RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Full Version)

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pink -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 12:07:51)

Fantastic work Stephen and great to see you back....have missed your input.
Hope all is good.

Very best

pink




tijeretamiel -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 12:41:12)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

Palo Escrito is a wonderful wood, fairly light weight, and very light compared to the denser heavier woods negras are made with. It's similar to Indian rosewood, but perhaps a bit lighter. It can make dry sounding guitar, I'vea flamenco coming up next on the heels of this one made with Palo E. It was thinned more in the back and ribs and braced lighter so it will be more flamenco, plus the top is braced a la Barbero.



I love the sound of Palo Escrito negras, and look forward to seeing your negra Mr Faulk - it's a shame Jason McGuire won't be around to post a video of it playing though! (unless it's going to him...)

A bit of a sidetrack question but is Palo Escrito a stable wood? It doesn't have problems with cracking like a few other tonewoods BRW, Ziricote, etc...




estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 13:22:42)

Palo Escrito seems pretty stable to me, much like Indian rosewood if you needed a stability comparison. Wood cracks if make it too thin and don't splint the skirt of the ribs..the flat area just below the waist, other than that PE seems very robust and strong. But any wood thinned enough to make a light flamenco risks the skirt being flimsy or fragile.

Yeah I miss hearing Jason play my new guitars, he was usually game to evaluate them. The Palo E. flamenca is going to very fine working professional player in NYC. so I am hoping he will make a sample clip for all to hear. I'll post if that happens.

Hello Pink, I think of you from time to time when I'm in my shop. Sorry I can't be around more, but you never know things could change.




krichards -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 13:58:10)

Stephen
nice work as ever

I've been thinking about Palo Escrito for some time but haven't found a good source.
I guess you bought your stock in the USA?




pink -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 14:00:10)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana


Hello Pink, I think of you from time to time when I'm in my shop. Sorry I can't be around more, but you never know things could change.


I hope that your input continues in a way that works for you.
Strange how things are, I was discussing you with Kevin Richards only yesterday.....good things I hasten to add!!
How is your playing going? Very much enjoy your own uploads....have you found a comfortable
seating arrangement yet for when you play at home?

Best

pink




estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 15:37:40)

My playing is not happening at the moment. Funny I had an MRI done on my back today, and a CT scan and X-Rays two days ago. I have a reaccuring back pain that the physical therapists have not been able to fix. As a result I can't sustain holding a guitar for longer than 15 minutes without burning pain between my scapula. I stopped playing seriously about three years ago. The doctors say I have perfectly fine spine, but it's a mystery. Tomorrow I go back for the doctor to read the MRI results and he thinks it is an impinged nerve. I think he's daft, I think it's muscle tear with scar tissue upon scar tissue.

That is why I'm such a grumpy misanthropic piece of dookey- I had to give up guitar but I still have to build them to make money!

"Life, it's a killer." ~ Dr. Benway

_ I sold my guitar to keep from playing and also to keep from playing flamenco here. There are some nice ladies here who dance and I got throw in with them to play at a wedding. They did fandangos de Huelva and something that seemed to be something like tangos, but I can't be sure. There was also a number that I think was supposed to be tanguillos, but I can't say for certain...there was some flamencoid dancing and no singing. They kept ivting me to play and the best way to get out of it was to just sell the guitar adn get it off the property and then say "oh I don't have a guitar so I can't perform. I figured if you're going to ruin your back you have to at least play for someone worth wrecking your back for, right? I can't stand to see flamenco done that badly that I just cut myself off from it. I have too much respect for flamenco to play badly, even though I'm in a position to work and get gigs by virtue of the fact that so few guitarists are in this part of the country it still does not justify compromising. There's a term for people who go to Japan and get work in advertising and TV commercials that they would not do in their own countries. You see actors on TV in commercials who would not do commercials in their own film market. One of them is David Hasselhoff, he does not count however because he'll obviously do anything anywhere. But Kelsy Grammer has done some stupid ones. The name for it is Japandering...so no Flamenco Japandering for me, flamenco is too good to screw it up just you are in a situation where the audience can't tell one thing from another. It just seems wrong.

I'm holding out for a complete back muscle and skeletal transplant from a young healthy athletic donor. You know life is so unfair that youth is wasted on the young. They don't deserve youth, they have not lived long enough to have earned it.



