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Ok I’m making a guitar that looks like a Vicente Arias on the outside, specifically the 1910 Arias at at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. And on the inside it has Manuel de la Chica bracing. So kill me for making a Spanish Frankenstein monster.
The wood is Japanese Flamed Horse Chestnut and it’s more rare that a brain cell from Donald Trump.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
The evidence, and I dutifully accept a few demerits for adding a bit of wood to the tongue of the heel.
Also, halibut fishing from shore is a thing from March to April and I’m sure I’ll score a big fatty this year with my surf casting lure made from slicing up a potato chip bag to make a tinsel skirt.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
Flamed Horse Chestnut or Tochi no Ki - ( chestnut wood)
It’s lot like English Sycamore in how it feels and bends, it’s like light weight maple. Of course none of this matters because I will put 40 layers of bright traffic cone orange polyurethane on it because Sensei Ricardo wants the world to be orange.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
I still haven’t caught my halibut, but I have two in the bullpen.
The Arias spirit I’m working on plus a classical order. I’m building three at a time, when the #3 is finished with assembly I’ll do the binding on all three at the same time and move to fingerboard & French polish.
Curious here the Arias, right side, is a 640 scale. The # 2 classical ( spruce top - cherry back and sides) is a 630 scale and the third guitar also a classical order will be a 620 scale.
The days of short scales being the freaky outliers are over.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
Nice. Are the two different head designs by request, or just whatever you feel?
One on the right is a copy of a typical Arias headstock, although think he occasionally made a fancier one. The one on the right is my normal personal design.
RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
Nice. Are the two different head designs by request, or just whatever you feel?
One on the right is a copy of a typical Arias headstock, although think he occasionally made a fancier one. The one on the right is my normal personal design.
That left me puzzled :-).
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The smaller the object of your focus the bigger the result.
RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
I put this guitar away for a month while I advanced other commissions, but back on it and trying to finish in May.
I’m trying to get a binding ‘bee sting’ into the heel like the ones I’ve been studying in photos of Arias guitars.
The look I’m going for is a steep angle that doesn’t intrude into the heel cap too much, really just the miter at the end of the binding inserts into the heel. But it’s the details that make credible models after a specific luthier.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
This seems to work, but I have to rethink the way the heel cap looks. I remember seeing an Arias photo with a heel cap of a taller egg shape like mine, but the photo I’m studying for the way the binding sting fits shows a round heel cap that looks like a violin button shape. Luthier talk.
Anyone have spare 120 year old Vicente Arias they can loan me for a couple months?
I’d gladly pay for any Luthieral Medium who could come hold a seance so I could speak directly with old Vicente himself about this.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
This is interesting to me, the work is clean and when I final scape it will be crisp and sharp. But there is an illusion that the button, heel cap whatever you want to call it, is asymmetrical. I measured it with my caliper, each side of the button is exactly 7mm from the outer edge of the center strip. The flame pattern is causing the illusion.
This is why guitar making is weird, you live in every square inch of the guitar while you build it. You look at every part in millimetric focus.
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