Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

actually I´m going to take your advice but did also change something (but reversible :) ) I put a veneer of 0.6mm under the heel which raised the action to about 4mm. With this I can reduce the saddle height to around 4.xmm if I go back to an action of 3mm. That makes me feel a bit more relaxed as I...

and perhaps in addition: it does have falcate bracing with fully compensated nut and saddle, bridge similar to the one in Trevors book

@Martin:
Neck bolted to the body

@Mark
I just strung it up yesterday. The neck relief is around 0.1mm and yes it does have an adjustable trussrod

Looks like I still need more practice with classical guitar building. This is my third classical ... and every time I manage to make my life a bit more interesting. This time the neck angle is not correct. The resulting saddle height above the bridge is at the highest point almost 6mm. Action is a b...

Hi, I think this is a newbie question but I don´t know and as this guitar is for a customer I don´t want to risk problems. I hope someone here can tell me if I can use hard shellac on top af a waxed shellac with pumice as sanding sealer. Up to now I alway just used the hard shellac to fill the pores...

Hi Greg, nope, I didn´t. I actually nowadays work with the textbook value to get a good start and then do the optimization (routine for an existing guitar) to get as good as possible. Not the best solution but at least it worked for my guitars. Too bad Trevor never reacted on the question. Perhaps h...

actually the question is not where I can buy bookmatched soundboards. To be more specific: if I want to saw my own soundboards from a block of spruce where can I buy quartersawn spruce blanks. I don´t have a clue where I would be able to get quartersawn spruce with a decent quality. All suppliers in...

Hi Greg,

more or less the same from my side. Please continue
I always read your posts I just haven´t got much to say at the moment. Mostly occupied with other things
Work, building my second guitar for a customer,

I´m thinking of going on a longer trip to the US during a sabatical and saw that Trevor is holding a course on modal tuning during October with Robbie O´Brien. As I already build quite a few guitars (7) following the BOOK I´m wondering if I will be able to learn more than I already have using the bo...

Thanks for the answers. I have to admit I never saw a pinless bridge in real life, only some pictures. I even found one here in the forum: a post from Jim Watts from 2018. Looks actually a bit like the Breedlove bridge. But for example it´s not clear to me how to get the angles for the string channe...

hi guys, I have my third customer finally :) But he has some special specifications. One of them being a pinless bridge. Did one of you use a pinless bridge on a falcate bracing and did you have trouble with reducing the weight? Which design worked for you? I saw the doolin version and the breedlove...

I found some old mahogany stair steps online for forty € and decided to see if my Record Power bandsaw was up to the task of sawing my own backs and sides (which is btw a first, never did that before). IMG_20230612_163748.jpg Ok, that was already after sawing a few times but you get the idea. In add...

I still owe you the final result. I wasn´t sure if I should post it in the Gallery but here you can see the whole story. IMG_20230930_112706.jpg IMG_20230930_112854.jpg IMG_20230930_112948.jpg IMG_20230930_113019.jpg As I didn´t have a customer for this guitar anymore I decided to add a feature I wa...

Perhaps that would have been the better solution. I went for two marriage strips and a few diamond patches. Almost forgot to take a picture so had to do it just before closing the box.

As there is no customer anymore for this one I had put this project on hold but finally coming back to it. It will probably go to my brother as he suddenly showed some interest of getting a guitar for himself. I managed to repair the crack and to find a piece of padouk with the right colour to put b...

I´m sure this question is somewhere in he forum but I can´t find it :) I´m thinking of making my own kerfed lining with a bandsaw, so far so good. Only question is which wood makes the most sense. Usually you can buy mahogany and cedar kerfed linings but are there any good alternatives which are eas...

Thanks for your posts... But the initial question is still not answered. If you´re using steel (or spring steel) which thickness are the slats you are using? :) Btw. I like the idea of keeping both side under tension. Just need to find a way to incorporate it into the existing tool. And find some sp...

I am trying something new. Ok, not for most of you new, but for me. During the last almost ten years I built around 20 guitars which admittedly are now a lot better after finding Trevors books. But I actually never did a cutaway. So at the moment I´m thinking about buidling a cutaway version of my 0...

Thanks a lot Wayne. That´s a very detailed answer which helps me a lot.

For quite some time I didn´t show anything I built. So here pictures of my first sold guitar (I´m actually not sure why the fretboard looks kind of blotchy on the pictures. When I look directly I don´t see anything obvious) 12 fret 000 Back and sides: Indian Rosewood Top: Sitka Binding: Curly Maple ...

I´m buiding now for quite some time guitars (up to now around #20). After just giving them away for a long time I finally managed quite recently to sell 3 of them (actually kind of by coincidence). Quite often people had been asking why I don´t guitars with a pickup system as none of my guitars had ...

Yepp, that would explain a lot.

What do you do with such a set of top panels? The deflection method will also not work on those. Is there any way to still use them?

Thanks for your reply Trevor. For the sitka I found a small mistake. After correcting it I got the same result. So that seems to be ok. In the mean time I also checked with the deflection method and found quite similar results. So for this time I think I can trust the values for the target thickness...

Ahh, I forgot: you need the box size for the guitar

a=520mm
b=385mm

If I use the values from table 4.5-3 I can reproduce the target thickness.

Looks like it´s getting a bit more active nowadays. And ... some quite similar problems. So I´ll join the club. After 4 guitars following the principles of Trevors book and me thinking yepp, that´s no big problem anymore. I posted some information about those guitars in the forum. I finally have a c...