Variations on a Macca.

[J.F. Custom]

...I love the rosette segments that Jeremy did and subsequently uses as his avatar so I worked out a variation on this theme (hope you don't mind Jeremy)...

Bit PRESUMPTUOUS to assume I would still be following such an obviously unentertaining ho hum thread isn't it? just because I check it daily...

Of course I don't mind and thanks for the credit, I'm glad you like it. That's whats great about these forums - source of inspiration and expanding your own luthiery vocabulary...
That said, who the hell said it was OK to out-do the original source of inspiration ???
At least give me a fighting chance and wait for my workshop to be finished so I too can play out some of the ideas in my head - I'm quietly going mad.

...guess my engineering experience comes in handy sometimes!

Ahh, that now explains a lot.

I'm interested in your acrylic templates too Nick. I have many - some I've cut on the bandsaw and finish sanded. Others I've had laser cut from my own CAD drawings. How are you doing yours? They do look very neat.

Seriously, the guitar and rosette are looking great. Look forward to more updates... Ahem, err I mean, I'm off to find a more interesting thread elsewhere.

Keep up the great work, I'm enjoying it.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

[kiwigeo]

Speaking of Hot, how good is your Avatar Tim ? & the young lady holding it aint bad either

The "young lady" is a sex doll Tim bought at the sex shop on the way out to Darwin Airport.

[kiwigeo]

[quote="J

I'm interested in your acrylic templates too Nick. I have many - some I've cut on the bandsaw and finish sanded. Others I've had laser cut from my own CAD drawings. How are you doing yours? They do look very neat.

[/quote]

I suspect Nick had his Chem 101 students hard at work hand filing the templates with 1200 grit wet and dry paper in return for a pass in their lab classes.

[J.F. Custom]

I suspect Nick had his Chem 101 students hard at work hand filing the templates with 1200 grit wet and dry paper in return for a pass in their lab classes.

What a brilliant idea!!

Gotta find me some students...

Jeremy.

[Nick]

I suspect Nick had his Chem 101 students hard at work hand filing the templates with 1200 grit wet and dry paper in return for a pass in their lab classes.

I wish! seeing some of the work I've done for PhD students hacked about and 'modified' by them using various 'non-engineering' methods, there's no way 101 students are even watching me make them lest they sneeze at the wrong time!
I didn't take any pickies of making the patterns sorry Allen, I basically roughly cut out the shapes on the bandsaw. The outer purfling one was then my 'master' that the other two (inner purfling & insert shape) were fit to. I drilled the dowel holes when they were in the rough so that from then on they always lined up with each other.
Sorry no magic methods were used to make them I made cardboard templates first which I then transfered onto the paper on the acrylic and filed down to the lines. Years of filing practice during my years as a tool & diemaker! back in the days when things were finished by hand & not roll off a CNC machine finished If nothing else... it taught me patience!
I think if I was to do this style of rosette again I would do a CAD drawing and then get them laser cut, it would save alot of time trial fitting,measuring, filing a little bit,trial fitting ad infinitum.

[sebastiaan56]

Hi Nick,

this is going to be one sweet, sweet instrument. I also appreciate the way you document your progress, eg "complacency is my enemy", this is my biggest learning curve as well,

[Nick]

Rosette finally finshed
just a close up of the veneer 'insert', I ended up usuing Imbuya burl which was a bit of a pig to keep the sharp points at the end on, I'd just be doing a final fitting with either a file or sand paper and ...ping the bldi point would drop off the pleasures of grain that goes all over the place


It was worth it though because the wood has a beautiful dark colour to it and should look good under a few coats of jam.
I added some black purfling to the inside of the soundhole as a border and gave it a gentle rounding.
Here's a shot with the dummy fingerboard in to give an impression of the finished look (minus the edge binding of the fingerboard).


