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Showing posts from October, 2014

The Best Wood, Part 2

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Federico Sheppard: Do you ever use cedar tops? Antonio Marin: Yes, but only two or three per year. This is a spruce town. From an interview with the great Granada guitar maker, Antonio Marin, American Lutherie #117 A young man visited my studio the other day to chose a guitar from my inventory, he was looking to replace the Asturias brand guitar that he is currently playing. His two complaints about the Asturias were the string length (656mm) and the neck is too thick and rounded. Spruce/Walnut Guitar I handed him a spruce/walnut guitar (photo above) with a scale length of 650mm. He loved the neck and the string length, but I noticed right away that he was struggling to get a good sound out of it. Spruce/California Laurel guitar, Torres/Santos Model So, I pulled out one of my latest guitars, the one based upon Antonio Torres's guitar FE 19, which is loud, has an amazing voice and capable of many nuances and again, as he played this guitar I noticed that he did

Wooden Straight Edges

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It is not advisable and can even be dangerous, to entrust someone else with the search for a fiancee, the purchase of a pair of shoes or the choice of a guitar. Jose Ramirez III, Things about the Guitar , 1990 I didn't get everything done today that I wanted to get done, but I did get started on a few things. After morning chores, I took the dogs for a walk through our wonderful backyard, which is part of Arapahoe National Forest, and then started making legs for a router table. I have about ten windows (6-9 pane) to make before the end of December and I am not about to plane all the muntins, rails and stiles by hand, I have an expensive router bit for that. I got the legs glued up, went for a 2.5 mile run and had lunch. The afternoon, I thought, was going to be dedicated to working on a copy of a 1968 Hernandez y Aguado classical guitar, click here for a post on that guitar, I need to thickness the fret board and glue it onto the neck. First thing I wanted to do was

Advice for an Aspiring Classical Guitar Maker

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I shall start off by stating something that could sound rather surprising coming from a guitar maker: a guitar is not a work of art - it is almost fundamentally a technical opus. Jose Ramirez III, Things About the Guitar , 1990 The following advice is for those who want to make a classical guitar in the Spanish tradition. I do not make steel string guitars, I am not interested in them, but, perhaps, some of this advice can be used to help you succeed in making a steel string guitar. #1 : Buy the following books: Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology , by Cumpiano and Natelson, click here ; Making Master Guitars , by Roy Courtnall, click here ; The Guitar Maker's Workshop , by Rik Middleton, click here . And you must buy every book written by Roy Underhill . You will learn so much about hand tools from him! Read them from cover to cover several times before you start to make a guitar or buy any tools. #2 : Buy The Naked Woodworker with Mike Siemsen (cli

Made a Draw Down Stand for Saddle Making

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The one piece of equipment that is almost indispensable is the drawdown stand. Lee M. Rice, How to Make a Western Saddle , 1953 I recently attend a local heritage days celebration, there were many great volunteers on site who did a great job of engaging the kids in butter churning, quilt making and several other skills. I did notice a volunteer who was trying to teach two young boys how to rope, the volunteer couldn't handle a rope any better than the boys, he just handed them the ropes and walked away. I went over and showed the boys how to build a loop, how to hold the loop and rope coil and how to catch a calf with a simple under hand throw. Then I showed how to swing the rope over head - one boy caught on and roped the dummy calf, he was very excited. On the way home I told my wife that I should volunteer next year and be the cowboy. Horses were always a big part of my life, I rode whenever I had a chance and my brother and I occasionally got the chance to ride for