Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

That should be fun. I hope it goes well!.
Mark

Very nice Mr Evans! I have bought some nice meranti at Bunnings for a workbench and it had similar colour. If I see some well quartered bits I might think of it for bindings. How deep is that body at the tail, and at the neck? Looks fairly deep, which might boost the voice of an otherwise small body...

I love watching the birth of this instrument. Thanks for the beautiful documentation. Your work looks very skillful and elegant, especially on the neck scroll. I am interested to see that you can graduate the outside arch of the top using the Safe-T-Planer, which would be a great way to hog off a lo...

I am like Martin and cut the back into a “guitar shape” before starting to do the bracing. However, I can’t see any problem with the way that you do it as long as it still conforms to the radius that you intend. White oak looks very pretty. Is it heavy?

Just some of that nice stuff that comes from your neighbors in the Adelaide Hills

Sounds like you have got it well sorted out. It might be a good idea to find some pictures online of the headstock and nut area of the Martin guitar and enlarge it and print it so you can take some detailed measurements of how they do the string spacing. It is interesting that they have updated an i...

Your string spacing ratios at the nut will also be replicated at the saddle and bridge. It works well to put both G strings in the same hole. You have to use an unslotted bridge pin, and cut slots in the bridge at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock in that hole to guide the strings on different paths. It woul...

I made a 7-string like that, and have also made an 8-string with paired D strings and paired G strings (taking the idea from a Taylor baritone model which I played somewhere once). My plan, which I won't say is the "correct" method but I have been happy with it, gives a little bit more space to the ...

There is a fantastic web resource called the Wayback machine which has archived 928 billion webpages historically, dating back to 2008. I just did some playing around there to see if it can retrieve this thread with pictures. Haven’t solved it yet, but there are 517 entries from ANZLF archived, so m...

But isn't the big orange baby saying that the exporting countries will pay ???? Yes he says stuff like that, and that it will raise trillions of dollars for the US, but the way that tariffs work is that the buyer pays it to their own government. There will be a backlash from Americans who voted for...

Congratulations on the new space Trent. Looks great from what we can see in the photos (please show us more!), and the punters are happy and productive.

I usually find that after it has been strung up for a week the action will get higher, and I usually find myself sanding down the saddle at that stage. Your guitars might be different - but just watch for a little while.

Have you only recently strung it up? If that is how it looks and measures up in the first few days I would wait and watch it for a little while. It will tend to migrate in the direction you want as the top pulls up a little and the neck tilts a bit forward. These changes are more marked in the early...

Wow - very stylish and well executed. I really like how you carried the art deco theme through everything - especially the matching shapes of the pickguard and tailpiece. Do you plan and draw all of that at the outset or does it evolve as the build goes on?

On the OLF forum Ed Bond recently posted a nice photo to illustrate that idea of slightly routing out the centre of the heel and leaving a rim which is the actual mating face against the guitar body. It would be a real pain to try to floss the entire heel block to get the right angles but this makes...

Yes, it is a good idea to hollow out the flat face of the heel - the face that contacts the sides at the neck joint - so that you have a small surface area around the edge to floss for the fitting process. But that doesn't fix your 3mm height issue. To fix that I would enlarge the holes in the neck ...

On your specific question of whether it is OK to have an insert for a cutaway section I think definitely yes. Here is one of mine. An essential tip in doing the cutaway is the slot cut into the mould shown by the arrow in this photo. This allows the side that is bent into the cutaway to extend beyon...

Hi Tiana and welcome to ANZLF. Mould building is a rarely discussed topic, so thanks for raising it! Here are a few of mine hanging on the wall. moulds.jpg I throw them together fairly roughly and quickly from cheap and available material such as MDF sheets or plywood. They are definitely not pretty...

That is why I asked where you are located. Someone might be nearby to you and happen to have the book or plans for you to borrow? Well I guess I was referring to myself. I have a copy of the Collins book, and the book by Francois Charle called The Story of Selmer Maccaferri guitars - which is the d...

Another patent-able invention Taffy. Nice one. I spent a while looking at the photos wondering about the functional importance of having two tuners installed while using this jig - but I am guessing that was just a random feature of the instrument modelling the system? Glad to hear that the biblical...

That is why I asked where you are located.
Someone might be nearby to you and happen to have the book or plans for you to borrow?

Hi Major and welcome to ANZLF. You will get lots of help with your project here, and there are a few contributors with quite a bit of experience with Maccaferri style instruments. Have you chosen which of the Maccaferri designs you want to do, and do you have plans yet? They are not too difficult to...

Hi Martin. Share some good repair stories with us too if you like. Cheers, Mark

Hi Johnny. Good on you for jumping in and giving it a go. I understand completely the thought that you can't start by working on any kind of nice timber, but don't go too far in the other direction either. For my first build (an acoustic) I bought a kit (from StewMac, or LMI - I can't remember now) ...

Generally speaking shellac is compatible with virtually any other finish including oils, nitro, poly and other varnishes. It can go under them or on top of them and not cause any problems. The only caveat is that some sprayed finishes (most notably nitro) may react poorly with underlying layers that...