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Showing posts from April, 2015

Miguel Rodriguez Style Guitar - The Last Guitar of the Season

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It is easy to create a mystique about guitar making. There must be something magical about a process that constructs a wooden box, stretches some strings across it, and persuades delectable sounds to come from it. Colin Cooper, The Classical Guitar Book , 2002 Back in January or February, I made the neck for this guitar. I jointed and glued the western red cedar top about the same time and installed the rosette. Some where in this blog are postings of when I made the three piece back and when I split out the braces for the top. I bent the sides last week. All this was done so I can assemble this guitar by Saturday, the last guitar of the season. I go back to my day job as a historic preservation carpenter on April 28th, after that I will continue to work on this guitar and three other guitars as I can make time. This guitar is braced in the manner that was used by Miguel Rodriguez,Sr. and his sons, Rafael and Miguel. Those of you familiar with Rodriguez guitars will no

The Secret to Woodworking Is...

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Art and life are one and the greatest of the arts is the art of living. Dorothy L. Pillsbury, Adobe Doorways , 1952 We got to enjoy a wonderful spring snow storm over the last several days, by early this morning we got close to a total of 36 inches of very wet snow at our little house. One small community in Larimer County recorded five feet of snow from this past storm! My wife and I dug out the Jeeps yesterday so we could drive to town to get groceries and dog food and this is my last week of freedom before I return to my day job as a historic preservation carpenter. Here's where I heave a big sigh, I will miss my days in the studio making guitars. Tools for making guitar bridges I've been very busy on 3 guitars, 2 are custom orders and one is a "speculation" guitar that I assembled several years ago but couldn't complete because of orders, work and life. A Lee Valley router is the ticket to inlay some mother of pearl I started French po