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Second Falcate Classical Guitar Build Blog:

 


October 20th 2015


I started the finish process. So I should be finished in a few weeks. I thought I would post one change I made to my zpoxy process a couple of instruments ago. When working with rosewood and white purfling lines I mix a small amount of zpoxy up, dilute it with alcohol and seal the bindings and purflings. The stuff drys to tack within an hour or so. At that time I zpoxy the rest of the instrument.



November 1th 2015


I used royal-lac shellac to finish the back and sides and neck and I did a true french polish shellac finish on the top. I have not yet done any sanding or buffing but it looks pretty good now. I am going to let the guitar sit a week to allow the shellac to cure a bit before finishing it.

Before finishing the top I looked for glue on the top with a black light. Yup I had some smears in the center and some along the bindings. You can see the bright spot in the lower bout especially along the edges. This is after I though I had the top clean.



November 4th 2015


I made one of two possible bridges Gore style bridges for this instrument. The first one I made is made out of Brazilian rosewood, the second will be made out of walnut and ebonised. I think the walnut will be a lighter bridge. they both are reinforced with two separated layers of CF fabric. I used a very dark block of BRZ.

In the first set of photos you can see me ready to put the block together. I resawed the bridge blank I had into three strips 2mm, 3mm and 4 mm. These are put together such that the 2 mm is on top and 4 mm is on the bottom. The carbon fiber fabric will be separated by the middle 3 mm slice. As shown in the picture I used west system 105\206 epoxy for the lamination.





While waiting for the epoxy to cure I found some interesting mushrooms in my yard. These might cause a bit of delay. :)

I had a previous walnut layup that I made when I made my last falcate classical guitar. They sort of look a mess until they are trimmed to size.

I marked out the tie holes on the blank and drilled them in the drill press. I attempted to make a nice aluminium jig for the tie holes but had trouble drilling the holes the twist bits I had did not cut it in the aluminium. I did not use the cross vice as a cross vice. I had punched the holes and just moved the vice in place for each hole.

I mounted the blank (actually the second attempt) in my routing jig. In the first attempt I relied only on double stick tape and it did not stick. I cut that spoiled bridge diagonally and made the wedges that you can see in the photo.

I do four passes in this jig. The first pass with a bull nose 1/8" veining bit is to separate the tie and saddle block. This is done to the depth of the wings. I switch to a straight edged 1/8" bit and create 1.5 mm x 1.5 mm rebates on the tie block for bone strips. The last uses the same bit to cut the saddle slot. The Gore\Gilet book describes on additional cut with a 45 degree bevel bit to slope the inside channel toward the saddle. I do this with a chisel. I used a Luthier Friend jig do shape the wings.











Here it is just needing a bit of finish sanding.

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