Palo Escrito, hard to find, but when the dealers get it it's good. Mine is from Mexico and it's about 20 years old. I bought it from a guitar maker who closed up shop. When this stash is used up I'll have to get more, I would start by emailing Todd Tagart at Allied Luthery and see if he has any. He gets stuff like that.

There's also a guy in Santa Clara CA- Global Wood Source, he scours around a finds things, you could ask him. http://www.globalwoodsource.com/

Anyway, just checking in. Keep up the good work, and keep Ruphus off the drugs. Stay away from orange guitars and most importantly, don't play any cajons. Cajon playing has been scientifically proven to reduce your "manhood".




Ruphus -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 21 2014 16:38:55)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

Keep up the good work, and keep Ruphus off the drugs.


What irony.
Due to environment I am going through most boringly sober period of my life since over 6 years now.
I could kill for even just a good beer, darn.

It is effects of a completely insane world; not drugs.
[ *deleted*] ... My guitar student was relieved to see me in good mood yesterday. The change coming from my plan to ban bad info from my thoughts and avoid viewing.

Then while we were talking a bit he told me this actual bit:
In one of the local "wild-life reserves" a dead leopard has been found. With one paw amputated live by a trap and in his body over sixty air gun shots.
It was one of estimated 80 left over specimens.

Guess what imagening the mentality behind the trap and air gun did to my mood since yesterday.
Drugs, you say? :O|

BTW, headline from yesterday: Japan´s dolphin sloughtering season has set in once again. ( This time with smaller numbers though, for last tsunami having wiped lots of trawlers. Thanks Neptun!)
Todays headline: Australia opens killing zones for sharks ( which again, so I am convinced, do not find enough fish to eat / thus attacks against swimmers / surfers increasing, which on another note again is how a penguine nowadays can reach from Antarctica to Australia untouched; clearly indicating the decimation of sharks.)

Ruphus

PS:
Eating that abalone ... Did it not grind between the teeth? [8D]




Ruphus -> [Deleted] (Jan. 21 2014 17:16:01)

Post has been moved to the Recycle Bin at Jan. 23 2014 8:56:17




pink -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 22 2014 22:59:19)

Stephen
How did the results pan out? Hope things are going to be OK and you can get through to the other side of this soon!

Best

pink




estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 0:07:28)

(*&(*&^^&%%^&$%&^((_)(&%%$#!!!!! Doctors don't know anything!

I had the MRI, a CT scan and X-T=rays and I should and will count my blessing, my spine is in good working order, looks really good and I have clear lungs. Yeah!

So the doctor says, "Oh this is very common with Asian people not so much with foreigners. ( As if he would know) - He continues "Asians work on farms and do lots of hard labor so this happens. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do about it. But I can give you a local anesthetic shot that will make the pain go away for a few days and you can be happy for having no pain for at least a little while." So just to appease all parties I get the shot, it's like novacaine that the dentist gives you, did not do a damn thing.

So am back at square one, but now I at least know I don't have nerve damage. It's very frustrating to know there is a physical therapist SF who could fix this with regular therapy, but they don't do that kind of work here. I've been kind of depressed about it actually, I look healthy so it is difficult to convince the doctor I am in a lot of pain.

In this chart it is this muscle group that is the issue or where it hurts:

1. Serratus Posterior Superior
2. Serratus Anterior
3. Rhomboid Major

It happens where those muscles get near the bottom tip of the right Scapula- I don't know which of those muscles it is, but it is not a muscle near the surface, it is under the top layer. The pain radiates up about four inches from the bottom tip of the Scapula and then radiates down about four inches, like belt of pain about 3" wide it does not effect the spine at all.

If any of you have had this please let me know how it was treated. It was brought on by repetitive motion like doing fret work and typing. One day three winters ago in a yoga class I was in a pose called triangle pose, and the teacher was pushing us too hard and I felt a pulling and then a sort of tearing feeling. I've never been the same since.



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estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 0:41:41)

Anyway I'l get back to business. Here's another picture of this Palo Esctrito guitar being built.

I put the back on as an unbraced panel as Torres or Romanillos would do. This is the guitar ready for the back. It is an interesting process and I have been studying Torres methods and discussing them with others who have seen many Torres guitars. Torres order of assembly was different than that which we commonly use today- he probably glued not only the back as an unbraced panel, but very likely also the top. There is evidence of this- he braced the top with the fans, but not the horizontal braces above a below the sound hole. The horizontal braces were glued to the ribs first, then the top, or so the evidence shows.

