The snowflake prints are cut out and glued to the shell, abalone in this case. The saw is used to cut the picture out of the pearl. I don't use the whole Martin ssnowflake pattern because some of the shapes don't please me.
MARK'S GUITAR, PART 3
PAGE INDEX
Bridge making (still to come)
Fretting (still to come)
Mark's guitar was delivered long ago, but to get it to Mark in a reasonable amount of time I had to skip documenting some of the construction procedures. I thought I'd make a separate page showing some of the stuff I left out of the first two parts. Obviously these aren't pictures of Mark's guitar, but it won't matter. The work is still the same.
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Sliced shell is the most common inlay material in instrument making. These are mother-of-pearl (MOP) at far left, gold pearl at top, pink pearl on the right, and abalone at the bottom, The center bits are also abalone. Some luthiers have become true artists with inlay. My own work is more mundane. Cutting shell is tedious and not all that attractive as work goes. |
| The shell is cut with a jewelers saw. The OOO blade mounted in the saw is barely visible. The large stick inside the saw frame is a packet of 12 OOO blades. They break very easily. I need a magnifier just to see which way the teeth are pointing. But because the blades are so fine they can cut a very detailed pattern. A couple MOP snowflakes are included in this picture. | |
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This is a picture of MOP snowflakes as supplied to Huss & Dalton by Bill Swank, a pearl cutter in Maryland. I put the picture in Paint Box, sized it to suit me, then duplicated it many times on the same page. |
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The snowflake prints are cut out and glued to the shell, abalone in this case. The saw is used to cut the picture out of the pearl. I don't use the whole Martin ssnowflake pattern because some of the shapes don't please me. |
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PLACE HOLDER FOR pix of me cutting pearl |
| Any shape you can think up is possible with a fine saw blade. |
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The inlays are tack glued to the fingerboard and outlined with white pencil or a razor knife. The knife usually allows a better fitting outline. |
| Very fine router bits are used to cut the pockets for the inlays. The 3/32" bit on the mat is used to hog out a lot a material. The 1/32" bit in the laminate trimmer is used to cut to the outline. |
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PLACE HOLDER FOR close up pix of routing |
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Once the inlay fits into the pocket, the pocket is filled with black epoxy and the inlay is pressed into place. The glue squeezes out, hopefully eliminating any air pockets at the same time. After setting, the glue/inlay is dressed down to the level of the fingerboard. The fingerboard is sanded, polished, and fretted, completing the job. |
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This is a compressed explanation of neck shaping. I used an electric mandolin neck because its short length permits more of it to be in focus. An acoustic neck would have a larger heel, but I covered heel shaping in Mark's Guitar Pt 1. Here the dimensions of fingerboard width have all been set, as well as the headstock shape. The depth of the neck has also been set. The center line has been drawn on the wood. The other guide lines have been applied rather arbitrarily, dictated by experience as much as any set dimension. If they are marked too far from the centerline the back of the neck will be very flat and square-ish. If they are too close to the center line the neck will have an extreme vee shape and too much wood may be removed, weakening the neck. Note that there is also a line under the fingerboard. |
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A facet has been cut connecting the line under the fingerboard with the outside guide lines. Blending into the headstock has begun, also. |
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The right side of the neck has been rounded, destroying the corners of the facet. It's important to maintain the centerline for now. New lines could have been dropped on either side of the facet corners, then connected with a rasp to create a new set of facets. This is a good idea on your first neck. After a bit of experience it's no longer necessary. |
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The shaping has just about been completed. All the shaping was accomplished with a cabinet rasp. The neck was then shoe-shined with 80 grit sandpaper to remove any flat spots, then sanded length-wise to remove the cross-grain scratches. |
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Here's how the neck is blended into the headstock. |
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And here's how the heel area is blended. This will be a bolt-on neck, just like an electric guitar, and the large flat area will be set into the body. |
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I saw this guitar in a book about experimental musical instruments and I couldn't resist trying it. I cut the wings off a yard sale electric guitar body and stripped out all the electronic stuff, then bolted on the Styrofoam coolers. The coolers are supposed to make good resonators, but I wasn't very impressed. Maybe I should have held out for vintage coolers. Besides being quiet it was very fragile. This beast eventually went into the dumpster, but it was worth building just to get this photo.
