Tiger Myrtle 000

[ozwood]

Hi all,

For your Viewing ,

Top is Engleman, Bracing inspired by Trevor Gore .
Back and sides , Head plate , Bindings and Rosette are Tiger Myrtle supplied by Tim Spittal.
Neck is Blackwood .
Fretboard and Bridge are Mulga From Tim.
Kerfing is Huon Pine. ( bends really well).

Neck is fully detachable.

I have handed it around to a few professional muso mates of mine for their opinion on the sound and the verdict was it's loud ,sweet,rich and clean .

It was my first build completed some time ago, with the assistance of Strato Anaganostis at the Australian guitar making school.
and guest Teacher was Justin Montifiore,while Strato was on holiday's, so I had the best of instruction and the benefit of two different approaches. I was so inspired that I set up a work shop at home and am into my third guitar and planning some more .
I find this forum a wonderful resource and thank everyone for there help.

Paul.

[DarwinStrings]

Well done Paul, it looks great. I have had images of bracing like that in my head but never seen it done before, funny how you think you have a original thought and it has already been done. What is the finish on it and what is under that CF tow?

Jim

[ozwood]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your feedback, the finish is just plain old Spraylac by Mirotone Pre cat out of an aerosol,the stuff is fool proof , Cut back between coats then polished micromesh and finished with Maguires plastic polish , it's in a gray bottle , and was intended for polishing plastics , but works a treat for this purpose as well .

The Bracing is laminated Sitka, for the build I'm doing at the Moment, I'm going to try laminating CF poltruded Sheet between the Spruce using epoxy as a glue . just seems to make sense to me , rather than just laying the towe on top, having said that this bracing works well , this thing has the volume of a much larger instrument, and has minimal soundboard belly.

Paul.

[WaddyT]

Beautiful guitar. Fine work there!

[Allen]

That's surely some of the nicest TM that I've seen.

What was the inspiration for the laminated braces?

[ozwood]

Hi Allen,

Thanks, it is nice TM I got lucky , I actually destroyed the first back I was sent so this back was a ring in that worked out well.

The braces are inspired by the bracing that a maker called Trevor Gore uses, he's an amazing engineer, and all of his design's and decisions are made with solid engineering design principals and facts as a base , he's bringing out a book soon if your interested, http://www.goreguitars.com.au , I'm Merely a novice , and this bracing design was being Experimented with by Strato at the Australian Guitar Making School , he asked me If I'd be keen to try , and I was happy to give it a go, the principals behind it made sense to me, I'm Doing a few thing's a little differently on my current build , which may or may not prove to be better , but overall the feedback about the sound has been excellent.

This bracing system has Reduced mass , is really stiff , is easy to replicate, and is transferable to Nylon's , I say Nylons because to suggest using this bracing for a Classical would for some, be a prompt to send me hate mail it's an easy system to do , the only draw back is you need to excersize caution in relation to you bridge pins, I drill 2.5 mm holes were the pins are located so I can make sure that the braces don't end up over the bridge pin holes , I do plan to experiment with a pinless bridge in the future , but one step at a time.

Paul.

[jeffhigh]

I had the pleasure of meeting Paul this morning and trying out this guitar
It's a beauty, great appearance as is obvious and the playability, volume and tone to back it up.
A very responsive guitar to fingerpicking as well as flatpicking
I look forward to trying Paul's future builds.
Jeff

[ozwood]

Thanks Jeff,

I enjoyed the visit and gathered a wealth of knowledge, Great to get some feed back and ideas, I equally enjoyed Looking at your collection , clearly a bad case of GAS ( Guitar Acquisition syndrome) , I Particularly liked the Macro flamenco, A real sweet featherweight.

Thanks again ,

Paul.

[Kim]

Top job Paul,

That really is an outstanding bit of TM.

I also like the bracing, the pattern makes a lot of sense to me but I also would be looking at pultruded strips rather than towe. If you will continue with your investigations into CF, I would suggest doing some deflection testing of your unbraced tops and establishing a datum point if you have not done so already. This will give you some idea of where you are heading from one instrument to the next.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Kim

[ozwood]

Thanks Kim,

I'll Take that advice on board, as I received a Crash coarse on deflection and wood elasticity testing from Jeff today , Not Quite sure I have the engineering skill to replicate his process , But I'm sure I can at least get an idea of how effective the bracing is.
I was thinking that even with the Poltruded sheet between the Spruce I would still need some Towe as well, because the braces taper at the ends , where there is still a requirement for a reasonable amount of strength, as the brace tapers , the laminated sheet also reduces , so a bit of Towe would help . I'll have too build a few too find out I guess .

Paul.

[Tim Mason]

Wow, i love what you did at the butt join, really nice work!

Very nice bit of tree you have there