A Tuesday in a Guitar Maker’s Workshop…
What’s New This Week
Another cold day, expected high is 29 degrees Fahrenheit, current humidity is 42%, the shop humidity is about 43%…
The big project I am working on at the moment is the retrofit of my old Hernandis No. 1 Sherry-Brener Ltd., classical guitar. It now sports a salvage old growth Redwood top, soon it will receive a new neck which will change the string length from the original 665mm scale to a 650mm string length. Yesterday, I glued on the back bindings,
…and I scraped down the bindings a bit this morning.
Tomorrow, or Thursday, I will glue on the top bindings and once that is done I will be able to cut out a mortise for the new neck. The original neck was dovetailed into the heel block, since this is a one-off retrofit I am opting for a standard mortise and tenon.
About six or seven years ago, I bought a wide board of wenge at a local hardwood store and took the time to re-saw it into backs and sides. Ten years back, give or take, the master luthier Ervin Somoygi proclaimed that wenge was “the next Brazilian rosewood”, so of course I had to try it. I made one guitar out of it which I donated to the Twisted Spruce Music Foundation in 2019 as first prize for their inaugural guitar competition, Thomas Aquino was the winner. That guitar was such an incredible guitar that I decided to make another wenge guitar, I got as far as bending the sides, but I got sidetracked with new commissions.
Those wenge sides have been with me for three moves, and the other day when I completed the side laminating form for the next guitars, I place on of those wenge sides on the form and discovered that with a little time at the bending iron I could easily make them conform to the Manuel Ramirez 1912 guitar outline.
That was post lunch work, taking the sides from a more or less Hernandez y Aguado outline to the outline of Andrés Segovia’s 1912 Ramirez.
The sides will stay in this form until the System Three T-88 epoxy arrives, then I will sand the sides some and pull out some cherry and European fir veneer to laminate to the sides. It will be a great way to try out the new laminating form and the large Thin Air Press bag I just got from Roarockit.
Now, where did I put the wenge back pieces that go with these sides?!