Buckaroo Recap

January 21, 20151 Comment

The Lil’ Buckaroo was completed on Day 10, with the combined efforts of myself and Aaron Tacke, and by all accounts it was a success! Here is the details:

Aaron called me from Minneapolis, suggesting we collaborate and build a quick guitar for a friend. We would build a 1937-spec L-OO out of all local walnut and whatever spruce was on hand, build it in about a week, and have it ready to play for the Portland Old Time Music Gathering on January 17th, 2015. We talked briefly about having it be top-bound, black painted, and put a few supplies on order. I don’t think I seriously believed that we could do it (and have any finish on it), but when I returned from a days work at the bike shop to find the top and back joined and sides thicknessed, and brace stock milled, I was thrilled to dive into the build. The only pieces I had prepared ahead of time was a rough walnut neck blank slotted for a two-way truss rod, and a Brazilian Rosewood bridge I had from a previous build. The rest would be made from raw stock.

Here is the specs:

1937 Gibson L-OO 14 frets to body, 24 3/4″ scale length, 1 3/4″ ebony nut

Sitka Spruce top and bracewood with a very well-aged maple bridgeplate

Claro Walnut back, sides, neck

Palisander Rosewood fingerboard and Brazilian Rosewood bridge with a bone through-saddle

ivoroid celluloid binding and rosette

Finish is enamel and oil varnish.

And it’s for sale!

New Build, Old Build Update

February 18, 2014February 18, 2014Leave a comment

Adirondack Spruce Soundboard, before thicknessing and jointing.

I’ve begun on the first Portland-made Miller guitar! It’ll be Adirondack Spruce top and bracing, with Claro Walnut neck, back and sides. The fingerboard and bridge will be a very Brazilian-esque Palisander Rosewood, and the headstock will be very 1930s: black lacquered rather than veneered, tapered, and possibly with a stenciled logo. It’ll be very close to 1937 specs, with fresh hot hide glue, a through-saddle, and celluloid galore. Stay tuned!

This past weekend, Joanna and I performed and taught at the Olympia Old Time Festival. Plenty of fun, music, and guitar-geeking was achieved. You can check us out at http://www.facebook.com/coupe.duet

Here is the Coupe Duet playing at a local breakfast joint. I am playing the Miller F5, and Joanna is playing an awesome x-braced Harmony conversion.

Because the spruce has beautifully ambered, I figured that I would post some updated photos of the Roy Smeck Dreadnought. I’ve received a commission to build another one this spring; this will be a (late 20s) hand-rubbed sunburst with maple back and sides. Exciting!

Build Complete, Bluegrass, and SNOW.

March 5, 2013September 16, 2015Leave a comment

ivoroid cut by hand

So, after 7 weeks of building, the dreadnought is together, fretted, inlayed, carved, and jsut about ready to be sprayed with lacquer. Unfortunately, we must first complete a finishing class before we will all cut loose in the spray booth. That means 7 weeks of practice sanding, color-matching, sunbursting, grain-filling, spraying, more sanding, etc. We’ll also have a Repairs Class, where we practice routing for pickups and necks in electric guitar bodies, make oodles of guitar nuts, and squeeze in some self-directed repair work. This will all of course be scrutinized by our stringent taskmaster, so I will be sanding my fingers to the bone! I’m pumped!

This past weekend the Minnesota Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association had it’s winter wingding at a big hotel just west of Minneapolis. A bunch of us old time musicians made our way out there, danced our hineys off, and played tunes to boot. I had a great time, hung out and played tunes with some great folks like Chirps Smith, Bill Peterson, and Clancy from Port Wing Donut Fame, not to mention the awesome Twin Cities crowd. I even got in some bluegrass and honky tonk while I was at it!

Next week is SPRING BREAK, and I’ll be living it up Midwest Style, going to a square dancing festival, skiing, hot tubbing, visiting luthiers (and saunas) from Northwest Minnesota clear down to Madison Wisconsin. Whee!

Pictures of Stuff!

February 25, 20132 Comments

With one week of Construction Class to go, I’ve carved the heel, set the neck (a careful adjustment of the dovetail joint considering neck extension height, centerline, and twist), profiled the headstock (complete with a vintage taper), drilled for tuners, and glued the neck in with hot hide glue.

