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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to Firefrets)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Firefrets
I can't wait to see that wood pop. Nice job mate. Arias has done some nice rosettes. I thought about your Halibut then one thing led to another and the next thing I'm contemplating how to design a fish scale rosette. I wonder if Arias ever did one?
From 2018
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to Firefrets)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Firefrets
I can see where you were going with that. I like it. Was Arias a big influence on you as a luthier?
No, Santos, de la Chica and Barba and 1960’s Reyes because those were the guitars owned by my teachers and friends in San Francisco in the 1990’s. I got to keep them in my shop to study for a a week at a time. I actually made that rosette before I started looking at Arias!
RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
Finally got around to making a bridge for this Arias / de la Chica inspired Frankenstein.
The bridge is made of Inumaki wood. It getting stained in an ‘ebonization’ process to paint the light blonde wood black. It weighs 15 grams without the tie block peice and saddle. It’s stiff in the center because I laminated in a piece of real ebony on the front and back face of the tie block to keep the string hole exits from getting grooved.
So if we think of this bridge as a brace, this brace is light and rigid, but with some overall bit of flex, but stiffer in the middle at the tie block. The top is thinned a bit more in the center and more uniform around the perimeter, but it’s all quite thin. It’s a high grade Italian alps top.
Let’s see if it’s guitar worthy when it’s finished.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
I like building guitars, but sometimes I just wish it wasn’t so ****ing slow. The payoff is when you see something about to happen, like how this guitar will snap together with a vibe of its own. Hand making stuff is a slow motion addiction.
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RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
Color color - the bridge is made with a wood called Inumaki which is in the juniper family. It’s blond light, less dense than rosewoods, but very stiff. It’s a wood that is easy to control the flex of the final bridge. I happen to think bridge weight and flex is really important. I couldn’t tell you why with any calculated data, but light stiff, slightly flexing bridges work well on most flamenco / classical style nylon string guitars.
I made this one the normal way a bridge is made, but I mortised out a section on the front and back side of the tie block to glue on a 3mm thick piece of Macassar ebony. So where the string holes are drilled from back to front on the tie block there’s a swatch of ebony to make the entry and exit holes of the string holes with a material harder than Inumaki. I did this so the strings holes wouldn’t wear as Inumaki is too soft to hold out for the many decades ahead of this guitar.
Once the bridge was shaped I painted it with high grade gouache paint ( opaque watercolor) and sanded and painted several times to build a deep black finish. Then I French polished over the gouache. I’m told some Spanish makers used a softer wood than rosewood and stained it. It is a thing I’d like to explore in my early 20th century/ late 19th century inspired guitars.
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From: Washington DC
RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to estebanana)
very nice. I just noticed you (also Felipe Conde jr. is doing this), glue the "T" joints on either side of the tie block where the white strips end. The wood grain is sideways relative to the tie block, in other words. So I noticed that on my my 73 sobrinos they did this differently, cutting into the tie block edges in order to make a "shelf" to lay the bone (or plastic?) strips in. I saw the earliest design in examples of E. Garcia (Simplicio copies it), but curious why one way versus the other? Is it easier?
RE: Arias in spirit, constructed by ... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
very nice. I just noticed you (also Felipe Conde jr. is doing this), glue the "T" joints on either side of the tie block where the white strips end. The wood grain is sideways relative to the tie block, in other words. So I noticed that on my my 73 sobrinos they did this differently, cutting into the tie block edges in order to make a "shelf" to lay the bone (or plastic?) strips in. I saw the earliest design in examples of E. Garcia (Simplicio copies it), but curious why one way versus the other? Is it easier?
There is no one way to make a normal Spanish style bridge. I think either way is fine, the idea is to get the tie block lower than the top of the mound that has the saddle slot in it. Usually the bone strips used to reinforce the front and back edges of the tie block are cut offs of fitting saddles, saddle material is 10 mm tall and you usually cut 3mm of of it or more when you cut the saddle to the right height in the slot. You save those pieces and make tie block edges with them.
If the length of the tie block is longer than the bone strips you have the you’ve got to center the strips on the tie block and add a piece of material to the outer sides, it doesn’t matter if you cut a channel or mortise for them to fit into or just plane the tie block low and glue something over the whole tie block. The Arias bridges consistently look to have a wide tie block that extends quite far out from the strings on either side. His bridge are also quite wide.
This brings up some subtle design results in bridges. A longer tie block indicates a bridge that’s stiffer in the center, because the tie block is a big stiff bar of material so for less than a gram in weight you gain extra stiffness in the area of the strings. All these small design factors make an impact on the colors of the tone and the, dare I use the term, pulsation……
I dialed in the action and frets for classical playing 3.5 bass at 12th fret and something like 2.8 at treble E on 12th fret. They like ‘em clean. It’s a loud projecting guitar, not just loud, but with a carrying inside the box voice. It goes through walls. I could hear Yuko playing it through a closed door on the second floor while I was down in the kitchen. It’s voice is clear, but with a pleasant gritty eco. It has that thing you can’t describe. It’s intonation is very good, most octaves in tune all the way up the neck. I hope a good player buys it, it would suck if this guitar gets taken up by a string tickler.
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