Another busy week working through an order. Today I will be reducing the thickness of a western red cedar set and brazilian rosewood back set. I do this to clean up the top and back and look at the grain lines which helps when you go to joint them. By the end of today these will be glued together. This afternoon I will be thicknessing the brazilian rosewood sides to 2.2mm. For my traditional guitars I build them very light. My lattice braced guitars sides are over 3mm thick when finished. The sides on this traditional guitar will finish up a little under 2mm which will be great. This brazilian rosewood is a beautiful black set. Will attach some pics soon. One side of the guitar will be bent this evening.
Tomorrow will involve bending the other side of the guitar, making an end block, cutting kerfing and cutting the outline of the soundboard and back of the guitar.
Thursday morning will involve cutting the channel for the rosette with the afternoon spent building up the rosette and glueing it in.
Friday will be cleaning up the rosette and thicknessing the top and cutting up the bracing for top and the back of the guitar. The afternoon will be spent glueing up the bracing for the top which will be a standard 7 fan strut.
Being the sole instrument repairer in a 150km radius of the place I do quite a few repairs. Most of the repairs are for new bridges for violins and cellos (or should that be celli), reglueing seams that have come apart due to the humidity issues around this area. The usual refretting for guitars and basses , bridge repairs and refining the action on guitars.
Rehairing a bow is a standard repair for my shop, this morning I have rehaired a violin bow and a double bass bow. The double bass bow would use two and half times the hair of a violin. I do the bow rehairs generally while the glue is drying for the guitars.
I have been binding a double top guitar over the last couple of days. I have seen a video on youtube where the guy binds a guitar with rope in under 10 minutes. It takes me the better part of 2 days to do it and another full day to clean it up, scrape them flush and have the guitar ready for the next task which is preparing, shaping, slotting and glueing on the fingerboard. I am in no rush, years ago I built guitars very quickly but I now work at a steady speed and produce guitars which are far more precise and aesthetically better. It takes time to get a good sound out of a guitar and takes a really long time to finish a guitar and have it look like a concert instrument should.
I use tiger myrtle for the bindings on my guitars, I have used jarrah as well. I had a whole heap of jarrah fence palings that I sliced up for binding. Ebony as a binding material is also used and is what I am working on for this double top at the moment. This is going to be one nice looking guitar when it is finished and it should really sing.
The orders are coming in, two traditionals and a lattice all in the last week. I have 1 spot left in my build schedule for this year if you want a hand made guitar by Christmas.
It has a been a busy time in the workshop in the last two weeks. The Smallman style lattice frames are finished, balsa will be cut, sanded and routed this week for the current lattice build. The balsa lattice is a very important structure in my Smallman style instruments. The balsa I use is of medium density that is both strong and light. Carbon fibre is epoxied to the sides of the lattice which sits under the bridge area, the lattice is then glued together. Once this is done I sand the lattice to a 25 foot radius and then apply carbon fibre to it. This is not a pretty process, the epoxy stinks (thank goodness for my protective mask that saves my lungs) and sticks to everything but it is the best product for glueing the carbon fibre to the balsa as once it all dries it is incredibly light and strong. The lattice is then resanded so it is has a perfect bonding surface to the soundboard which are glued together using a 25 foot radius dish in my vacuum press which applies an even pressure over the lattice. By putting a 25 foot radius to the soundboard you are adding a little strength which helps counteract some of the forces around the bridge area. If none of this made any sense, it doesnt matter as it’s all hidden beneath the soundboard to keep that very traditional look of a classical guitar.
I build one main guitar at a time and generally while I am waiting for the glue to dry for one process I will work on constructing the next part of that guitar and french polishing the preceeding guitar. Each guitar I make takes over 140 hours and this is usually spread over a two month period. Finishing a guitar with French polish takes me about a month with daily french polishing sessions taking about 15-30 minutes each.
My contact details are email: info@lodgeguitars.com or phone +61 2 6931 6950
One of my favourite pieces to play. This was recorded on one of my handmade traditional classical guitars with western red cedar top and indian rosewood back and sides. This guitar is my research guitar, I use it to carry out experiments. Have a listen to the youtube video, please forgive the errors, the technique (was trying to keep a quiet and efficient right hand, the ‘i’ finger is just is too busy) and the bung notes. The advantage of being a player as well as a builder/luthier is that you get to hear and feel the differences in the guitar and you really understand the importance of a great set up.
