Thursday, April 30, 2015

Andy Chase Cundiff with his Chickadee 18" archtop

 

Andy's guitar is approaching completion. He visited the studio to add his artistic hand in hand assisted draughtsmanship on the finish. He saw the FG FatBoyFiddleButton guitar I made a couple of years ago and said I must have it on mine. Glad to accommodate. Since Andy is a professional artist as well as musician he is highly qualified to draw on his guitar. I love these picts. Thanks to Kirk Richards for the photos.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Service for Telecasters

Work in the studio is varied. Here is some work on a telecaster where the original neck is being replacing with a beautiful bird's eye maple neck. Trouble is the predrilled neck holes don't match the holes in the body.

Here's the procedure. Fill the body holes with maple plugs. Easy right. Dowels must be honed to the correct diameter. Chucking up the dowel in a drill press and sanding it till it is .170" does the trick.
glue and fill then train the excess to complete the task.

Transfer the neck hole pattern to the body. Some left over .170" dowels were temporarily place in the the neck holes. Set some carbon paper (remember carbon paper?) in the neck pocket of the body and fixe the neck to the body. Be sure to make sure the center line is valid.

Drill the new .170" holes in the body. Make sure it's all squared up and drill.

Wax up the screws and use your PopEye like forearms to mount the neck to the body.

There it is. Sounds easy and for the most part it is. Precision is the key to doing it once.

 

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Mandolin Top Creation

How does a mandolin top get created? Here is a montage of photos showing the various processes. This is one of many ways to fabricate. 
The billet is squared up 
The contours are drawn on the top 
The top is carved. In this case with a router. 
The inside of the top is drilled to thickness 
The inside of top is carved. 
Simple. Yes?

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Looking for guitars and mandolins: Gibson, Martin, Epiphone, Guild, Fender and others. If you have one taking up space let me know  and see if we can work out a deal.