& one without the fingerboard. It has some tiny imperfections that result from doing certain things by hand but I ain't doing another soundboard. As I say, next time (if somebody wants this style rosette) I'll do it with CAD and laser cut my patterns.Mind you, sometimes I wonder if a few imperfections can 'enhance' the hand made aspect of it, I've already had somebody ask me if I got the stick on rosette from a shop


Now I can get on with bracing the sucker WooHoo

[Dennis Leahy]

I got the stick on rosette from a shop

Nick,

Can you please PM me the address of the shop where I can buy those pre-made rosettes?

Dennis

p.s. "Sweet as!"

[Paul B]

That looks awesome. Nice work!

[Nick]

Thanks awefully chaps & Dennis it's good to see your getting a grasp of the Ky-why lingo.
You can try this one in future on your friends ...Tu Meke (Too-Meck-eh) which is the rough translation from Maori (the official 'second' language of Nu Zilund and the so called 'indigenous' people of this land) as "Awesome", "wonderful" in English, they didn't use words like awesome but that is a general statement they used to express the equivalent.

[Allen]

Words escape me Nick.

[Mike Thomas]

Nick, I really like the aesthetics of this design. It has an art deco look which is entirely in keeping with the style and period of the original Maccaferri guitar. And the execution is first rate.

[Kim]

One word Nick, Tu Meke!!

(Or is that two?)

Very inspirational stuff mate, always such a pleasure to see your work.

Cheers

Kim

[kiwigeo]

Well my Jan Akkerman T shirts arrived today...and guess what sort of guitar is featured on same????

[kiwigeo]

Words escape me Nick.

That happens when you wander around in cold weather with backless chaps on.

[Nick]

Words escape me Nick.

That happens when you wander around in cold weather with backless chaps on.

Didn't know you guys got cold weather over there! Is that when it drops below 15 degrees?
Thanks guys for the comments, the whole experiment may be a dismal failure yet as far as the sound & volume of it but at least it might look the part(a bit like Paris Hilton, all fluff and image & no substance )

[Allen]

We were in Darwin a few years ago in June. Heard on the radio that it had dropped to 15 degrees overnight. Coldest night on record apparently. And every electric blanket and space heater had been sold.

You Kiwis just know how cold it can get up here.

[Nick]

We were in Darwin a few years ago in June. Heard on the radio that it had dropped to 15 degrees overnight. Coldest night on record apparently. And every electric blanket and space heater had been sold.

You Kiwis just know how cold it can get up here.

15 Degrees! how do people survive at such Antartic temperatures?
Woke to another -2 Degree morning today and had to give the car windows the water treatment.

[Craig]

Didn't know you guys got cold weather over there! Is that when it drops below 15 degrees?

Minus 5 C. is about normal in the morning here on the Tablelands Northern N.S.W. Nick . Suits me though as I come from Dunedin originally. Brrrrr.
As others have said ,,That rosette is awesome . Fantastic work Nick.

[kiwigeo]

Nick,

Can you please PM me the address of the shop where I can buy those pre-made rosettes?

Dennis

p.s. "Sweet as!"

Chemistry Building, Canterbury University, Ilam Road, Christchurch, new Zealand.

[Nick]

Nick,

Can you please PM me the address of the shop where I can buy those pre-made rosettes?

Dennis

p.s. "Sweet as!"

Chemistry Building, Canterbury University, Ilam Road, Christchurch, new Zealand.

Thanks Martin, I need a salesperson! interested in a position ?

[Nick]

Well just a quick update to progress, probably nothing too interesting in this post just a few pics of the top braced. Again the Maccaferri uses ladder bracing (non-scalloped) in the same 4 brace style as the Selmer so it's really easy to brace these guitars. The braces are thinner in width (7mm as opposed to 9.5mm) & the whole top 'feels' lighter. The first Maccaferris were made as classicals so I guess that's where the lighter bracing came from & was carried over into the steel strings and found to be strong enough. The Selmers used a longer scale length so I guess the bracing had to be beefed up to compensate.
I was surprised by the tap tone of the finished top considering you don't 'tune' the bracing, it really rings a nice fundamental tone without overtones and has really good sustain. I'm hoping (*crosses fingers*) this carries over into the completed axe.
Picture time


The first two braces (Upper tone bar being number 1) have a 12' radius, the other two use a 7' radius. As I intend using a cantilevered fingerboard on this build I did wonder if the UTB needed to be quite so beefy and wasn't sure if I could shave it down, in the end I felt there would still be some loading of the soundboard from the neck/neck block at this point so left it 'as is'


The two little vertical braces in the bridge position are spaced so that the bridge feet bear directly on them, they also have the bend of the pliage shaped into them so they help 'hold the shape' of the top.Here's a blurred picture of said braces


and just a final shot of the bracing around the soundhole.


