Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
Posts: 1696
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
Videos of Me Making a Negra
I'd like to share with you these videos that my friend Maymi made while I was making a flamenca negra guitar for her (in self defense, because we have been playing together and her old guitar sounded so bad). She wasn't present the whole time I worked on it, but I am amazed at how much of the time she did hang around.
My techniques are constantly evolving, as I'm sure yours are too, so the way I did something in the videos is not necessarily how I do it now.
Its nice the whole process from start to finish. 3 questions: 1. was it a vacuum cleaner through with you passes all the parts? 2. At least from what I'v seen in the video the solera's neck is flat rather then angled ,isn't it? 3. I always thought that the neck and the heel are made from one piece of wood , no?
Oh , ye , last one: How long all this process take?
I'm not sure I understand your first question. The big hoses are part of my dust collection system.
My solera does have a ramp to angle the neck, to 3 mm at 320 mm from the 12th fret. Moreover, it is hollowed out up to about a centimeter from the edges, below the lower harmonic bar, rather than dished to a spherical section (or whatever you would call that).
Traditionally the heel is made from a stack of pieces which are each about the same thickness as the neck piece, but I often use a single block for the heel. It is rare for a neck and heel block to be all one piece and I have never done it; it would waste a lot of wood to cut it out.
It takes about 125 hours to build one and then sometimes that much in addition to finish (varnish) if I am unlucky. This one was varnished with spar (marine) varnish, but lately I have been French polishing which takes about 25 hours.