Next up is to glue on the fingerboard, finish carving the neck, fretting, and oodles of sanding. I’ve got a pretty neat headstock inlay in the works, but I’m working out the kinks before I commit to it. I’ll give you a hint: it involves ivoroid sheetstock and is in the classic Gibson style.

This weekend I have the pleasure of attending the 7th Annual Port Wing Donut Fry in upper Wisconsin; it was a blast. Picture, if you can, a town hall built in the 1940’s crammed with children playing, a lengthy talent show, epic potluck, and thousands of delicious donuts being fried in freshly-rendered lard. A very tender Midwestern experience for me.

I also had the pleasure of staying at Sarah and Clancy’s homestead; a beautiful timber-framed solar-powered house. They even had a log cabin sauna. Wow.

And now for the evidence:

And more pizza! These are bacon-goat cheese-beet-arugula-mozarella. Best ever.

Tailgraft, binding, and plug cutters!

February 18, 2013February 18, 20132 Comments

The tailgraft is in, the box is bound, and I made some nifty ivoroid position markers. So, you’ll notice that I have a thing for ivoroid, the grained celluloid so favored by the fretted instrument makers of the (first) golden age of American Lutherie. I’ve loved the look of ivoroid fret markers, but haven’t been able to purchase them. So, I made some.

For the 1/4″ markers on the face of the fretboard, I was able to use a commercial plug cutter to cut some out of ivoroid sheet stock. For the petite side markers, I took the example of Frank Ford at FRETS.com and fabricated a plug cutter out of brass tube stock. It made some nice 3/32″ plugs when chucked into the drill press. Sweet!

Voicing the Guitar

February 1, 2013February 2, 2013Leave a comment

My wonderful Lie-Nielsen low-angle apron plane. Not a required tool in the program, but such a help

An exciting event has come and gone; I have voiced my first guitar top. Following the concepts of Dana Bourgeois and the guidance of my instructor, I flexed and tapped the braced top, listening for tone, sound quality, and response. Bits of spruce bracing were shaved off, the height of the finger braces were lowered. I’m using an exceptionally stiff piece of Adirondack Spruce (Picea rubens), so I was able to elegantly taper my braces into smooth arcs. When finished, I could tap the top nearly anywhere and be met with clear, musical tones. It felt like tuning a marimba key, shaving away bit by bit, until it seemed as good as it could be. This should make the guitar truly speak.

Next, I quickly braced the back, which is a lovely peice of Claro Walnut from Oregon.

So: the top and back are joined and braced, the rosette installed, the soundhole cut, the top and back are joined and braced; the sides are bent, blocks are glued in and shaped, half of the kerfing is glued, templates are made for neck and headstock shape.

By the end of next week, I should likely have the box closed up, binding channel routed, fingerboard shaped and slotted, neck cut out and begun getting shaped, truss rod channel routed…

Meanwhile, back at home I’m graduating F5 mandolin plates, fabricating spool clamps, managed to get the 1-18 Martin copy (home build, starting last spring) going with the top and back joined, thicknessed and cut out. I’m going full tilt, trying to stay productive and still get a nights sleep. We had a great visit from a friend and prospective student from New Orleans; I’m sure he enjoyed our below-zero windchill (although it wasn’t too cold at 9 degrees F). Till next time, friends.

Braced!

January 29, 2013January 29, 20134 Comments

The bracing layout is in pencil, once the rosette is installed and soundhole cut

What a busy week! With 9 hours per day spent between lecture and shop time, we have our hands full with our building schedule. While we do have the benefit of jigs set up for certain tasks, such as sanding a radius into brace stock, otherwise we spend a bulk of our time learning how to carefully attach small pieces of wood together, then elegantly carving away much of the material we’ve just attached. What remains is the guitar.

The bracing of the top is a great part of the artistry of guitar making and design. You would think that the soundboards of a guitar would be made flat and strong, right? What isn’t apparent when looking at a fine guitar, is how it has been engineered to withstand the constant pressure of the strings, not to mention made to sound good when played.

Flat to the untrained eye, the top (front, usually light-colored spruce), top braces (the sculptural reinforcement glued to the underside of the top, mostly hidden from view), back, and back braces are a much more complex system than first meets the eye. Modern guitars are built “under tension”, meaning that the top and back plates (the major sources of sound from the instrument) are forced into a subtle arch during construction.

