How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Full Version)

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meencantalaguitarra -> How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 29 2011 6:52:37)

Hello Forum. I am somewhat new to the idea of building a guitar. I have been playing flamenco for several years and have recently began to think it might be possible to build one. This is not intended to be a quick project. I want to gather as much information and tools that will be necessary to embark on the project. Is there any good books or resources you can point me too that are must have to build a guitar. It really blows me away when i see how the rosette is created and sanded, or how the neck is carved. How does one learn how to do all these things?



estebanana -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 29 2011 7:49:36)

I started out by laying on a bed of nails for 12 hours a day for about 5 years. And then I got serious and made a bed with swords poking out of a thicket of poison stinging nettles and spruce saplings. Then after 15 years of flagellating myself with that I began to learn how to sweep up the shop of a master who abused me and told me I was not mortifying myself enough to ever be any good. It was after 27 years under this master that I made my first guitar.

I hope this helps. Welcome to the foro.



aarongreen -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 29 2011 12:42:20)

Damn Stephen, don't sugar coat it for the guy, you're setting him up with your pie in the sky quick road to success story. You totally forgot to mention the Master using the side of your head as a footrest whenever guitarists would come by to try out guitars. Or how he used your early guitars to practice his golf swing. Jeez.

Meen,

hope you don't mind the abbreviated version of your screen name btw,

Where are you located? If you want to find a teacher or school then go to Luth.org, which is the webpage for the Guild of American Luthiers (should be Guild of International Luthiers now but the organization is older than me and when they started, it was just in the US)
Anyways they have a links page to schools and where to find instruction.



estebanana -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 29 2011 17:04:30)

Aaron,

I thought we were playing "good luthier, bad luthier" - I rough them up and keep them detained at the work bench for 24 hours and get them soft, then you get the confession by offering them a bag of Mc Donalds Chicken Mc nuggets and some rosewood shavings.

Wait til I show my technique called "water soundboarding".



aarongreen -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 29 2011 22:48:30)

Yeah I know, thats what I was doing. :)

Tell me your sins......



estebanana -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 29 2011 23:09:49)

quote:

Tell me your sins......


I listen to Iggy Pop while building classical guitars.



Anders Eliasson -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 9:58:37)

Ok guys.

A bit of out of topic is ok. BUT so far it has only been out of topic.

So back on topic.
As far as I know, there arent any direct guide on how to build a flamenco guitar. Maybe I should write "Building flamenco guitars for dummies"

There´s a lot info to be found and a lot of misinformation as well. Sometimes I find the the last is 3 - 4 times bigger than the first.

You´ll have to navigate through all this information and make your own conclusions.

Here a couple of starting points:
1) El guitarrero DVD by Simon Shearston (Escribano and host of this forum) It features me as main artist. Its not a how to do DVD but there´s lot of info and its very well done.

3) The first online apprentice DVD by David Schramm. It on how to build a Hauser classical guitar, but its built the way most builders here in Spain work and the difference between a Hauser and a flamenco is pretty small.

3) Follow this forum. Ask and read backwards. Theres a lot of good info and not to much crap. (Just stear away from any discussion with T. Blackshear)



Morante -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 11:20:53)

http://www.rafaellopezehijo.com/construccion.htm



aarongreen -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 13:05:53)

Hi Anders
Yes some joking but I did point out a source of info in my first post. Other than that we were just having a bit of fun.

Stephen

Iggy's a fine choice. I had Raw Power on constant rotation a few years back. Need to get it back out again. Mostly I listen to John Coltrane when working these days. The other day though I had Rage Against the Machines' first album on when a classical guitarist, an older one at that walked in. I could tell his first reaction was to get back in his car and leave.

Separates the lookers from the buyers...



Anders Eliasson -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 13:27:01)

It sounds like listening to Wagner opera when a flamenco enters the workshop.[8D]



aarongreen -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 14:31:46)

This one always sends em running for the hills




stephen hill -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 14:50:42)

I run a month month full time course here in Andalucia. Its a crash course in flamenco guitar building, not cutting corners tho and you will end up with a fine guitar. The ability to absorb all the huge amount of information is up to your ability to absorb information. Notes, photos, videos, plans etc. Trouble is am full till May 2012.



mezzo -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 14:55:09)

quote:

Trouble is am full till May 2012.

Anders you should set up this kind of stuff [;)]



Andy Culpepper -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 15:17:16)

this really is good:

http://www.fernandezmusic.com/GuitarmakingDVD.html

Who needs fancy stuff like vises and bandsaws when you have a big ass knife?



Anders Eliasson -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (Apr. 30 2011 17:31:41)

quote:

Anders you should set up this kind of stuff


Nope. You need to be a relatively nice person to do this kind of things. I´m a grumpy old solitary fart.

