The Making of a Guitar, part 2

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One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.
Georgia O'Keeffe



Plans that I drew for a terz guitar, it shares the same outline as the "Mae West" Lacote posted in the last blog. I did some research a while ago on the terz guitar and thought I should make one, because it would be as fun as a uke, bigger then a baritone uke and has six strings. This all started because I came across a fugue for terz guitar by Mauro Giuliani in the Boije online collection and fell in love with the piece.



In this photo I am gluing the peghead to the neck shaft. It is a simple butt joint and it will be reinforced with a dovetailed key, this is one time I will pull out my Porter-Cable router. I'll make the channel with a dovetail router bit, make the key on a table saw and glue the key in place.



Here is the wood that I am using to make the terz-Indian rosewood back and sides (I bought the wood from Allied Lutherie almost 10 years ago) and the top is Sitka spruce that I purchased from Alaska Specialty Woods. Believe it or not, the piece is from a 1A top.

Still waiting to see when I will be going to Rocky Mountain National Park. Weather has been gorgeous.

Oh, if anyone listens to NPR, maybe you have already heard about the Yosemite Valley Post Office getting a face lift with new sugar pine shingles. I was lead carpenter on that project, Nick G. and I put the last shingle on at 4pm on Groundhog Day. I will post some photos soon, the post office looks great!

Comments

  1. hdwareMarch 4, 2011 at 10:06 PM

    wilson,
    the terz' sounds intriguing. a bit like having one's cake and eating it too.
    I corresponded a few weeks ago with a young fellow in Dallas who was all hot to reinvent the fretted instrument; what he had in mind, it sounded like, was an unholy combination of a baritone guitar with a harp-guitar and maybe that oddball transverse-mounted-harmonics-n-drone-string thing made by someone for John McLaughlin some many years ago. My correspondent, referred to me by an old college friend, is a scientifically-precocious high schooler who is mad about the physics of instruments...but I counselled him that instruments full of divergent possibilities end up, like the giant-economy-size swiss army knives, left on the shelf in favor of more manageable tools.

    Played a little Lanikai tenor the other day. Had on-board electronics, a single cutaway (!) and came from the box properly set up, assembled well and at a stinker of a low price. Ah, chinese labor--such wonders it makes possible. Didn't like the spruce top on it, which may stamp me as an old fuddy-duddy; make mine mahogany or koa, please.

    so, any word on your eastward move?

    ReplyDelete

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