When you try to wrap your mind around that order of assembly you run into some interesting problems. It also breaks down what we think of as Spanish style construction into a broader idea. It looks to me that a lot of Torres' methods will never be fully understood because we don't have his tools and fixtures to backwards engineer how he did it, but I surmise and others have confirmed this, it was different than how someone like say Manuel Ramirez thought about order of assembly at the turn of the century 114 years ago.

The reason I'm taking this on is because I want to make a Torres replica to offer as a more genuinely constructed model, but the deeper I got into it the more I realized that it's not as straight forward as simply copying a plan. There's much which defines Torres' guitars that has to do with _how_ he did it as much as with dimension, materials and style/design. It's unfortunate that unlike the great violin maker Stradivari we don't have Torres patterns, notes or tools. From the collection of original Stradivari tools and patterns violin makers have been able to reconstruct the order of assembly of classical Cremonese violins, it has made a difference in both academic violin scholarship and modern violin making.

In the past, after the great Cremona era in violin making, other regions and schools such as the German tradition and French school of building changed the order of assembly that was used in Cremona. It gradually changed the violin in subtle ways, then in the mid 1970's a seminal book was published called Secrets of Stradivari by Simone Sacconi and this changed the game and brought forth a more intense examination of Cremonese working methods. The guitar world hopefully, someday,will find more evidence that will help to re-examine Torres working methods, but at this time some key pivot points of how he assembled the box are up for conjecture. I'm working on a plausible method for putting the top to the ribs and then I'm going to continue to submit my ideas to those who are Torres authorities and see what I come up with.

It came to light when I finally decided it was time to grapple with Torres' work that it was not a simple idea, but I hope it not only renders a good guitar but increases my depth of understanding. My guess is that Torres was more complex than meets the eye and later makers simplified his work to make it easier to build them in series with a shop of workers each making separate sub assemblies. And we today basically were handed down that order of assembly which came after Torres, mainly invented in Madrid; not that it's it's bad or even wrong, but it would be nice to know for certain how it was changed from Torres' original concept. We may never know. And we can't go back in time or back on how far guitar making has come.



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estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 1:07:00)

Here is how the back goes on. It's not a difficult as it seems.

First I used hot hide glue, and brushed it on top of the braces, edges and heel block slipper. Then put the back on the guitar and lined up the back strip with the center line. I clamped the tail and heel to pin the back on the "frame" and then went over the braces very stealthly with a hot clothes iron to make sure the braces were hot glued an no cold joints happen.

Then quickly the long wood battens go over each brace and a clamp holds them down flexed over the arc of the brace thus ensuring a full connection between brace and back. Let that assembly dry.

The second picture shows the edges being glued later. A series of small battens are used to put clamp pressure around the perimeter and glue is freshly applied with a thin pallette or butter knife. I worked around the edges and glued them in sections of about 10" at a time. It takes about ten minutes to do the whole thing.

What this means is that the back is applied more like a skin than a separate assembly. It make sit easier for the back to be removed if ever major interior work is to be mounted. It also means you have to project the arch of the back by planing and placing each brace to get the arching in the correct places.

No wonder the back assembly was changed to include gluing the braces to the back before it goes on the ribs. This is kind of difficult or at least requires patience and finesse.
If it worth it? Sure, do it once and you learn some new things about yourself and your building. Does it change the way the guitar sounds? Eventually if you learn to modulate the way braces and back "skin" engage I think it does, that is if you're making a Torres model.





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eccullen -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 1:25:24)

Stephen,

See email...




estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 6:57:48)

C,

Thank you, got the email. Most helpful, I will work on it and reply.

Oh and sorry about the*&^*&%%^$&^*()* doctor comment [;)]
Glad you love the guitar, hope to hear you play something someday.




Ruphus -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 9:01:31)

Above postings edited.

Ruphus




Sr. Martins -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 9:35:48)

Are there any luthiers making grevillea robusta/silver oak/lacewood/leopardwood or somthing like that flamenco guitars (except Anders Eliasson)?

It looks sooooo good! [8D]




jshelton5040 -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 14:08:05)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

I put the back on as an unbraced panel as Torres or Romanillos would do. This is the guitar ready for the back. It is an interesting process and I have been studying Torres methods and discussing them with others who have seen many Torres guitars. Torres order of assembly was different than that which we commonly use today- he probably glued not only the back as an unbraced panel, but very likely also the top. There is evidence of this- he braced the top with the fans, but not the horizontal braces above a below the sound hole. The horizontal braces were glued to the ribs first, then the top, or so the evidence shows.