Next step will be to glue this on and tap tune the inner back.

[Nick]

Ok, things are moving along steadily so here's a few more pics to document progress.
Just one more final shot of the inside before it's lost to the world a couple of coats of sealing shellac colours things up nicely although the nice honey gold colour the maple's taken on hasn't quite come up in the pic.


Top and back plates are glued on using a ring of coarse chip board and a high density foam on the face that sits against the plate. Good thing about using the coarse flooring grade chipboard is that it's remarkably flexable when in a thin ring form, so conforms to the '3D' nature of the top easily.

Top glued on and roughly trimmed to the rims.


Here's also a couple of pictures to illustrate the pliage and shape of one of my tops.I actually overbend the pliage slightly (whilst it is still on a straight plane as described earlier) so that when glued down to the sides it creates a very slight upwards curve toward the pliage line (You may be able to see it in the following pic) from the tailblock rather than a straight line, to my warped way of thinking this also makes the soundboard more receptive as it will be more sprung loaded from the get-go and more 'reactive' & quicker to react to any vibrations from the bridge. May work, it may not? without doing a side by side with another maker's Selmer Maccaferri it's hard to tell if my thinking is any good or not.
From the side:

Then from the end:

Next up was 'tuning' the inner back. I have scraped a recurve similar to what is seen on archtop style instruments. To anybody unfamiliar with this technique (forgive me if you already know!!),basically while you have the guitar sitting upright on a towel (to isolate it from the benchtop), you tap the soundboard at the bridge position while lightly touching the back with your fingertips. Starting at the center you feel the amount the plate vibrates as you tap then, lightly again, drag your fingertips across the back plate toward the rims, comparing the amount of vibration. You scrape in a recurve at the edge until the whole of the back plate vibrates evenly across it's width (normally near the rim is 'dead' and doesn't vibrate at all). With this 'experiment' though I felt that because the inner back will be 'free floating' if the plate was too loose that when playing fast passages some of the notes would get muddy as the plate "over resonated" & merged in with the following notes, I'm aiming for more volume not an unplayable instrument! So my recurve isn't quite as deep as it could be, I tuned it so that it is still vibrating out near the rim but not as much as at the centre.
Hopefully you can see the recurve in the next couple of pics.



Well that's where I'm at so far so now it's onto bracing and fitting the outer back plate.

[J.F. Custom]

Beautiful work Nick.

That's truly some instrument. Very well executed in all aspects.

Really looking forward to your assessment post completion and hope we get some sound/video bytes to boot...

Cheers,

Jeremy.

[Nick]

Well things have been progressing but nothing too ground breaking or stunningly quick! I had to 'rethink' the rear bracing on the outer back because it is still the major structural part of the rear of this beast & also I have limited room with regards to brace height. The originals are 19mm high (3/4" for the Imperialists among us!), mine have to be 11mm (7/16") in order for them to clear the inner back and let it do it's thing unhindered. I decided to incorporate some modern technology & laminated in two Carbon fibre strips in each brace.

First time I've played with this stuff so it was in keeping with the 'experimental' nature of the build. The braces came out damn strong for their physical dimensions, I was quietly happy with them.
The braces are spaced to fall between the 3 braces on the inner back. Next pic is of them glued in and center seam added prior to gluing the back on & 'closing the box up'

I won't add the picture of the back glued on and trimmed up, I think we've seen enough of them to know how that looks!
Next step is cutting the binding channels, I will chuck some pictures up of that when I do it just to show my binding/routing gear seeing as different people use different methods/gear & some of you may be interested.