After recording this I took the bridge off and replaced it with a bridge of padauk which weighed in at 12.5 grams. The ebony bridge that was on this guitar weighed in at over 30 grams. By reducing the weight of the bridge the guitar is now a little louder, trebles are not as strong but the overall sound is a little fuller. The padauk bridge is one that I use on all my lattice guitars as it works very well when you have a very lightweight soundboard.
I then took off the padauk bridge and replaced it with an Indian Rosewood bridge. Indian Rosewood as a bridge material is fine and from my research a number of the great makers would use rosewood and stain it black. It’s lighter than ebony and weighs in at around 20 grams and it still holds a lot of the trebles and gives a nice even response.
Have been on a trip to Sydney and Canberra for a couple of days this week to find some timber for the guitars.
Visited Gerard Gilet and looked through some of the timber and picked out a couple of pieces that should do the trick for some headplates and a couple of ebony fingerboards. In the past I have sourced my ebony boards and headplates from madinter in Spain, the quality has been great but the postage to Wagga has been so high that it would almost be cheaper to fly to spain and buy them and put them in a suitcase and take them back with me.
Visited Gladesville guitar factory which has some very nice classical guitars. Had a good chat with Rob about my guitars and will bring my next two non commisioned guitars up to Sydney - a double top and traditional. Living in Wagga is a long way from anywhere, so to have my guitars in a capital city where peole can play them would be great. Over the next few months I will be looking at other places in Australia and internationally as well to help distribute my guitars.
As I mentioned on my web site I am chasing that great sound produced by Julian Bream with a guitar that has the best aspects of Hauser and Romanillos guitars.
Have spent the last couple of days cutting, routing, shaping and glueing up the plywood structure for my lattice brace guitars. One sheet of top quality plywood (100% solid, no knots) will make 12 frames for 12 guitars on which the soundboard and sides will be glued too. The off cuts go into the support bars that run from the bottom block to the waist to stop any movement or compression in the frame. Cutting and routing 12 support structures in two days is a lot of work. The support structures now need the adjustable neck support and the upper block glued in and the neck cavity routed in. By the end of the week the support structures and bars should all be completed with carbon fibre glued on to strengthen them even further. The final part will be gluing in the inner veneer around the soundhole part of the structure, this completely hides the fact that you have any ply in the guitar at all. Why do I use ply? Take a look at my lattice bracing video on YouTube for an explanation.
I try and get this done in a week, 12 frames in 5 days. It’s a messy job, saw dust everywhere but this lot of frames will see me through to this time next year. All my lattice guitars are built using the same size frame and hence the guitar bodies are all an identical size. This makes a big difference as you get to know an understand how the guitar body works and sounds. Consistency and quality is a massive part of being a quality luthier and by making the same size body I can better manipulate the sound the guitar produces as you have the same set of variables you are dealing with everytime you build.
Went for a drive down to Melbourne to take a look at the Melbourne Guitar Festival. http://www.melbourneguitarmakersfestival.com
Did the drive up and back in a day, left home about 5:00am, nice little 1000km round trip and then played a 4 hour gig with the band till 2.00am. Big Day!
I really wanted to go to the exhibition to have a look at the guitars and meet up with a few of the Luthiers. 95% steel string with only a couple of classicals on show. Will try and get my act together next year and exhibit my classical guitars at this show to even up the balance.
Uke’s are obviously on the way back as a few exhibitors had these displayed. Played one of the acoustics from Chris Melville and it felt great and sounded really nice too, his level of finish and detail is top quality.
Played a spruce top lattice from Gerard Gilet which was very nice, quality build and first class workmanship from a guy who has been doing this for over 30 years. Sachar Amos had a classical on display too and this had a great neck and a quality set up, lovely french polish finish.
In Wagga you do seem miles away and its nice to go and meet up with a few luthiers face to face and shoot the breeze.
Met David Churchill who has also been building acoutics for over 30 years and he had two lovely guitars on show with cedar tops that were incrdibly light in colour. Great sounding instruments.
Thought I would add a clip on YouTube for my acoutics as an example. The guitar is tiger myrtle a beautiful timber from Tasmania. German Spruce top with a tassie oak neck and ebony fingerboard. Tiger Myrtle headplate with gotoh tuners. Great guitar for $4000.
