A Blonde Guitar - Making a Copy of the FE 19 Guitar by Antonio Torres: Shaping the Neck

-
Wilson, the necks on your guitars are perfect!

Alex Komodore, Coordinator of Guitar Studies, Associate Professor at Metropolitan State University, Denver, Colorado




This is the one time a guitar maker gets to do anything close to carving a piece of wood - the neck.



The profile of the heel is carved nearly to completion when I attach the guitar's top to it, now that the guitar is assembled I need to blend the curves of the heel to the rest of the neck. I also need to shape the profile of the neck to a flat "D" shape. I find this shape the most comfortable for playing, though some like a more rounded neck, I think this is the best shape for a classical guitar, even Alex Komodore thinks so!




Knives, spokeshaves, card scrapers, round and flat rasps and files are the tools used for shaping the neck.




I use this gauge to check the progress of the neck's shape.



The best judge for a neck's surface and shape is my thumb and hand. As a player I know the importance of a good neck and I spend as much time as needed making the neck perfect.

I read an interview with a very famous classical guitar maker and in the interview he bragged that he could shape a guitar's neck in 15 minutes using just a draw knife. Bravo for him.

I spent close to four hours shaping and sanding this neck. I want my guitars to be playable and comfortable.

French polishing with shellac is next phase for "Amparo"!


Comments

  1. Tico VogtJanuary 23, 2014 at 5:36 AM

    It would seem to me that the neck carving would be a great pleasure and release after all the very tightly controlled fitting work you do elsewhere in the building process.

    Man, that Etude #11 is amazing! It's fun to see it played after hearing it so many times. Thanks again for the wonderful videos.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Make a Traditional Froe Mallet

-
Image
What holds the Holy of the Holies, what did Brahma become? Wood. Why will aspen always tremble? For the nails driven into the cross. What makes the color of wood? The soil it tastes. Cradle, fiddle, coffin, bed: wood is a column of earth made ambitious by light, and made of beauty by the rain. Kim R. Stafford, Having Everything Right , 1986. Rive , verb, to split Shake , noun, a split in a piece wood. (Heart shake, ring shake) Shake , verb, (Middle English), to split. I know I should have been in the studio working on my back log of guitars, but the day was so nice and warm with a tall blue canopy, I couldn't stay inside. I decided that I needed to make a proper froe mallet. This style of mallet is traditional to northeastern California , primarily Tehama (where I'm from), Butte, Shasta and Plumas counties where making shingles by hand from sugar pines was an industry. I don't know if it was used in any other region along the Pacific Rim, other parts of the United S
Read more

The Guitar's Scale Length, Your Hand Size and a Chart

-
Image
I will cite the case of a marvelous concert player, a Japanese lady who is barely 5 ft. tall and with hands that are real miniatures. She plays a 664 mm 10 string guitar and demanded that I build this guitar with an action 1 mm higher than normal, which she handles with incredible ease. This is serious study! Jose Ramirez III, Things About the Guitar , 1990 Here is the hand size and scale length that I found on the forum at delcamp.com . Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 250mm+,  664mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 230mm to 250mm,  656mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 210mm to 230mm,  650mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 190mm to 210mm,  640mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 170mm to 190mm,  630mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of below 170mm,  615mm scale length Here is my flexible imperial/metric ruler. Here is my hand properly placed on the flexible imperial/metric ruler. Today my reach from lit
Read more

How to Stipple Wood

-
Image
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein, scientist, mathematician This morning I spent several hours grinding and filing on a spike (large nail) with the idea that in the end, I would have several wood stippling tools, also known as background punches. The peg heads on the guitars made by Hernandez y Aguado have carving channels on them that are stippled, and since I am making a very close copy of such of a guitar I need to figure out how to do the stippling. Since I no longer have my leather carving tools and those stipple tools (available at brownells.com ) cost about $27, excluding tax, I thought that I would make my own. They work, but not the way I wanted them to, and I found out that it is really hard to stipple bubinga! That is what I was practicing on. Off to the computer and the world of the Internet and after a little research I found this article . Please be aware that this article is at a website of shooting ma
Read more