Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Well, if that bridge fails it won’t be for lack of clamps.

Nice video Nigel. I always love seeing an expert doing a task to notice the little points of difference to my ham-fisted work. Let me see if I understand your process. Please correct me where wrong: 1. You are doing this at the stage when the guitar is prepped for finish, but not yet sprayed. 2. I n...

Great tip! I have a few old stethoscopes in a drawer and have sometimes used them to track down problems around the house (but, so far, not in guitars). The dowel trick sounds really clever. I presume you place it against the mastoid bone, just behind the ear?

He was a sensational "outside the box" thinker and innovator. I remember some fantastic contributions that he made here on important ideas like adjustable neck designs and flying buttress internal bracing. The bio at Fretboard Journal makes you realize the varied roles he had in luthiery and the mus...

Great work Jim. Looks fantastic. Do you have any photos of the V-joint of the headstock in progress? The end result looks great.

It looks like you are at the exciting stage! Tell us more - what is the neck like and how is it attached? What is the soundboard made of? Some pictures inside the bowl please!

Yep, good point Trevor. The approach that I described is OK for a X-brace or similar design where you have some wriggle room for the bridge placement in order to get the saddle to locate where it needs to be. But I forgot that doesn’t work for a falcate design where you need to place the bridge acco...

“A question to the brains trust, to rout the saddle slot now, or wait till it's been glued on? I can see merit in both ways....... not sure which way I'll go.” I find it easier to rout the slot now, rather than try to work with the router on the top of the assembled guitar. But I know some folks do ...

Hi Steve Looks like great progress, after a long break. One of the really good things about instrument building is that the project can just sit and wait until you have the time to get back to it. My projects certainly tend to be like that. The herringbone and bindings look really good. If you are s...

Lovely instrument Allen.
I really love huon pine when I have used it in various woodworking projects. Lovely colour, nice to work, smells interesting. But I have never tried it in instruments. What are your thoughts of it as a choice for soundboards, and do you have any tips for working with it?

That is a fantastic collection, and really stunning presentation. Did you build the Red Special too? And which one gets played the most?

Yes, the black smudge that gets everywhere. Part of the solution is to keep sandpaper away from the ebony. Use a scraper on it, and then leave it alone. Maybe also seal it with a wipe of shelac while you work on the sensitive pale timbers. I have used ebony bindings and felt your pain, as well as ex...

Nigel - did you build that jig or is it a bought one?

I bet there are big smiles under the masks. Fantastic stuff!

Yep, I endorse what Graham and Richard said. There is actually no need for the heel, very good reasons to eliminate it, and a number of good options to attach the neck in another way. Here is one I made following Graham’s plan, with a hollow neck block (a bouzouki style body, but you could do the sa...

That looks completely awesome - and exhausting. The quality of work that I can see there is fantastic, and it must be really inspiring for the five of them to be there working together (as well as for you, Steve). How is the humidity - down the road from you the RH in my workshop is 88% today and th...

Peter, the usual reason that pictures won’t load is that the file size is too big. You can’t upload the pictures straight from your phone or camera at 2mb per photo. There is a separate thread pinned near the top of the index home page which walks you throu how to post pictures. Give it a go - we wo...

How much instrument building do you plan to do? Is this just a weekend hobby, building one or two per year, or are you going to start a business and be doing it 40 hours per week? I ask because the issue of RH control is very important, but only at certain stages of the building process (when bracin...

Runout is not thought to have bad effects on sound quality of instruments. If you book match a two piece soundboard with runout you get a different appearance of the colour of the timber under finish in each half. C95B3E5B-2AD1-4445-863E-BC866C8384C8.jpeg This is a cosmetic problem rather than a str...

Well, Trevor is making adjustable necks now too. I am hoping that he will show us what he has been up to in the third edition of the books - if he just gets his finger out and writes it (I mean, how hard can it be?) Greg - I did see that video a while back, thanks for reminding me. It is a take on t...

I am planning two new builds and want to try adjustable necks. One or both will be carved archtops, which is also a new venture for me. I have been reading as much as I can about adjustable neck designs and rediscovered the fantastic forum discussion from 2008 - an absolute epic at 15 pages and >350...

Great job. Two completions at once is a cause for celebration, and I bet the new owners are thrilled

Thanks for the heads-up Rod. I am in the market for some and I am actually on my way from Sydney to Melbourne right now. Once I unpack the chrissy presents for my kids and grandkids I will have quite a bit of spare room in the car for the trip home. Geez I hope they are open.......

Peter, you have built two guitars that you are happy with so you are obviously doing it well. But if you make the next one deliberately a bit lighter you might find it could be even better; especially if it is a small body. Kerfed linings or solid linings both work just fine. Solid linings are stiff...

Top thickness is a debatable thing. Factories like Martin or Taylor make guitars to fixed dimensional specifications, and make a fairly good guitar most of the time. For a small body guitar top (steel string) an industry standard would be something like 2.5mm. But when you build your own instrument ...