Stephen,
The first 3 or 4 guitars I built were assembled this way but I made essentially two boxes formed by the top, back and side braces then slid them in and clamped the side braces to hold them them in place. The lower brace for the back was done like you're doing. I was always nervous about the glue joints but none of them failed. I couldn't say anything about the effect on the guitars' voices since I was doing so many other things wrong that any assessment would have been impossible.




jshelton5040 -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 23 2014 22:37:54)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tom Blackshear

Since the heel is somewhat elongated what do you have to finish out on the heel by hand, and what is the radius of the saw blade, and have you ever tried it with a radial saw? Thanks. I hate to carve heels but put up with it.

Tom,
Here are three pictures showing how I rough out the neck on the table saw. A craftsman of your caliber will easily see how it works.

The first picture shows setting the saw blade depth for the heel. Then a picture of the neck after sawing is complete and the last picture of the finished heel/foot which took a little over an hour to shape with a sharp chisel and some sandpaper.

You can see the simple stop gadget on the table saw. After making multiple saw kerfs I run the piece across the saw blade sideways to smooth out the saw marks. This is a great timesaver but requires that the neck be square and parallel on the sides. The heel curve and foot shaping is done with bandsaw and spindle sander before the table sawing.







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estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 24 2014 2:34:35)

John,

I was a little confused by the explanation of your first few assemblies. Could you run that by me again?

My think with Torres right now is how did he attach the kerfed liners to the ribs? I speculate then he had ribs with liners glued in and then cut through the liners to glue in the triangular pillars that the horizontal braces fit on top of. Then attached the neck to the ribs and glued in the tail block. The horizontal braces were glued into the slots at some point making the guitar into a frame ready for back and top plates, which glue on like skins. The top had rosette patches and fan braces. Then the back when on in most cases, and then the top.

If that was how it when together the question is what kind of a fixture or mold did he use to glue the liners to the ribs? If that was the order of assembly he may have had a changeable jig of some sort to glue the liners to the ribs. Since his guitars are not standard in shape or dimension for the majority of his output he must have had someway to hold each rib in the same position to glue the loners. Unless he was very careful to bend both liner and rib to an exact pencil line on a sheet of paper. I think it was more about a jig of some kind because his guitars show a multitude of plantilla sizes and shapes, yet the symmetry is pretty good. That is hard to do freehand.

Thoughts?

I think because of the lightness and thinness of his ribs and the fact that he pillared the braces front and back and scraped the ribs in a certain way he had a sound developed form that type of assembly and also how he braced the top. I think those guitar are more intimate than modern concert guitars designed throw sound to the back of the room, and in being built to do so they lose some of those intimate qualities. But at the same time, the Torres type guitar does project. That is my personal project at this time to explore first hand by building the differences between Torres and the latest innovations.




Tom Blackshear -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 24 2014 3:23:57)

Thanks John,

I'll see if I can manage it with a radial saw, and let you know how it worked out, on the next guitar.




jshelton5040 -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 24 2014 14:20:24)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

I was a little confused by the explanation of your first few assemblies. Could you run that by me again?

My think with Torres right now is how did he attach the kerfed liners to the ribs? I speculate then he had ribs with liners glued in and then cut through the liners to glue in the triangular pillars that the horizontal braces fit on top of. Then attached the neck to the ribs and glued in the tail block. The horizontal braces were glued into the slots at some point making the guitar into a frame ready for back and top plates, which glue on like skins. The top had rosette patches and fan braces. Then the back when on in most cases, and then the top.

If that was how it when together the question is what kind of a fixture or mold did he use to glue the liners to the ribs? If that was the order of assembly he may have had a changeable jig of some sort to glue the liners to the ribs. Since his guitars are not standard in shape or dimension for the majority of his output he must have had someway to hold each rib in the same position to glue the loners. Unless he was very careful to bend both liner and rib to an exact pencil line on a sheet of paper. I think it was more about a jig of some kind because his guitars show a multitude of plantilla sizes and shapes, yet the symmetry is pretty good. That is hard to do freehand.

Thoughts?



Stephen,
It's been so many years ago that my aging brain may not be able to remember the exact process. I was working with a friend who was one of those savants who never much bothered studying other people's methods since he felt he could always do better intuitively. Surprisingly he was usually right.

