Dave White -> Making my first flamenco guitar "El Xiprer" (Feb. 29 2016 9:57:13)
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Firstly let me say hello to everyone – I’ve been reading posts on this forum for a while and learning lots and am now in the position to share. I’m a guitar player of 50+ years and a guitar maker of 14 years. My main love in playing steel stringed guitars but I’ve liked flamenco guitars from when I was a teenager. Back in 2013 I helped a friend complete his project of making a Flamenco Blanca guitar where he had completed the top and back and I finished the rest. He was using the Roy Courtnall book and the Santos Hernadez plans in it. Since then I’ve wanted to make one of my own – my first nylon string guitar and later in 2013 I had to have a Lawson’s Cypress tree in my front garden cut down: Having discovered that Lawson’s Cypress is a tonewood – Port Orford Cedar – similar to Spanish Cypress used for Flamenco Blanca guitars I had the contractors cut the main trunk into sections that could be cut into instruments sets: The tree rings confirmed that the tree had been planted in the mid 1930’s when the house was built. In 2014 my friend and classical guitar maker Colin Symonds kindly helped me process “The Tree” – here he is in the process: And here’s me: And here’s the result: That was the birth of my idea to make a Flamenco Blanca guitar using as much wood as possible from “The Tree” and my research began. Last October with my wife and youngest daughter I went to Barcelona for a few days where I did some more research at a luthier’s shop there and decided that the guitar would be called “El Xiprer” – Catalan for “The Cypress Tree”: The guitar is now strung up in the white but I’ll present the “making” here in stages over the next week or so in the present tense which will then catch up with the finishing process. Port Orford Cedar was used for the top, back, sides, neck, linings and bracing with figured Bog Oak for the fingerboard, Coyote Wood (Platymiscium polystachium) for the bindings, end graft, heelcap and headplates, and Bog Oak for the bridge. Purflings are black/ pear/ black. It will have a 650mm scale length and geared Peghed tuners. Having inherited the Solara and made a bending form for a Santos Hernandez guitar from the previous project, this is the shape I will use for “El Xiprer”, but the bracing and everything else will be my design. The first job is to join the thicknessed top and back using hot hide glue and the “tent” method: The channel for the inlaid backstrip is routed out: The backstrip is then glued in consisting of a Coyote wood central strip flanked each side with black/ pear / black and a rope purfling: When the glue is dry the centre strip is scraped and sanded flush and the back cut close to final shape:
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