When I first started building guitars, I remember some of the difficulty that I had in cutting the headplate square to the nut slot.
I would clamp a piece of scrap wood to the headplate as a fence, but the fence would only keep me square to the sides. To get the edge of the headplate 90 degrees to the neck’s playing surface I would have to manage the angle of the saw blade by eye, and it would always be off by a little bit.
The problem is that the fence is being clamped to the headstock, which is pitched back at an angle.
I could change the angle of the saw bearing edge of the fence but that would assume that I would be building guitars with exactly the same headstock angle every time, and even though I do use the same 15 degree angle almost every time, there is a degree of deviation from 15 degrees that I accept, which would throw off the fence.
The ideal situation is to simply clamp the fence to the neck’s playing surface but the excess headplate material gets in the way.
The obvious solution was right under my nose and it took an outside perspective to see it.
Student, Pat Griffaton suggested that I simply remove some material from the bottom of the fence to allow for the excess headplate material…
It was an “Oh, Duh!” kind of moment, mixed with equal parts of jubilation and embarrassment.
I thought that this quick tip was worth sharing, so I made a short video to explain the fence:
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
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This Martin 000-15 came into my shop with a long split in the sides on the treble side. The owner told me that the guitar was never dropped or bumped into anything. It never experienced any kind of trauma to cause the split.
Furthermore, the guitar had been repaired previously for splits in the sides, also on the treble side. Again, the owner claims no previous trauma for the old splits as well. The picture below shows the previous repair with 3 cleats and one brace. The idea is that the cleats sow the split shut like a suture for a wound and the brace, in this case, prevents the split from spreading further along the grain if the split is re-opened.
Diagnosis: The guitar was built with excess tension in the side, or ribs, specifically the treble rib.
(The bass rib is isolated from the treble rib because the endblock and the neck block act as an enormous brace and buffer for the tension. Splits in the treble rib cannot spread to the bass rib)
The rest of the instrument shows no signs of humidity problems, poor care or neglect, so I would say that somewhere in the factory assembly process the treble rib was forced to conform to shape while the glue dried, thus “building” tension into the rib.
Cleating up the new split wouldn’t fix the problem of excess tension. The owner wanted to correct the problem FOR GOOD, so here was my solution:
Some guitars are built with braces on the sides. Often 4 or 5 braces but I’ve also seen guitars with many more braces than that. There is no widely regarded rule for that as far as I understand.
Side braces make splits less likely to occur in the first place, and more importantly, they isolate the split, preventing it from spreading. They also provide structural support for the instrument as a whole, but the primary reason I build my guitars with side braces is to prevent splits from spreading catastrophically.
Many guitars are also built without any side braces at all. And most of the time this doesn’t cause any problems. However, in this case, there is a problem on the treble rib only. So my solution is to brace the treble rib with 4 mahogany braces and then cleat the existing split. Again, the bass rib is not affected by the excess tension, so I won’t fix something that isn’t broken!
First I determined the size and location for my cleats.
Of course, these cleats will be glued to the inside of the guitar, but I’ve laid them out on the outside for the camera.
I want to accomplish a few things here. For starters, I want cleats at both ends of the split. Then I want a cleat to suture it up with in the middle. You may notice that the middle cleat is positioned a little high and that it is larger than the other two. That is because there is a second, smaller split just above the first. The middle cleat is sized and positioned to bridge across both splits and to completely cover the smaller split.
This is enough to repair the splits. At this point, I put the cleats aside for later glue-up.
Now I turn my focus to creating braces so that no future splits occur. I want 4 braces with approximately even spacing (measurements are not necessary; just spaced by eye) and I want the braces to span from the back kerfing to the soundboard kerfing.
Because the top and back plates are domed, the length of the brace will be different for each location. Rather than get a precise measurement of length, which would be difficult, I simply cut my brace material into a sequence of lengths and test fit each length until I find one that is close. To get the fit snug, I can either sand it back until it just fits, or I can adjust the location slightly for a tighter fit, since the exact location of these braces is not critical anyway.
Once the brace fits, I dress the brace up on the sanding board.
I use stacks of magnets for gluing the braces. I’ve adhered cork to the face of some of the magnets. That way I don’t mar wood or finish.
I use the padded magnets first to position the brace and then I begin stacking the other magnets. The power of magnets increases as you stack them.
Next the cleats are glued in the same fashion, using smaller magnets.
And that’s it! A quick and dirty repair that will last. I also want to mention that these magnets were all purchased at one of the big box hardware stores, so they are not anything special. Any magnets will do, as long as you can stack enough of them to provide a sufficient clamping force.