The plates are first sanded flat and fairly thin. Next, the sturdy spruce braces that are to be glued inside are given a radius usually between 15′ and 25′. When glued to the top and back, these braces induce arch into the thin plates. This creates a stronger and more resonant structure. It is also a fair amount of work.

One of the wonderful clamping tools we use in the shop is called the Go-Bar Deck. The deck consists of two plywood plates held about four feet apart; the assembly to to clamped faces upward, and flexible shafts are bowed between the part being glued and the upper plate. This allows one full access for glue cleanup, fine control over clamping pressure, and and inexpensive alternative to using deep-throat clamps. Best of all, it looks way cool.

Once the braces are attached with hot hide glue, they are profiled and scalloped prior to final voicing. This is a major contribution to the fine, nuanced sound of a hand-built guitar. For a first-timer, it is also laborious and time-consuming. The 1930’s Gibson design I’m using has 14 bracing components. Each has a purpose, and each must be precisely fitted and shaped for the best result.

Meanwhile, back I’m listening to old reggae favorites and having nightmares about my chisels not being sharp enough. In other news, I’ll be taking a trip down to visit friends in Viroqua, Wisconsin this coming weekend. While I’m down there, I’ll be participating in a wonderful radio show sunday evening. Styled after the great old-time radio barndance programs of the 1930s, the Driftless Radio Barndance is loving variety show played live in a gorgeous tobacco wharehouse-turned-bookstore in Viroqua. You can expect some fiddle music, some fine country harmonies, and plenty more. You can listen in live streaming around 7pm this Sunday February 3rd, 2013.

http://wdrt.org/listen.html

And what is possibly the most beautiful book store in the whole world:

http://www.driftlessbooks.com/

2013 Building Begins!

January 18, 2013January 18, 20131 Comment

Boy howdy! While this week I’m missing out on my favorite possible thing, the Portland Old Time Music Gathering, I am back in the midwest kicking butt on lutherie projects! In class, we’ve begun building our acoustic guitars. My hopes are high for a busy semester, where I will build a dreadnaught guitar in class (a la 1930’s Gibson “Roy Smeck Radio Grande”); continue at home the build of the O-18 Claro Walnut and Red Spruce guitar, and the Arches F5 mandolin kit. Hopefully I can squeeze in some repairs, snoshoeing, square dancing, and finally, get this awesome honky tonk band rolling (we’re called The A-11s).

I’m feeling so excited about the week’s work, that I’m gonna go ahead and give the blow-by-blow: By the end of the first day, my #1 Adirondack Spruce top was jointed with hot hide glue; templates cut for body and neck profile, and the layout work for a headstock template and workboard. Day two and three, I stayed the master-multitasker thickness sanding, profiling, and doing rosette layout for the top; jig up and shave down celluloid binding strips for the rosette (more on that in a moment), finished the workboard, finished templates, and managed to sneak the #2 Adirondack top in to get it jointed and glued; I’ll bring this one home to thickness with hand planes—the old fashioned way. Each day this week, I’ve been excited to get home and work on the F5. So far, I’ve got the top kerfing, levelled, and am waiting on fresh instructions from the maker of the kit.

I’m really excited about the rosette. Wanting to stick with the ’30s Gibson aesthetic, I wanted a black-white-black rosette ring. I had noticed a local supplier carries vertical-grained celluloid binding. I struck on the idea of tortoise/ivoroid/tortoise binding in play of fancy herringbone or some such readymade rosette. I wanted somethin’ special. I went ahead and ordered the binding and hoped that it would look as nice in reality as my mental picture. Literally the next day, I walked into a Minneapolis boutique guitar shop to find that my idea was far from groundbreaking—somebody else already does it! But it looked great, so…

Celluloid is an early iteration of plastic; created in the mid-19th century, it was often used on musical instruments in place of ivory during the 1920s through the late ’40s; the first Golden Age of American Guitars. A highly flammable combination of nitrocellulose and camphor, celluloid plastics today are rare; as far as I’ve heard, the entirety of celluloid production these days comes from Italy. While a bit harder to come by, I think grained celluloid (ivoroid) and tortoise shell celluloid are lovely trim.

A few words to explain the jointing of tops. I had heard and read about the importance of a perfectly top joint, so it was great to finally do it!

