Week 10

It’s almost 2015, incredible! I hope your holiday season was full of love, peace, and joy; and that your new year will be just as much a blessing for you! I will do my general introduction earlier than usual- if you don’t know; I’m taking a one-on-one guitar-making course with the wonderful Brian Hawkins of Hawkins Guitars. (*Click on name for website) This blog is all about my step-by-step process with him to make my very first acoustic guitar from scratch! (*Click HERE to view previous blog.)

I ended last week without announcing the exciting news that the next class I’d be putting the box together! (*The box is the body of the guitar) So, this week the first thing we did was to prepare everything so we could glue our top and back to our sides.

"SANDING THE UPPER BOUT"

We began by sanding the sides nearest to the upper bout, on the side where the top would sit. (*The upper-bout is the part of the guitar closest to the neck) If you remember, we had already the top at a radius of 20”, but Brian likes to sand the upper bout area flat, while keeping the rest of the top of the guitar radiused for visual purposes’.

We used a new jig for this, made up of a single wooden board, some sandpaper, and an elevated wood block to keep everything that we didn't want to be flat remain at a radius.

Here’s a couple of pictures to demonstrate what I mean…

Before sanding the upper bout, we drew our centerlines, and made penciled dots where some braces were. We did this to make sure everything was straight, so we could keep everything centered through out the process; and so that we could get some prep work done for “tucking”.

*Drawing our centerline

"TUCKING THE TOP BRACES"

We then made our preparations to tuck our top braces. “Tucking” means that you bury the brace in a notch on the top of the guitar side, to add strength to the brace.

Since we had already drawn our dots where the braces were, we began by using a straight edge to mark out where our notches were going to be, lining them up with the brace. We then used a violin makers tool to make the line to limit how low we’d cut our notches.

*Above left: marking our lines on top with straight edge, above right: using violin makers tool

Next, we used our Japanese saw to make the cut, and then my favorite chisel to take the cut wood out out (*since it was already cut with the saw on either side).

*Pencil lines where we made the cut

I’ve said this before, but I’ll mention it again as it is appropriate for what happened next. Each piece of wood is different, and some tools work better with some wood than others, so even if you’re doing the same thing you’ve done in the past, you might have to try different methods sometimes. When we saw that using the saw and chisel wasn’t working well for a few reasons, we ended up using a router with the right bit, moving it back and forth until we got all the notches nice and clean.

*Cut out notch

After cutting, we made sure our braces fit perfectly in the notches, leaving no space between the brace and top all around. I had to shave a bit off the brace using a small scraper to make that happen, but finally there were no gaps all around, and we were ready for gluing!

"PUTTING THE BOX TOGETHER"

Finally, after all the hard work we did up to this point, the time to glue our box together was here!

We began by taking out a clamp system that Brain likes to use, and prepping all the pieces. We then spread the glue on the edges of our sides, and fit the top on, making sure everything was fit and centered. We then quickly put the clamps on, and after that we let it sit to dry.

When it was finished drying we did the same for the back.

You’ll be able to see the system better in a couple of pics than I could explain it. So here they are...

After gluing we took the guitar out of the mold, and then likewise to the clamp inside the guitar that was keeping the sides in place.

Then,

Drum roll Please…

The moment you’ve all been waiting for…

TADA!

A BEAUTIFUL guitar body!

We all played with the guitar many times; tapping it, and hearing the tone and note come out of it! (*by the way it was a G# for all of my geeky musical friends) It was so exciting to see and hear all of our hard work coming together!

Next time we’ll be working on the binding!

"Making the Bridge"

We then got to do something that Brian didn't think we'd get to that day, which is making the bridge! Brian had this realy beautiful piece of asian ebony, so we chose that to build with.

*Asian ebony bridge blank and jig

The bridge was already roughly cut to shape, so the first thing we did was put the blank into a jig and use the router to cut where the saddle would sit. This process was a lot like making our cut for the rossette (*Check out the post where I explained that HERE). We went back and fourth until it was nice and smooth.

*Routed out saddle area

We then radiused the back of it at 20", since it's going to sit on the top.

*Radiusing the bridge

After that we marked out the center of where our pin holes should be drilled: we did this using a template, a drill bit, and a straight edge. We then used the drill to make the plunge! I somehow got a bit off-center with one of my holes, but Brian fixed that for me... it adds to the character anyway...

We then drew our lines so we should get the bridge to the desired thickness, and I got to take down and shape it on the belt sander.

*Drilled pin holes, about to use the belt sander

I'm not sure why this next picture is blurry, I guess I took it too fast, but here's how a partially blind man would see the bridge on the top...

We'll glue the bridge at another time...

I am so blessed to be able to do this, and I am so honored to learn and to be a part of the whole process of a guitars transformation! It's amazing that what's before my eyes was once a tree which was cut down and sawed into boards, then cut down into smaller boards (and pieces/blocks of wood), only then to finally be made into something that is living, something that has its own voice again, and is again truly beautiful!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this process so far; it’s only the beginning! It will increase in beauty as the guitar is played, when songs are written using it; when inspiration, peace, laughter and all manner of emotions and reactions come from the response and use of it. That’s why this is such a satisfying craft; the creating process doesn’t stop at the birth of an instrument, but is rather the beginning of a momentum that will topple like dominoes to keep on creating life, and in that you get to be a part of something much bigger than yourself!

I hope that wasn’t too mushy for you, but I'm very passionate about creating something that will inspire people to create more love and life.

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If you’d like to know more about Brian and all he inspires and creates, then please click HERE for his website, or HERE to “Like” his FaceBook page.

I hope everyone has a very Happy NEW YEAR!

Thanks for reading,

~Daniel

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