I hope you liked this tip!
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
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This video walks you through the construction of upper, waist, and lower bout spreaders to fit your guitar mold.
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
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My Canadian friend brought me a Norman guitar with a lifting bridge, a belly bulge, and long run-out splits in the soundboard beginning just forward of the belly bulge. These are all symptoms of the same problem: too much tension at the bridge.
A lifting bridge
First, the bulge in the belly needed to be reduced, then the bridge removed and reglued. Finally cleats were installed on the inside of the guitar to patch up the splits in the spruce. I also glued a thin graft to the underside of the area that was worn thin by years of heavy picking.
The cleats are placed on the outside of the guitar to demonstrate to the camera where they will be located. Of course, they will be glued to the INSIDE of the guitar. Bottom Right: A set of magnets is used to glue the cleats.
I will save the details for belly reduction, removal of bridges, regluing of bridges and installation of cleats for another time. For Episode #22 I want to focus specifically on what to do between bridge removal and bridge reglue… when a bridge removal goes bad!
Not every bridge comes off clean. Even when you do everything right, some amount of tearout in the soundboard is expected. If the damage is minimal, which is usually the case, the bridge can be re-glued without any patching of the soundboard. If the tearout is significant enough to negatively affect the glue joint, then patching of the area is necessary. The patch may be the size of a dime or much larger.
In this worst case scenario the footprint under the bridge was affected throughout. I unfortunately never took a “before” picture of the damage, but take my word for it, it was bad!
Why did this happen? In this case, the lifting bridge had progressed so far, and in such a way, that the spruce had already begun tearing out before bridge removal even began.
My solution was to rout out the entire footprint of the bridge to a depth that eliminates 95% of the damage, and install a spruce patch.
I say “95% of the damage” because certain areas of tearout were so deep that it was neither sensible nor necessary to rout the whole footprint to such a depth.
Notice the small areas of tearout that remain after routing. This is acceptable.
I routed the pocket with a 3/32″ bit in a dremel tool and a Stewmac saddle routing jig. Any “sled” type device that fits a dremel tool will work for this. The saddle routing jig works particularly well because of the Baseplate Travel Stops and the Jig Reference Plate (see image below).
The Baseplate Travel Stops prevent me from accidentally routing beyond the area of the footprint. The Jig Reference Plate allows me to work my way from the front of the bridge to the rear in multiple, parallel passes by adjusting the Jig Guide Plate to the Jig Reference Plate and then resetting the Jig Reference Plate with feeler gauge tabs after every pass. I’ve borrowed the image below from Stewmac’s website. This should hopefully help illustrate what I am talking about, even though the picture shows the jig routing a saddle slot, which is it’s actual, intended purpose.
For the majority of the rout I do not have to adjust the Baseplate Travel Stops. It is only for the rounded section of the footprint in the back that I need to adjust the travel stops inward after each pass. The 2 curved sections of the footprint (indicated by the arrows) then have to be touched up carefully with a chisel and/or a razor
An oversized spruce patch is cut to shape and glued in place.
I level the patch with a thumb plane and fine-tune it with sandpaper on a flat block.
Once the patch is flat and level with the surrounding lacquer, I turn my attention to cleaning up the mating surface of the bridge.
Ordinarily for a bridge glue, I would sand the mating surface to the radius of the guitar top. The patch, however, has no radius, so the mating surface of the bridge is sanded flat on a granite block.
I relocated the bridge and clamped it in place so that I could mark the pin holes on the new patch and drill.
The guitar is now ready for a standard bridge glue-up.
After the Glue-up: Since the spruce patch sits level with the surrounding lacquer, rather than level with the wood of the soundboard, I made sure to seal around the bridge with brush on lacquer. You can also use superglue. Either way, it should be carefully applied.
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
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Transcript:
Now we are going to rough out our brace blanks from billets of spruce. Before we get started with that we just need to understand the difference between quarter sawn and flat sawn.
To get a better understanding of quarter sawn vs. flat sawn lets take a look at the source of the spruce.
First, look at the top of the diagram. The end grain pattern of quartersawn wood is nearly 90 degrees to the face of the board.
This nearly vertical grain orientation imparts the structural integrity that we need if the braces are glued with the quartersawn face up.
In contrast, look at the bottom of the diagram. The end grain pattern of flat sawn wood is nearly parallel or 0 degrees to the face of the board.
Braces glued with the flatsawn face up will have significantly less structural integrity.
