Aug 31 - Sept 2 2015 - More of the neck

Here are two more pictures of the neck from the previous post after all of the finish spraying was done.

 I shaved the neck heel so that the neck would attach to the body at the proper angle (what we normally call doing a "neck reset"), got everything mated up nicely, and glued the neck back on. Unfortunately, at that point I realized I had made a beginner mistake. While I had the neck off (since the very beginning of rebuilding this instrument) I never once checked to make sure that the truss rod worked properly. As soon as I started trying to turn the adjuster nut, it sheared right off of the rod.

That's how, in less than 3 hours, I glued a neck onto a guitar and ended up taking it right back off.

holes drilled to steam the neck off... again... 

neck with broken truss rod, new truss rod, and removed fingerboard 

fingerboard being glued back onto the neck after truss rod replacement

During all of that glue-up time, Scott had me start disassembling my next guitar to rebuild. This one is still a Harmony, but it's a classical guitar instead of the normal steel-string guitars that we do. It'll be my first classical rebuild. It's actually built more similarly to a steel-string guitar than a traditional classical guitar, but I'll at least get to build a classical bridge and install classical style bracing.

24-28 Aug 2015 - Fixing up a neck and setting up a Strat

Sorry this post is a little bit late; Blogger has been acting up for the last few days. Anyway, here it is:

These pictures are the progression of the neck that I showed you in my last post.

all divots and scratches filled and brown stain applied to light spots

divots and scratches on front of headstock filled with black wood filler

front of headstock oversprayed with black; the clear coats will blend the logo in better

At this point, I faded in some brown tint on the headstock and the neck heel to hide the lighter spots still under the brown stain.

tint and clear coats done, ready for final wet-sanding

wet-sanded and sprayed with one last coat of clear, flat lacquer

I also ended up working one client guitar last week. The below pictured Fender American Stratocaster (unusually equipped with EMG pickups and preamp) came in for a set up and some electrical work. The electrical issue was actually just that the battery (for the EMG preamp) was dead. I replaced the battery and gave the guitar a basic setup.

17-21 Aug 2015 - Nice Silvertone and Neck Prep

This guitar belongs to Rebecca's grandmother. We were visiting earlier in the summer and she mentioned that she had an old Silvertone. This guitar is from the 50s and is in great shape. It's going to be a really nice guitar once I've rebuilt it.

This is the neck from a guitar that I've been working on for a while. It's a rebuild, but it was in particularly bad shape from the start. The body has already had a couple of large pieces grafted onto the back and been refinished. Now I'm in the process of refinishing the neck so that it blends more nicely with the refinished body. The lighter brown areas on the picture above are wood filler. I was filling all of the little ding and nicks and scratches so that the new finish that I put on the neck will be nice and smooth. Smooth necks are much nicer to play than neck with chips in them. Below is a picture after the excess filler has been sanded away and some dark brown stain has been added.

10 Aug 2015 - Kim Has A Weird Neck

Well it looks like I'm not very good at updating my blog daily. I'm starting a couple of new projects now, though, so it's a good time to pick this back up. My new goal is going to be posting at least once a week, even if it's just pictures of what I've been working on. I'd like to post more often than that, but I'll start with once a week.

As for the new projects, the first is a guitar that I'm working on for a friend named Kim. Her 80s or 90s Korean-made Kay guitar had become unplayable because the neck had started to separate from the body. I told her that I'd fix up the neck, reset it if the angle wasn't quite right, and maybe even do the whole conversion process like we do on the older Kay and Harmony guitars. Here it is minus the strings:

Today I started by taking the neck off. Most Kay guitars (and all of the older guitars that we do the conversion process on) have dovetail neck joints like this (this is not Kim's guitar):

In the old Harmony pictured here, the dovetail tenon on the neck heel fits into the mortise (slot) in the neck block on the body of the guitar.

However, I immediately started to doubt that Kim's guitar had a dovetail joint when I first felt around inside the instrument. The neck block seemed too small, and there was another longitudinal block running under the top of the guitar almost to the sound hole.

