109 - How to build a guitar - Part 2 of 3

Marc:The Wood Whisperer is brought to you by: Powermatic, the gold standard since 1921 and by Rockler Woodworking and Hardware, Create with Confidence. (groovy brass music) (serene guitar music) (driving guitar music) Rick:We're going to focus on the tail here of the guitar where the two side pieces come together. We're going to make a decorative wedge which I've already done. I made this out of some scrap bubinga that I had laying around. The kit didn't come with detail here, they just put a little strip down the back. I thought it might be fun to put in a little wedge. That's what they do in the video and it looks like a fun little challenge. We're going to cut the wedge shape out of here and pop this sucker in there, glue it down and that will be the tail piece, whatever. (serene guitar music) The back is the same wood as the sides which was east Indian rosewood. We begin by using the drum sander to reach the desired thickness. After jointing the two halves I use a hand plane to fine tune the jointed edge. This will ensure a tight glue bond. Now we will cut the braces that will become the support for the back of the guitar. The braces are made from Spanish cedar, very aromatic wood most popular in the lining of cigar boxes. The word cedar is misleading because the wood is actually part of the mahogany family so it has very similar working characteristics of mahogany. (Spanish-style guitar music) The sound board begins it life as two bookmarked halves of engelmann spruce. I made a jig that will allow me to produce the slight curve in the sound board. It's rimmed with cork and has a hole drilled in the center of the sound hole. By fastening the strap through the hole I can pull the sound board down in the center, creating the slight curve necessary for the sound board. (jazz guitar music) (driving guitar music) (record scratch) This is really the first major error on a guitar. Instead of drawing the line binding straight across the neck joint as seen here I should have angled it to match the contour where the neck and the sides are joined together. I didn't realize my error until I started fitting the bindings and by then it was too late. This will come back to haunt me when I cut the neck to final width and I'm not sure yet how I'm going to fix it. In the meantime, back to the build. (driving guitar music) The bridge is east Indian rosewood and will actually be the last thing that goes on the guitar before the strings. In order to do the bindings on the back the trim router, because the back is curved like this, it's got a radius to it, if you just put the trim router on the surface and routed the channel the channel wouldn't be square to the side, and there would be a gap on the side when you put the binding in and it would be very unsightly. The recommendation is to get a tilt base for your trim router. I have a DeWALT 670, I've had it for a couple years. It's a really nice trim router, I really like it a lot but they don't make it any more, or if they do they certainly don't sell it anywhere around here, and I can't find a tilt base for it any more. I've tried eBay, Amazon, etc., so I had to improvise a little bit and make my own. These are just little shim stock that you would use for installing windows or doors when you're roughing a window or door. I found two that were identical in thickness and double-sided taped then to the bottom of my trim router. They just happened to be the perfect angle so that when I route the channel like so the sides will be perpendicular to the, or square to the channel. (driving guitar music) This is the saw blade that I used to cut the kerfs. It's six inches in diameter by 23 thousandths thick. If you recall I had a little issue with the top bindings. The problem was that I undercut the neck too much, or rather I undercut the body too much when I did the top binding so we end up with this little gap here and coincidentally enough I also had a little bit of tearout on the neck when I was shaping the neck. So I've got this very unsightly, ugly looking gap there and I can't really think of any creatively great ways to fill it. I could, I guess, just wedge a piece of whatever in there and hope that nobody notices. The other idea that I had was to take a piece such as this. It's just a little wedge shape piece of the binding that I had left over, and I would attach it like so. Not the prettiest thing in the world but I think it will do. It doesn't look bad. A little more sanding and some blending and you'll hardly ever notice them. Except that now I've pointed them out in a video. For those of you who are luthiers and are watching the video you probably noticed that I made a little bit of a mistake, and this mistake is actually pretty huge. The mistake that I made is I did not taper the fretboard before I glued it to the neck and body of the guitar. The fretboard is supposed to start small and then tapers down the wire to the sound hole. Now I have a really nice ebony fretboard glued to a really nice guitar that isn't correct. There are several options that I came up with. Some of the things I thought of, is it possible to pry this off of the neck? I have myself convinced it's probably the worst idea because there was a lot of glue and the glue bond between these two long grain pieces, the neck and the fretboard, is probably pretty strong and I think I'll risk cracking the neck more than I would getting the fretboard off. I'm okay with the fact that I'd have to buy another fretboard but I'd rather buy another fretboard than have to build another guitar. The other option that I thought of and it's the one that I'm going to try first is to try and shave the fretboard while it's glued to the guitar. What I think I'll do is have this very heavy, precision ground metal here and what I'll do is I'll actually clamp it to the fretboard. This fretboard is still very flat because I didn't bother shaving it before I glued it to the neck. I'll clamp this to the fretboard and take either a dovetail saw or my veneer saw and try and saw a groove in the appropriate place on the fretboard and chisel the material outside. I'm not quite sure exactly how I'm going to do that. The good news is everything on the bad side of the saw line is going to be taken off anyway so if the chisel slips or goes too deep into the neck it's not a big deal because that part of the neck is going to be gone. The problem is of course on the bottom. I have this glued over the rosetta, what happens, is this going to start peeling the rosetta? I don't know yet, and I'm not really looking forward to this. Marc:Will this be a do over of epic proportions? What will our hero do? Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of the birth of a guitar. (happy guitar music)