This is why we glue our braces with the quartersawn face up.
If you are having a hard time determining which face is quartersawn, then you may have a riftsawn board.
Riftsawn boards are somewhere between quarter and flat sawn with an end grain pattern close to 45 degrees.
Don’t expect all your brace stock to be perfectly quartersawn along its length.
Boards with an end grain pattern as skewed as 60 degrees to the face are acceptable.
A good rule of thumb is: If you can’t determine which face is the quartersawn face, then the board is rift sawn and it should be tossed.
This is the quarter sawn face. As you can see the grain lines are very close together. That is because the grain lines are coming out at the camera.
This is the flat sawn face. This is because the grain lines are coming out at an angle. As you can see there are no tight grain lines.
On all of our braces we are going to have the quartersawn face standing up and the flat sawn faces on the sides.
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
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Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
Want more of this? Subscribe below for Weekly Guitar Making Tips on “The Small Shop Luthier Blog”
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
Want more of this? Subscribe below for Weekly Guitar Making Tips on “The Small Shop Luthier Blog”
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
Want more of this? Subscribe below for Weekly Guitar Making Tips on “The Small Shop Luthier Blog”
In this lesson we will discuss various tools around my shop. This is just to get the gears turning in your head. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of necessities. I urge the student to make NO tool purchases at this time. It is much wiser and more economical to rent, borrow or purchase tools as you go, lesson by lesson. Not every builder uses the same tools so you may find that your situation calls for a different setup than mine.
Lesson Transcript:
The last two lessons prompted you to take action: to order a set of plans and to order the parts and materials for your guitar. This lesson, however, is going to be just a little bit different. I urge you to put away the credit card for now and just listen. I am going to show you some of the tools around my shop. some of these tools are totally necessary while others are just plain fun, or they make the job easier.
You are encouraged to take notes but not encouraged to purchase any of the tools you see here… yet.
What I really want you to do is this: As you go through the content of this course, lesson by lesson, purchase the tools as you go. It is much smarter that way. You will end up making wiser purchases and you won’t have any extra junk tools around the shop that you never really use.
I also encourage students to rent or borrow tools as much as possible. There is likely a woodshop or maker’s space in your area where you can rent time, especially on some of the larger equipment such as thickness sanders or bandsaws.
Call up some friends. Look on Craig’s list. It is very likely that a lot of these tools are right under your fingertips if you look hard enough.
#5 Jack Plane
The #5 Jack Plane finds a myriad of uses around my shop, most notably for jointing long edges, such as the joint for the top and back plates. I also use this general purpose plane for thicknessing stock before fine-tuning the thickness on a drum sander.
Thumb Plane
This miniature handplane made from an ebony block is called a thumb plane. It is certainly not a necessity, but it does make some jobs, like trimming brace tops, a whole lot of fun.
Block Plane
The block plane is an excellent companion to the jack plane. The block plane is useful for jointing edges and thicknessing small surfaces such as the scarf joint for the neck.
Chisels
I use 4 chisels for work on guitars. I use a 1″, 3/4″, 1/4″ and an 1/8″ chisel. It is wiser to invest in a good quality 1″ and 1/4″ chisel, rather than a whole set of cheap, low quality chisels. I do, however keep some bargain variety chisels, such as this one, around for general use in the shop, just to save the edge on my good chisels.
Spokeshave
The spokeshave was designed for use in shaping and smoothing curved surfaces, such as chair legs, wheel spokes and, in this case, guitar necks. Make sure your spokeshave has a flat plane (*sole) rather than a radiused plane (*sole).
Card Scrapers
Card scrapers are great for smoothing surfaces if you know how to sharpen them and use them. Otherwise, you can just use sandpaper for smoothing. In a pinch, a razor blade can quickly and easily be honed into an effective mini-scraper, simply by drawing the razor’s edge across an edge of hard steel, such as the edge of your bandsaw table.
Large Backsaw
The backsaw is designed for precision cuts. Unlike most other saw types, the backsaw has a metal rib, opposite the cutting edge, to limit flexing of the blade. The only drawback is that the metal rib prevents you from cutting beyond a certain depth. The larger variety of backsaws, which you see here, is not of much use unless you do not have access to power tools and need something heavy duty for cross cuts.
Dovetail Saw
The dovetail saw is a small backsaw set to leave a narrow kerf. I keep 2 10″ dovetail saws on hand: A low quality saw for my rough cuts and a high quality saw with a kerf specifically designed for cutting fret slots.