The assembly was: bend the sides and linings, attach the end block and glue the sides into the neck mortise. Taper the sides and glue in the linings both top and back. The body was then put into a form and the top and back were put in place so the guitar's shape could be traced onto them. After bracing the top, two devices were made kind of like picture frames, slots were cut in the linings and the frames were shaped to fit perfectly into the body. This formed the tonebars on the top and two of the three back braces. The lower back brace was let into the linings in the traditional way. Once the frames were in place one could glue the back and top with simple weighting. The order was unimportant. It worked and the guitars were not bad and very playable. If I were to use this method today I'd do it slightly differently but not much. I didn't mean to imply that this was based on Torres' design, just thought it was an interesting coincidence.




El Burro Flamencuro -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 24 2014 15:14:22)

@ estebanana
Wow Mr. Faulk, i didn't know you lived in japan. You should make a guitar for Jin Oki! But maybe he's sponsored by yamaha or something idk.




estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 25 2014 0:22:31)

John,

Thanks I get what you mean now. I thought it was the picture frame you were describing but I had to check.

Two thoughts not really associated; There is method in South America mostly in rural areas, or used to be, where it two guys to assemble the guitar. One would hold the top and back apart, the other would work the rib into the neck slot and onto the tail block as the lining was already glued to the top ! crazy stuff.

Warren White the California builder had an interior structure that he used for a while. He built the guitar top down in the solera normally, but left the horizontal brace off, the one below the soundhole. Before he put on the back he glued a 3" long brace under the soundhole and then from each side of it he buttressed a brace from the top to the back lining. The result is the inside of the guitar looks like the flying buttress of a Gothic cathedral.

I've seen two of these over the years, the first one in 1989, it was already about ten years old. Then again a few years ago. Both guitars had a very distinctive kind of sustain quality and shook like an earthquake when you played them. But at the same time were good flamenco guitars.

I have kind of wanted to build one fr fun to see how it ticks, but it is a very esoteric idea and I don't have time to make guitars I can't eventually sell. It needs a very stiff top to work so the double tops they make today might work with that bracing.

Crazy stuff.

Jun Oki is on my list of people to get to know, but I have not had time to travel North yet. There is a dealer in Osaka I am going to visit and bracing a guitar, that will be a turning point I think.




jshelton5040 -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 25 2014 15:55:27)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

Warren White the California builder had an interior structure that he used for a while. He built the guitar top down in the solera normally, but left the horizontal brace off, the one below the soundhole. Before he put on the back he glued a 3" long brace under the soundhole and then from each side of it he buttressed a brace from the top to the back lining. The result is the inside of the guitar looks like the flying buttress of a Gothic cathedral.


I had a chance to examine a Warren White guitar a number of years ago. It didn't have the buttress bracing but did have some other rather unusual variations like a brace let into the neck mortise that receives the top. It was a good guitar although not exceptional. The color of this guitar resembled mud, the finish was quite dull and dirty looking. I've seen a couple of other older guitars that looked similar so it must have something to do with how some shellac ages.




Anders Eliasson -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 30 2014 17:43:13)

So I finished a fiddle. It has had strings on for 2 days now. It still stinks of varnish and it´ll take some month to dry out completely and get its full tone, but here it is. There are more photos and music videos on my blog.







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Anders Eliasson -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 30 2014 17:44:25)

And a video





Flamingrae -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 30 2014 22:13:51)

Now that is a bonnie orange varnish! Love the antique effect. Strad pattern or one of your own? I need to set some time aside for two instruments I need to varnish. I cooked up my own varnish a few years back (outside as the fumes would probably kill you) It's the sort of thing you do once and you have enough to do for several instruments. I always felt sorry for my neighbours at the time, when I heard a voice from an upstairs kitchen saying "there is that smell again" :)
Small (very small) crit - careful with corners not to make too sharp - which you probably know anyway. Easy done and working in symmetry is the hardest thing. Congratulations.




RTC -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 31 2014 3:57:06)

Anders:

Maestro!




Anders Eliasson -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 31 2014 7:32:18)

Thanks both of you. Yes, the darn corners are very difficult. Overall, there are many things I would like to do better, but workwise, this one is better than the last one. Soundwise, I´m not sure. Time will show.
The shape is more or less Strad. Its the shape from Strobels book, which he took from a Strad copy made by a very well known French Luthier.




krichards -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 31 2014 7:54:16)

Nice one Anders.

If you are not playing the guitar these days, maybe you could play flamenco violin?




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