Guitar build #2 Progress

I haven't posted anything in quite a while, but I've just recently been getting to work on my Guitar #2, a Rosewood/Sitka Spruce OM Cutaway.

I just got the back glued on the rim, and the top is braced up and rough shaped. The neck is all ready to go and the fretboard is fastened on with a truss rod in there from back when I didn't have the tools to build the other parts. This is the first guitar I've done scratch braces with, and I'm pleased with the result so far.

This guitar 100% so far has been built with reject parts and pieces of wood that Martin factory decided they could not use. It's proving a solid learning experience trying to make all these foreign parks work out and at the same time it's a really cheap build in comparison.

I'm hoping to close up the shell in the next couple of days, and start working on the bindings/finish.

Neck shaping and fretboard

The kit I got came with a rough shaped neck, and I needed to do quite a bit of carving to get the final shape I wanted, although it's still not 100% perfect where I want it, you can get the idea from the picture.

I didn't get multiple pictures of this so you can see the fretboard has been glued on also, and it's fretted up until the 12th fret so that fitting the neck will be a little easier, I'll go back and fret the rest of them later.

I don't have the tuners installed in the picture, but I've also drilled the holes for my gold Gotoh tuners that is a really nice touch to the guitar.

Bindings

I haven't updated this in a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't made ANY progress. I'm not going to lie though, the bindings of the guitar intimidated me and I was a little afraid to get on it, and that's why it'd been so long since I've updated. I'm lacking quite a bit of tools and had to improvise as much as possible as far as guides go, but they turned out ok.

Body is Together

Aside from routing the bindings the body is all done and together. I just finished gluing the back on and by taping the guitar and already have an idea of the great sound it's going to produce. It's finally starting to take it's shape as a guitar.

Glueing Side Reinforcement Strips

Glueing the Top On

The Patches

Here are the 2 mends. They both turned out alright, but once the guitar has a finish on it, I'll be able to determine which one I like better.

When I was cutting out the notches for the braces in the side of the guitar I made a pretty big mistake, twice. Using a flush cut saw that was probably a bit too aggressive for this purpose, I cut too deep into the sides and tried 2 different kind of mends to see which one I liked better, and which one I would be using if it were to happen again. The one example is where the saw dug in more than I wanted and I just tried to fill the cuts with a mini rosewood wedge. The other was the same exact thing, but instead of filling a wedge, I cut it out deeper and was going to put a patch in with the same grain.

Kerfing radiused for Top and Back

Got the braces for my soundboard and back glued down and shaved down some (after pictures were taked), pretty much ready to go on.

Finshing Braces on Soundboard

I had all the braces on the soundboard glued down and ready to go but 2 of them that I didn't have clamps for big enough to reach all the way out on the sound board and hold them down. So... I improvised and a rice bag came into play. I held the rice bag off center and pushed down to check the seam on each brace at a time, and it looks like it "should" work. Didn't have the resources to do it the normal way, but I'm pretty confident this will work out fine.

Kerfing is all glued and ready to be sanded.

Installing the Kerfing

I just got the clamps off and check the sides of the guitar to see how that set up. The one flaw is the bottom corner of the side on the end block spaced out a little when I glued it so there is a very slight taper in what will be my "top" side when playing it. People would probably advise me to try to steam the block and remove it to reglue it, but it is a fairly minor gap, and I'd like to run with it and see what happens. If anything, I'd like to see what exactly happens with it and what kind of set backs it is, so I know not to do it next time and know exactly what problems it causes.

Anyways, I installed the internal mold of the guitar and glued the "backs" kerfing on with roughly 100 clothes pins strengthened by rubber bands.

Gluing Sides to the Blocks

I went out to harbor freight tools and I picked up ALOT of random clamps that I needed for this build, I was actually already at a stand still with gluing the sides because the lack of clamps I had, but I got what I needed and got started. I made radiused cauls to match the radius of the end and heel blocks, and filled them in with auto body filler for a tight fit on the end and heel blocks for good gluing. I glued them up and let it sit for 24 hours.

Installing the Rosette

Since I didn't have all of the clamps I needed to get started gluing the end and heel blocks to the sides right off the bat I skipped ahead a little bit to installing the rosette around the sound hole. The dry fitting when clean and smooth and I had a perfect seem for the inner circle but as soon as the glue went down all hell broke loose. The first 2 rings glued down fine, but the center, most visible ring, broke on me twice. I didn't think that I'd be able to just stop since I already had the glue in the channels, so I ran with with. All and all I'm happy with it, but there are 2 more, more noticeable seems that will catch a wandering eye.

Getting started

Recently I've gone out and purchased all the wood needed to build my first acoustic guitar (a kit). I've been studying up on how it's done and what is needed for the past 2 years while trying to gather up most of the necessity tools along the way. It's time to get started.