Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

For the last 18 months the workshop has been packed up during a new house build. Myself and the good wife lived in our garage and the workshop during the build as a cost saving measure. Now that the house is finished Ive been busy getting the workshop back up and running. A temporary bathroom was se...

If the whole area is humidity controlled then I guess there's less requirement for a separate wood store. For me getting the shitloads of wood out of my main shop meant more room for building....

First step....assign one room as a dedicated wood store.
Second step...separate areas for machinery that creates alot of dust.

Ross, try looking at the settings for Youtube at your end. I vaguely remember there being some security settings that control automatic redirections.

fast forward to 12:10 . what kind of wood does this? :shock: Looks like spruce. With a bit of coaxing you can get it to bend around a tight radius. Not sure about the logic behind that "extra" brace going across the lower bout.....one benefit of Trevor's falcate bracing design is the sound board ge...

Where you want to minimize "leakage" of string energy from the top down the sides red gum would be the ticket. Not so good if you're after a live back. My main reservations would be it's density and the difficulty working the stuff.

I've got a couple of back and side sets that have been sitting on my shelves for 20 years now. The grain in the stuff is about as rogue as you can get and I don't look forward to running plane over it. I may be pleasantly surprised when I finally come to use the stuff but right now these sets dont i...

Upper transverse brace looks robust. I assume there's no sound hole patch and you've just got those two braces either side of same. I generally install both a soundhole patch as well as much higher braces either side of the soundhole. Im not sure if this is the problem though. How thin is the top? I...

Quarter sawn is preferred for dimensional stability. Most fretboard blanks will be a bit off the quarter but Id be wary of using flat sawn wood for a fretboard.

I've found the VA frequency meter a bit catankerous.....sometimes it works.....other times it doesn't seem to pick up a harmonic. I tried the frequency meter and it doesn't give a reading? Which is probably why I haven' got into using it...re my resonant figures from the board I sampled, the long si...

What's bracing the area around the soundhole? Is there a sound hole patch/bracing...or both? A picture of the underside of the soundboard with all bracing would be handy.

Nice work Frank..

Thanks for the update Allen. Each time you sand back are you going back to bare wood and leaving the epoxy just in the pores or are you aiming to leave an overall even layer of epoxy on both pores and wood?

Good point....

56nortondomy wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 30, 2020 4:55 pm

Use ca. Cocobolo is really oily and unless you can clean inside the cracks with acetone then titebond won't stick. I had a similar problem with a set I had and used ca it did the job. Wayne

Yes forgot that one.....once the back is made up whack some cleats on the underside of same.

PS: watch the dust from that wood....some people get a bad reaction from the dust.

I rub in either CA, Titebond or hide glue to stop the crack propagating any further.

If you get to know most of the builders in here I don't think you'll find anyone who's done their first build on a building course and then gone on to do their second build with another teacher. Once you've done that first build and the desire to build a another one is there...I think most of us let...

Nice work mate. Whats the finish? Proof that the best instruments have a lot of planning behind them.

To all our members...Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year from Jeremy and myself.

With my new house finished and my workshop close to being back in action Ill have more time to devote to the forum....and who knows you might even see some builds from me.

Thanks Steve. Your input to this forum is valued and much appreciated. Have a great Christmas mate.

Thanks Trevor. Who's the builder?

If you're going to use hide glue make it up fresh from granules rather than use the ready in a bottle stuff. Which glue to use? Each glue has its pros and cons. Hide glue has a high shear strength so good for bridges etc. It also makes for a reversible joint. Clean up is also alot easier than with T...

I don't see any major gaffs....the access hatch cover will do what its supposed to do...cover anything underneath it. The jack...well yes that counts as a gaff......but then again I once glued a neck block onto the TOP of the neck. All in all pretty impressive for a first build and also without a ba...

On occasions when I haven't had the correct sized bearing Ive taken the next size down and carefully wrapped a layer or two of tape around outside of the bearing to increase diameter a tad...worked for me

Nice work Peter. What's the finish on that instrument?