Guitar build, heel block

Remember that piece of wood that I cut off of the neck blank a post or two ago? The one that I made sure to label the grain orientation, top, and bottom? If you don't, I included a picture of it below. I have measured it into roughly equal portions that I will cut up and glue to the neck blank to create the heel block.

To make sure that I had the direction and grain orientation correct when I glued it up, I cut the blank and labeled it as follows:

 Top

Board: [1 ↑ | 2 ↑ | 3 ↑]

Bottom

It all ended up being glued like this:

[Neck blank]

               [1↑|

               |2↑|

                |3↑]

And here is the finished product:

That's all for now. I hope to have you a few more interesting posts in the next several days.

Guitar build, headstock veneers

This is the first step where I get to make the guitar (or piece of wood that at some point will hopefully begin to resemble a guitar) look fancy/like a guitar. Whatever that is worth, I am now gluing on the headstock veneers. I will also interject now and say that I have failed you readers, and did not document me planing down the top, flat side of the neck. I did this with the help of Dave, the father in law, and his jointer. It was planed in a manner to give some overall taper to the neck. Honestly, there wasn't much to see (not that you will know, you'll just have to take my word for it).

As you see, I have both a maple and a rosewood veneer to be glued:

And one is much thinner than the other. The thinner maple will go between the headstock and the rosewood.

Before you do some clamping, best get your clamps together.

Here you can begin to visualize what it will look like. I rearranged the rosewood a few times and determined that I like it with the grain going vertically, with the wider grain nearer the bottom.

Veneer is glued and clamped:

Note that I left some of the veneer overhanging where the headstock, that will get cleaned up in the next few steps.

I set up a saw fence to saw off that excess.

And the saw of choice today will be the dozuki saw. It is a Japanese saw with a very thin kerf and it cuts on the pull stroke, making this a very precise saw. I suppose it could also be some sort of scary movie villain's weapon too...

And after some sawing, I'll finish cleaning it up with a chisel.

That looks a lot better. I also planed/scraped down the sides so that they were flush with the headstock. You can see in the following photo how the maple looks sandwiched between the headstock and rosewood.

Guitar build, the planing begins...

So here is the next set of progress photos. You can see the scarf joint all glued up at this point:

And here is a closeup. Notice the overhang on the top of the headstock. That portion is going to be removed via bandsaw and then planed even and flat. I drew the line you see on the side of the headstock at 18mm from the back of the headstock so that I would have a reference point when sawing and planing. Here is the closeup with the line drawn:

I feel like this next picture is of some sort of scene in a movie portraying the impending doom of a canoe fast approaching a waterfall, except that it is wood fast approaching a band saw...

Tah dah! A nice, uneven band saw cut. To the handplane!

(Note that I did not cut on the line, but right above it, to give me room to plane to the correct depth. This is a better way to get more exact results, and makes the uneven cut a non-issue)

Because I do not have a fancy woodworker's bench, with all of the holes for benchdogs and nice built in vices for clamping complex wood projects, I clamped the neck to my router table. To support the headstock, I put a saw horse with a wood block on it under the end of the headstock, and slid a wedge of wood up until it was tight (but not so much force that I might break the headstock). I then proceeded with the planing.

Notice the line where the two glued up pieces of wood come together on the headstock. It helped me when planing to refer to this line, because I could tell when things were flat and true (when the line was straight, and not wavy). I also drew a square line near the beginning of the headstock to use as a reference for my planing (you can see it near my fingers). After a few minutes (60?) I had the final thicknessed product.

Then, I needed to get rid of some of the extra wood on the neck blank to get the neck to the right length. I did some approximate (but very precise too) measurements for where the 12th fret would land (the 12th fret being exactly half the distance between the nut and the saddle, which is why you can get natural harmonics on a guitar string at this location), and added an inch for the part of the neck inside the body (classical guitar thing). I then drew a line, and cut off the excess, which I will use to stack up and glue together for the heel (to be seen in the near future).

Note: it is always good to mark the orientation of the board you just cut, in case you want to refer later to which direction the grain was traveling and what side of the board was facing which way. This is why I marked it with the diagonal line you see and made a little note on the board.

All for now!

Guitar build, scarf joint

Well, I began building the classical guitar that I have neglected to start for almost a year now (due in part to law school, it gets in the way of everything...). I decided to start blogging some of my progress, but only after I made the scarf joint cut on the neck blank. I will try and do a better job of taking pictures as I go along.

After I cut the scarf joint, I had to plane down the cut to get it smooth and flat for gluing it to the other part of the neck.

Here you can see the progress with planing. I don't remember the saying exactly, but they say a craftsman is only as good as his tools. A good plane is both sharp and honed, and having little experience doing either, I spent some time with The Handplane Book by Garrett Hack. Very helpful book for the amateur (me), and I got my Stanley 220 plane working much better, but still have room for improvement.

This is the joint held together.

And here it is before I clamped it up.

Finally, I got it clamped and went in to make dinner. All for now!