audio-talk

Very nice.

I studied music technology at london guild hall, making 14th century acoustic guitars, gut frets and friction pegs etc.
Never did anything with the skills though.

My favourite part was making carved roses for the sound hole.

kennyk wrote:I've been away from the hifi hobby for a while, but my years in the wilderness have not been lost; I've been at college studying guitarmaking...

Bluddy hell

Graeme wrote:Very nice.

I studied music technology at london guild hall, making 14th century acoustic guitars, gut frets and friction pegs etc.
Never did anything with the skills though.

My favourite part was making carved roses for the sound hole.

that's some mighty detailed work! never attempted anything like that. maybe if I get hold of Lundberg's Lute book I'll give it a go sometime.

It was all quite easy compared to what the mandolin makers were doing.
The other half of the workshop was the harpsicord makers, they were in a different league altogether!

Do you use hand tools for your work? I remember spending ages scraping the (spruce?) soundboard down to exactly 1.2mm (i think) all over. Go even slightly under and you had to start again.

The whole first year was hand tools only, it wasnt untill the second year they showed us the massive machine shop and even then we were only allowed to use it for roughing out or squaring up timber before the proper work began.

When you mention mandolins, I'm assuming that you mean the Neopolitan 'bowl-backed' instruments with many striped pieces? They certainly don't look easy to make. I think the technique in the Luhdberg book covers it. maybe one day I'll be brave enough...

Yes it's all hand tools; Bevel-edged Chisels, gouges, planes, cabinet scrapers, Tenon and Japanese handsaws etc.
The rosette channels and soundholes with a circle cutter, and a 271 hand router plane, although I'm about to invest in a precision router base for my dremel for rosette channels.

as far as machines go, in our first year we were allowed to use bandsaws for a lot of the cutting, the drill-press, and a router for the truss-rod slot and saddle slot on the bridge.
In second year we were allowed to use the routers and laminate trimmer for binding channels. I made a template and routed my headstock shape, but cut the slots by drilling a series of holes with a Forstner bit and then squaring off with rasps, files and chisels. I did one set of binding channels by hand but tried the laminate trimmer method too - it's certainly a lot quicker.
One thing I didn't try is a mould for the shape, but that's something I'll have a go at with a future build.

1.2mm is pretty thin; for my steel string I think I took my top to around 2.7-3.0ish if I went a bit thin I was able to beef up the braces to compensate! then with tap tones as a guide I took material off to get a good fundamental frequency. For a classical I'd expect the top to be around 2mm thick as there's less tension in nylon strings - but it depends on the timber you have - every piece is different.
But yes, plenty of time spent planing, then scraping, and marking the board out in squares, and measuring each with a dial caliper.

At the moment I'm just looking forward to getting my workshop built and ready to start making some more instruments!

Aww guys, this is porn, please stop it.

Yes, bowl back mandolins.

As for the sound board thickness, i should have mentioned these were 4 course guitars, so not full size.

sounds interesting. just two strings per course?

I'm hoping to make an archtop modern Cittern based on a Sobell model I have, although I want to do something a bit different - I want 6 courses instead of 5. To achieve the tuning I want to use (DADAEA) I'm considering a variable scale, also known as fanned-frets. It's not a new idea as the Orpharion, a contempory instrument of the renaissance cittern used the same topology.

I have almost all the timber for it but so far I've only joined the front wedges and the back. Once I get some workspace sorted out, work will recommence.