I proceeded cautiously, drilling into where I thought a joint would be if there was a straight tenon. I steamed out the holes in hopes of loosening whatever glue was holding things together. I did steam out some glue but not quite in the way that I had suspected. When I started wiggling the neck a little, I noticed that there were some dowels running from the neck heel into the neck block. Two of them were right where I had been steaming the glue out on either side of the trussrod. The steam had loosened the glue around them, and they were coming out of the neck pretty easily. Two more dowels were positioned directly below the trussrod, one near the middle of the heel and one near the bottom. I ended up having to saw through those two. Enough of the words, here's what it looks like:

This is an unusual neck joint, but I'll be able to turn it into a more conventional bolt-on neck by drilling out the two sawed dowels and replacing them with bolts.

That's it for today. I'll keep posting as I make progress.

28 Jan 2015 - Upright and Three Conversions

I have several pictures today. Let's get started.

The first thing that I did today was glue back a seam in a plywood double bass.

This bass has seen better days. The top is caving in underneath the bridge, and one of the seams had come unglued. We checked inside to see if the bass bar or soundpost were cracked or loose, but they were both in place. Unfortunately, the caving in is simply due to cheap construction materials.

We were able to fix the open seam though. Between the two of us, Scott and I were able to bend, glue, and clamp the seam.

I'll take the clamps off and give the bass one more look over Monday.

After clamping up the bass, I got started on three more of our Harmony conversions. Part of my learning process involves rebuilding old Harmony guitars. Many of these guitars were built by Harmony but branded as Kay, Silvertone, Stella, or a handful of other names. We rebuild the guitars using techniques and designs based on old Martins and Gibsons. By the time we're done, these cheap old guitars actually play and sound like fine, handmade instruments. I've completed two small-bodied rebuilds, and these three are my first full-sized guitars.

Sears Roebuck (SR) OM-style (aka #9)

Kay Dreadnought (aka #13)

Silvertone OM-style (aka #38)

We use numbered tape or stickers on each guitar to keep track of which necks and bodies (and sometimes other parts) go together. I start by removing the bridge, pickguard, tuners, and any other removable parts like tailpieces from the guitars. Then I remove the necks from each guitar.

Today, I also removed the backs and internal bracing from #9 and #13. Unfortunately, when I removed the neck from #38, it took a small piece of the top as well.

That piece from the top needs to be glued back on before I can continue to removing the back and bracing. I glued and clamped it back in place today, and I'll remove the clamps and hopefully be able to move forward on it on Monday.

Today was a productive day. If the repair on #38 holds nicely, I should be able to make more good progress on Monday.

27 Jan 2015 - Vantage Flying V

Today was just more of the Vantage guitar from yesterday. I had to soak the bridge in WD-40 to get a couple of the saddles to move, and I had to steal a couple of saddle adjustment screws from an old bridge because this one was missing two. Once I strung it back up, I noticed that I had filed the nut slot for the low E string at an angle, so I had to fill that slot, grind the nut down, and slot it again.

At the end of the day, though, the guitar was done. It actually sounded pretty nice for an old Gibson knock-off, too.

Hopefully I'll have something more exciting to post tomorrow.

26 Jan 2015 - Vantage Flying V

Today is the first instrument day of the What's On The Bench blog! I spent most of the day cleaning up and organizing my bench now that I've finished my first two Harmony conversions. I still have a lot of organizing to do, but today I just wanted to move everything such that I can always have a clean space at the end of the day. I'd love to leave the shop each day with nothing but my shot bag and maybe an instrument on my felt pad. After today, I'm headed in that direction.

Today's guitar is a well-used Vantage flying V style guitar. It's in for a full set up. Like I mentioned, I spent most of the day organizing my space. As a result, I only got the neck of this guitar done today, but the body should go quickly tomorrow as long as there are no nasty surprises waiting for me underneath the pickguard.

The picture that you see is the guitar before I started. Going forward, I'll also start including a picture of my bench at the end of the day (as long as there's something on it). I'll also post before and after pictures of any instruments or jobs that I completely finish during the day.

Here's to tomorrow!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new What's On The Bench blog!

I'll be posting short updates each day that I'm in the shop (usually Monday through Wednesday) showing what was on my work bench during that day. I got the idea today as I was cleaning up and organizing my work space. I still have a lot of organization to do, so you'll get to see a little bit of that process, too, as I figure out which tools I'll be using most frequently and keeping in the easy to access spots around my space.

I hope that this will be a fun way for me to process everything that I'm doing during my time at Baxendale Guitar as well as for you to get an idea of what it is I'm doing and have a peek into the world of a luthier-in-training.

Enjoy!