We had No. 7 jointer planes set up on shooting boards, set to remove very fine shavings from the spruce edge being jointed. The tops are held together over a light table, and are checked for good fit. If any light shows through, even the slightest line, then you must decide where the problem area is, and work the whole piece over once more on the shooting board. Once the joint appears perfect, it is glued and clamped flat in a fixture—Voila! The first major step towards building a guitar!

Archtop Update, Pizza Pie

December 4, 2012December 5, 20121 Comment

Time for some skillet licker pizza: bacon-spinach with grated nutmeg, cooked up in the trusty Griswold #11 skillet. YUM.

P1080595

I’ve kept myself busy, refining my fretwork in class, rehabilitating the archtop at home, and getting in some great tunes and square dancing in the Twin Cities over the weekend. My friends Bob and Julie had a great house party, with Old Time tunes in the kitchen, Cajun upstairs, Quebecois in another room, and so on! We stayed up ’till almost 5am singing ballads and sea shanties…what a blast! It was just what I needed.

As for the archtop, I’ve had my hands full attending to the most heinous faults: filling 19 holes in the headstock with mahogany plugs, installing the correct bushings and redrilling for the Golden Age reproduction tuners, and rebuilding the dovetail joint.

P1080593

When I steamed the neck out, I discovered that this beautiful guitar was put together rather haphazardly. The dovetail joint holds the neck onto the body, maintaining the correct extension height and resisting the pull of the strings. In this case, the dovetail pin on the neck was badly gouged (it appeared to have been assembled that way). With this much material missing from critical surfaces, it is no wonder why the neck had pulled away from the body.

I decided to rebuild the dovetail. To do this, I chiseled away the gouged sections, leaving nice square and flat surfaces to splice in fresh mahogany. Although this work will be hidden inside the headblock of the guitar, it is nice to know there is clean, respectable work in there.

Next step will be to carefully fit everything back together. As the joint fit was rather poor to begin with, some careful shimming and carving will be required. I can’t wait to hear what this guitar will sound like with a correct neck angle and solid neck-to-body connection. Fun!

The Archtop Gets an Overhaul

November 20, 2012November 20, 20121 Comment

Is it any wonder that I’m obsessed with hand-rubbed sunburst finishes these days? Out here beside the Mississippi, each sunrise and sunset has been spectacular.

In the last week of class, we have begun working on prepping fingerboards, hammering and leveling frets, and setting up electric guitars. So much attention to detail, hours upon hours of focused work, then bring it on home to get some more bench time.

Tonight, I took a break from fretwork in order to mix up a batch of hot hide glue. While the hide glue was gelling, I went ahead and steamed the neck out of my beloved old checkerboard archtop.

This 15 1/4″ plywood archtop was given to me by a family member a couple of years ago. She had bought it from a pawn shop, having fallen in love with the checkerboard binding and violin-like F holes. When I first saw it, it emerged like a swan from it’s bird-poop encrusted chipboard case. It was in a sad state, with awful replacement tuners, the bridge badly out of place, and a cornucopia of typical setup and structural issues.

At the time, I performed a quickie setup, put some Golden Age tuners on it, and fell in love with the percussive bark, with it’s undeniable class and verve. Ever since, I’ve looked forward to giving it it the complete overhaul it needs to truly shine.

So I hooked up my trusty stove-top steamer to a basketball needle, heated and pulled the 15th fret, and drilled a 5/64″ hole (actually, several) for the steaming operation. It took about 15 minutes for the steam to penetrate the old hide glue dovetail joint.

There was a lot of poop-brown old hide glue inside of the dovetail (although it wasn’t doing a great job of holding the heel in place as it was intended). It looks like Kay/Harmony didn’t worry too much about having fresh glue for their joinery.

Once everything was apart, I cleaned out all the goo, and clamped everything flat so that it won’t potato-chip with all of the moisture from the steamage.

Since everything came out looking fine, I expect that after a few days to dry out and settle down, I can start trimming and shimming the dovetail back to angly goodness. Along with the reset, this puppy is getting a refret, new bone nut and hand-made adjustable ebony bridge. This poor man’s jazzbox is finally getting the royal treatment it deserves!

Chris Miller Guitars

Vintage Reproductions and Repair In Sonoma, California

Tag: Lutherie