Second attempt at guitar body

[Richard Hutchings]

I usually like the hand tool forum the most but I'm back to building instruments. Having built 3 F5 mandolins, I'm now trying to build a dreadnought guitar. The neck came out great but the body ended with an unfixable flaw. I sanded through one of the sides. So now I'm building box #2 and I thought that I would share the process here.

Here's a few photos of the neck with the firewood body.
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Here's the start of the new body.

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[Edward Weber]

Thanks for posting

[Richard Hutchings]

Your welcome. I'll try to keep it going to the end.

[Jim Becker]

I also appreciate the effort and will enjoy seeing your entire process. One of these days I may take on an acoustic, or at least partially acoustic instrument myself.

[David Falkner]

Where is the sand-through? Is it possible to turn that into a sound port? I'll soon be on my second acoustic; they're a blast to build!

[Richard Hutchings]

Where is the sand-through? Is it possible to turn that into a sound port? I'll soon be on my second acoustic; they're a blast to build!

No, it's on the bottom of the lower bout. I could probably make some kind of patch but I just don't want to. Moving works for me.

[Richard Hutchings]

Getting read to glue up the top and back. I have an old window that someone was throwing away and it's perfect for checking the seams. The shooting board didn't work so well so I stuck the plane in the vise and tried that. It was better but not quite perfect. As hard as I try, I can never get them perfect off the plane so I stuck some 240 grit on the glass and got it perfect. I'll keep trying with the hand planes on future guitars.

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[John Kananis]

Richard, nice work and thanks for sharing this. Just fyi, if you're going to use your hand plane in a vise that way, you may want to seat it further down so you're clamping part of the sole and not just gripping the "wings". To avoid the cast iron snapping off.

[Richard Hutchings]

Thanks for the tip. I don't plan on doing it this way next time. I feel like I've had better luck in the past clamping the wood in the vise.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Looks excellent! I will enjoy following along!

[Richard Hutchings]

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I came up with a new idea for clamping the top and back halves. I was going to make board to do this when I spotted the table-saw. Bingo, this works great and zero extra fixtures cluttering the shop. I may save the shims.

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[Richard Hutchings]

For some reason, I can't seem to add any photos now.

[Richard Hutchings]

I won the battle of the potato chip rosewood back. I still can't post pictures.
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[Richard Hutchings]

That didn't work so well for the top so I cut it apart and re-glued by just making the space between the miter slot and the fence slightly less than the width of the boards. the boards made a little tent when place between them and I just forced it down with a weight. This worked perfect and was much easier.

The back pieces were a real challenge as they were very warped from improper storage. My bad. I made 2 attempts at this as well. I had to make a crazy fixture, really just a bunch of loose boards, clamped in every direction with the final clamps running across the joint. As you can see from the second photo, it worked very well. I hope I never have to do it this way again but if I do, I know how.

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[Richard Hutchings]

I don't know where my posts are going, I'm sure I posted something here yesterday. I had a bear of time getting this potato chip pieces together. I got it done though and I'm moving forward.

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I overslept and didn't get anything done before work this morning other than locating these jigs for inlaying the rosette. The one on the left I've never used, I found it at a yard sale. I think I'll stick with the known to work jig that I built. That's all I've got for today. It's a little disappointing, I was on a roll.

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