martes, 29 de enero de 2013

A new soundport design


here´s a new soundport that I just made for a steelstring. Its a handdrawing, more or less made on the spot.
I will now offer special inlayed soundports on my 1A guitars. 


sábado, 26 de enero de 2013

starting guitars 106 - 108

Between French polishing sessions, and other projects, I have slowly started the building of guitars 106, 107 and 108. So far I´ve made the headstock, joined the soundboard, made the rosettes, and taken the soundboards down to final thickness. The 3 guitars are really sisters. 3 pegheads with the same scale and nut width, but each one has its little pecial thing.

#106 is going to Germany and it´ll have geared pegs from pegheds.com





#107 is going to the UK and is going to have an inlayed soundport:




#108 is going to Australia and its going to be orange:




The soundboards are from the same German spruce tree, so they´ll share some genes there.

lunes, 21 de enero de 2013

A Bouzouki came by for a minor reparation

This is Sergios Irish bouzouki. Its made in California and it suffered when he took it from humid Peruvian coast land to dry Peruvian highlands. So it got a little crack in the soundboard from the bottom to the lower brace. Nothing serious, but better to glue before it dirt enters. I glued the crack and reinforced with two small wood  "diamonds". They can be seen in the photo with the light bulb. (below left)



viernes, 18 de enero de 2013

Steelstring bodyshape and bracing.

Here´s a look into my steelstring guitar before closing the box.
As you can see, I glued the two lower braces the wrong way. So I had to chisel, plane and scrape them off and then make two new ones and glue them the right way. If not, it would have been a lefthand guitar, which is not what I want.
The body shape is my own interpretation of what is called Orchestra size. The bracing is a copy of a Martin OM and the body debth is the same as that one.


jueves, 10 de enero de 2013

Violin has strings on

Well, here´s the violin with strings on.
The violin is very nice to play. Strobels book says main air resonance around a C and I was lucky to reach a C minus just a few cents below, which I think is better than a straight C in order to avoid wolftones.
The violin is very balanced with the 3rd string a little bit weaker. The 4th string is big and warm and the 1st and 2nd are fast and bright. Just like I wanted actually.
It´ll change. It still smells very strongly because the lacquer is not totally dry. Lets see how it sounds after a warm summer.






lunes, 7 de enero de 2013

numbers 103 and 104 ready to be French Polished

Here´s #103, an Indian Rosewood negra, with Pau Ferro bindings. Its going to be natural color.








And # 104 is a Blanca with an inlayed soundport. Its going to be orange.



miércoles, 2 de enero de 2013

Guitars # 101 and 102 ready to be French Polished

So here is number 101, a Panama Rosewood Negra with an inlayed soundport. Its going to be natural color.







And here is # 102, a 2A blanca that will be deep orange. It will be for sale when finished.