Harvest Moon Guitars

Harvest Moon Guitars JohnB Falcate 00 Koa\Sitka Guitar project blog:

June 10th 2024

Sorry for the posting delay, I had an issue when web.com bought up mydomain, so I have not been able to read my pictures. Basically I have been getting all of the components ready for the build before I but it all together. Not my normal process, in cooking it would be call mise en place. Here are some pictures. Heel and Neck block. The neck block is designed for a bolt on bolt off neck and a cutaway. It is a two part block, one is an extension that will ultimately routed out for the neck extension. In the past I struggled cutting out the combined block so this time I profiled it separately on the bandsaw glued on the heel block and used the profiled extension as a guide to profile the heel block.

I just cut the heel block to size and use my luthiers friend to profile the edges to about the thickness of bindings. I then clean it up on my belt saw.

June 13th 2024

Top and Back braces I ripped and thicknessed some brace stock and then used a 27.5° to give the back braces a gabled profile

I ripped a bunch of 2.2 mm strips and thicknessed them to 1.7 mm. I use three of these to make the falcate braces. I bend them on an iron and ultimately use epoxy to laminate them together.

I also joined the top and back

June 15th 2024

I finally pulled the trigger on a small CNC machine, a Genmitsu PROVerXL 4030 V2. I had always feared the CAD part of it so I tried the free trial of vcarve and drew out a Gore style bridge and simulated the tool paths.

Using just 2.5D there is some limits in terms of 3D profiles. In this case sloping the block top to bottom. Instead I etch some lines and finish up by hand. To test the process I cut out a bridge in poplar practicing a bit before I carve the rosewood.