Japanese Pullsaw
The Japanese pullsaw has a thin blade and it cuts on the pull stroke. This saw doesn’t see a whole lot of action in my shop because I do my rip cuts on the table saw or the bandsaw. However, if you are working without the use of power tools, then the pullsaw may be a viable option.
Razor Saw
The razor saw can be found at hobby stores. It is similar in form and function to the dovetail saw, just scaled down a bit. I use this saw to cut notches in my braces.
Coping Saw
The coping saw is designed for cutting curves. I keep one around for a number of uses but, more often than not, the bandsaw replaces my need for a coping saw.
Jeweler’s Saw
The jeweler’s saw, on the other hand, is irreplaceable for fine inlay work. This is essentially a superfine coping saw. I use fine and extra fine blades. The blades come in packs of 20 or more because breaking a blade is a relatively common occurrence.
Cam Clamps
Wooden cam clamps are the backbone of a luthier’s clamp supply. They are lightweight, quick and easy to use, have a secure grip and a high clamping pressure, though not as high as other clamps.
C-Clamps
C-Clamps are a bit more heavy duty. If you’re just getting started I would recommend picking up 4″, 1 1/2″, and some deep reach c-clamps. I would recommend 2 of each.
“Ibex” Bridge Clamps
Ibex bridge clamps are lightweight clamps designed specifically for gluing the bridge to the soundboard.
Spring Clamps
Spring clamps are lightweight, low cost, and even easier to use than cam clamps. Just squeeze the trigger and release. The tradeoff is in strength. Spring clamps are only as strong as their spring. They are great for any situation where you simply need an extra hand. The relatively light hold is enough for aligning and marking out dimensions.
Files
A variety of flat, round and triangular files find many uses throughout the build process. These need not be expensive items. In fact, a single set containing a variety of files can be purchased for very cheap at most hardware stores. Make sure your file set includes a rasp.
Needle Files
Needle files are equally useful and equally inexpensive. Once again, you will want a variety of flat, round and triangular files.
Nut Slotting Files
As the name implies, nut slotting files are designed specifically with nut slotting in mind. The nut slots are cut to the exact diameter of that slot’s string or slightly larger. Therefore, you will need a variety of nut slotting files to match or very nearly match the gauges of your strings.
Razor Knife
A razor knife with a variety of razor blade attachments can be immensely useful, and for very cheap. I also keep single edge razor blades handy for use as mini scrapers among other uses.
Fret Nippers
Any set of strong nippers will work but I like these fret nippers from Stewart Macdonald because the front face is ground flat, allowing the nippers to reach in flush with the fretboard. Of course, you can always use an ordinary set and grind the front face flat yourself.
Fretting Hammer
An ordinary carpenter’s hammer will not work for hammering frets, as it will mar the fretwire. The ideal fretting hammer is lightweight and has a plastic or a brass head. The hammer I most commonly use is filled with shot, making it a deadblow hammer. This reduces recoil and makes fretting just a little bit easier.
Fret Press
You can also avoid hammering altogether, and press your frets in instead. I often hammer my frets in but then use the Jaws II fret press, pictured here, to press in any fret ends that did not seat well.
6″ Square
A 6″ square of decent quality should be the only square that you need for marking and checking for square.
Straightedges
Reliable straightedges are essential. For guitar work, it is good to have an 18″ and a 24″ straightedge. I also own a notched straightedge. This straightedge is notched to fit over the frets. That way I can check the relief of the fretboard without the frets interfering with the measurement. This is, of course, useful for guitar setup and repair work.
Tools noted:
#5 Jack plane
Thumb Plane
Block Plane
Chisels
Spokeshave
Card Scrapers
Dovetail Saw
Japanese Pullsaw
Razor Saw
Large Backsaw
Coping Saw
Jeweler’s Saw
Cam Clamps
C-Clamps
Ibex Bridge Clamps
Spring Clamps
Files
Needle Files
Nut Slotting Files
Razor Knife and Razor Blades
Fret Nippers
Fretting Hammer
Fret Press
6″ Square
Straightedges
Caliper
Feeler Gauges
Protractor
Radius Gauges
Radius Blocks
Fret Bender
String Spacing Ruler
Heat Gun
Drill
Laminate Trimmer
Plunge Router
Various Rulers
Inspection Mirror
Dremel Tool
Bending Iron
Random Orbital Sander
Dremel Base
Circle Cutter
Was this useful? I would love to hear your questions or comments! I try to answer every e-mail I receive, so please be patient with me eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
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eric@ericschaeferguitars.com