Besides, I´ll move to China to teach in one of the big factorys there and become a millionaire



estebanana -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 1 2011 0:06:54)

quote:

Besides, I´ll move to China to teach in one of the big factorys there and become a millionaire


Your mother will grow a penis before that happens. [:D]


Anyway I'm sorry Anders for leading Aaron astray with jokes and buffoonery, but he seems to like it. We need to pull up the professionalism around here. I shant do it again.

The MIMF.com - Musical Instrument Makers Forum has an extensive online archive of guitar making information. Not really about flamenco guitars, but much of it is basic guitar making knowledge and very useful.



meencantalaguitarra -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 1 2011 4:01:48)

First off thanks to everyone for your responses and feedback. I absolutely don’t mind the “MEEN” abbreviation of my login. Has kind of a ring to it me thinks. I am located in San Jose, CA and I’ll definitely check out the Luth.org for any teachers close by. To Banana, Water Soundboarding sounds like a perfectly acceptable right of passage for a wannabe guitar maker like myself. To Anders Eliasson, thanks for the recommendations, me thinks I’m going to like this forum, and I actually purchased your “el guitarrero” DVD yesterday and its in the post. I’ll definitely check out the david schramm dvd as well. To Stephen Hill, I can’t tell you how much I would love to go to spain right now. A few guys I’ve met through my flamenco guitar class have spent some time in Andalucia and it really seems like I just need to get my buttocks over there. Thanks for the info on the class, I think if i were to go it would be inspiration overload, first trying to learn guitar technique, and also how to build them. Right now I’m just gathering as much info as possible to hopefully begin my project relatively soon. I’ve been reading with my basic Spanish knowledge Jeronimo Fernandez’s El arte de un guitarrero Espanol, rading over all the post/reply's and as soon As Anders’s DVD arrives I’ll be giving that a look. Once again thanks for all the recommendations.



estebanana -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 0:36:49)

quote:

You totally forgot to mention the Master using the side of your head as a footrest whenever guitarists would come by to try out guitars.


Just wanted to tell you how much I laughed at this.



aarongreen -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 2:19:12)

Well every now and again I'll get off a real zinger

Worry not about leading me astray or stray for that matter, I follow my own misdirection. I have a hard time passing up a good bought of banter. Quite a lost art these days.

A



meencantalaguitarra -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 4:21:58)

I'm starting with making a solera via the style of the making master guitars book. Where can one locate a plywood or mdf that's 18mm thick? Everything I saw at the tool shop was a max of 12 mm. Any wood recommendations? Do people ever glue two plywoods together to achieve this thickness?



aarongreen -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 11:58:26)

You should be able to find plywood in the thickness you need at Home Depot (18mm is roughly 3/4 inch) MDF is nice for somethings but I wouldn't use it for a solera, if for no other reason than any water that might get on it will cause problems.

My solera is 2 pieces of 3/4 inch glued together but if you want to go that route (laminated) you can easily achieve that with screws too. Just make sure you countersink them really good ,esp. where you create the scoop for the doming of the top. Or you can glue and screw, which (unlike chew and screw) is a perfectly acceptable practice.



meencantalaguitarra -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 19:23:32)

Thanks for the advice Aaron, Im going to take it and pick up the plywood today to being drawing out the diagram. Im using the "Santos plan I got from creating master guitars. I have the book on order from Amazon (should arrive in 2 days) , but in the meantime I found a scanned version from torrent searches and I cant tell if its just a bad scan but it appears that the dimensions arent exact. Per the instructions on making the thin wood or card plantilla, it says I need to expand the plan to 50cms. However I noticed on the plan they skipped a number, the 45th centimeter is missing. Do I need to expand the plan to make it 50cms in total or to make the squares the equivalent of 1cm by 1 cms? As of now ive done the latter, so my plans are 1cmx1cm squares, and the total length is 49 cms, as opposed to 50. Does this have to be exact? anyone run into this problem? Maybe its my punishment for downloading the plan. Haha. picture attached.



Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px



Sean -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 19:42:12)

High grade plywood is expensive and the low grade stuff can actually warp, it did for me. MDF with a thin sheet of high quality ply laminated to it is a good lower buck and dependable way to go.



Sean -> RE: How to learn to build a Flamenco Guitar? (May 3 2011 20:10:12)

With those plans you just get 1cm square graph paper and hand draw to match the smaller version square by square, its easy enough. Plans are really just general guidelines when you get down to it, your not going to get a guitar that sounds exactly like a Santos just by following that plan. It is nice to study different plans to try and figure out why things were done in certain ways and once you get a better idea you can be as successful with your own plan.
You could just as easily make the 5 fan Hernandez Aguado plan in that book into a nice flamenco guitar given the proper setup, bridge weight and a shallower body if you wanted something larger in size.



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