a sealer and 'orange' shellac over that.

Note the duct tape in the F holes. It was the only thing that would 'stick' well.

Coloration differences are because I was using different settings on my G11.

Color is yellow reddish.

I believe the sides are red maple which gives it that really red look.

[Ron Sommers]

Just noticed the jpg size limit has been increased from 150K!! Sweet! You can really see the details and mistakes now!!

The oil varnish I used I made using the Bill Fulton recipe. You can find it on line. He's a longtime member of Violin Society of America (VSA). I dried it using a 6 bulb drying cabinet I made for violins. It took 3 days. 2 days in, 1 out, 1 in.

I'm going to use 600 grit w/d sandpaper next. This was brushed on and while the brushing did it no harm, the top got a bit of dust attracted to it. Next time I'll spray the varnish. The back and sides are very smooth and clean however! Go figure!

[Geoff St. Germaine]

Looks great, Ron!

[Greg McKnight]

Looks really nice. Keep up the good work man.

[Greg Martin]

Looks Great Ron. love the pics of the jigs made,and the attention to detail. I just completed my arch top build 3 weeks ago, it took over 15 months with medical and work and life in between. I started reading "the book" about 19 years ago, and it took all of that time to realize the first archtop ,there were 19 electrics along the way,but the one I really wanted to make was my first jazz box. Im already going over my notes, thinking about the next one, and figure out how not to make the mistakes on the next one. Dad said you could tell how good a cabinet maker was by how well he was able to fix a mistake without trashing the part.
Hey, I just noticed you are in The Springs. So am I . Im near Austin Bluffs and Reasearch. Good to know there are at least 2 guys in this cow town that like guitar Jazz. If you'd like to get a cup of Java PM me. greg

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes possible in a very narrow field"

[Ron Sommers]

Well, now that it's finished, I figured I should put up some finished pics.

I'm already planning the 2nd one.

First one went to a friend who just 'had to have it'. I traded for cash and 2 guitars.

A Martin 1979 D25K (Koa) and

a Gibson L-6 electric. It's kind of a collectors item. Chickenhead selector knob for the pickups.

I'm not an electric picker, but I spose I could start...?

Played it a little and it really has a pretty good sound.

[Bob Francis]

What a great looking guitar

[Mike Conner]

Nice job. Looks like a bone insert in the bridge - my preference for acoustic tone. It's looks fairly tall - can you share what your neck angle ended up at?

My preference is to have the bridge sit on the top perpendicular to the strings, rather than slanted to achieve the intonation compensation. To achieve this the groove for the bone insert can be carved at a slant, then the bone saddle can also be shaped to adjust for intonation. Works well for me and just a suggestion for you next build.

[Patrick Hanna]

I'm glad I clicked in. This turned out extremely well! Congratulations!