Making an Acoustic Guitar - Gluing the Sides

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] bailey builds guitars where the golf stream flows his artisans hands shape the wood and the bone fashion from the stars like none of the cameras bailey builds guitars with the wind and the sun [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] hey welcome folks welcome to the workshop for the guitar making channel guitarmaking.co.uk can you just mute the audio carl my name's mark bailey and if you're interested in guitar making then this is the place to be here in the bailey workshop wow something amazing just happened look at that we got 6 000 subscribers and we haven't even done our 5 000 subscriber special will you slow down please folks right for our 10 000 subscriber special i'm going to reveal my third hand third hand reveal i did that on purpose current yeah because i'm over here you see today i'm working over here um yeah when i step back it's okay in it today we're going to be gluing the sides on on this here guitar so just to give you a reminder this is a a big d guitar um style guitar that i'm making for um ricky and rosewood back and sides spruce top mahogany neck and was it a rosewood fretboard those are all made all on previous live streams so this is um some of you might have noticed i'm not very good at counting so i had to change it again it was number seven but this is number eight of a series where we're building this here acoustic guitar so if you want to see how we actually made the front the back and the sides then you can go back and watch the previous live streams what i'm going to do today is bring you up to date to where i am now these sides are actually dry clamped so let's just whip them off and i'll show you what they look like so we've basically got um the individual parts of the guitar we've got our sides our front which is um stuck down to this bench um the back and the neck are stashed somewhere at the moment can't get lay my hands on them but the point is that we make the parts all separately and then we start to assemble them so i've already actually started assembling this as you can see the the heel block and the tail block have already been glued on last time we glued on the last two curved braces these x braces here so today we start to get three dimensions so we're building it up from the base a lot of people ask um do we build guitars inside the mould um personally i don't i prefer the freestanding build method um but by all means if you've got a um a mould for the side i'll show you what i mean some people prefer to build their sides into a mould like this personally i use the sides um as little as possible i use the moulds as little as possible um you don't actually need the moulds to build a guitar that's really what we're all about here at the guitar making academy is not having all the fancy tools but still building um professional quality guitars um it's not what you've got it's what you do with it isn't it so um as you can see i've got my top down here all the cameras have suddenly gone really bright i don't know what happened i thought i'd set him up again this morning never mind so that's what we call the workboard shoe which holds everything down here's my sound board and there's a workboard shim on my workboard underneath so the shim is there to accommodate the curve of the top if you remember the top's actually got a small curve on it so we're going to carefully clamp that down into place as accurately as possible with my workboard shoe so um on the courses i show you how to make all these things workboard workbook shim and the shoe so that you can build your acoustic guitar body on the deck here so i'm just nipping up it's not clamped super tight because these start bending if i um the top will actually bend and affect the position of these if i do it too tight so i'm just doing it nipping it just to stop it from sliding around while i'm fitting the sides and before i actually go ahead and glue them i'm going to bring you up to date with uh with how i got to this point okay so if you remember last time we glued on and i carved the x braces so i've spent quite a lot of time since then working on um working on these sanding them and refining them until they're um until i've got the required tap tune that i was looking for um the black art of tap tuning um so yeah that's a story for another video that is so last time i glued the x braces carved them since then i've glued on these heel block and tail block and i also did some work on the sides as you can see i've cut some notches what you might not be able to see but if i zoom in maybe you can maybe not i've also chopped the brace ends to length as well so if you remember some of these brace ends they don't go right to the edge finger braces and the lower face braces and the upper transverse graft but the x braces and the upper face brace they go right to the edge and so what we have to do is cut out these little notches you see this notch here got a notch on the side and then we cut the sides to length so that it fits just perfectly so i'm going to take you all through that in just a second and then at the end i'm just going to give you a little reminder of how you can get your grubby little hands on locked down lucy so this is the guitar that i made made during the first lockdown and um yeah i'd like to give it away to one of our premium members you need to be a premium member is the short story um but stay to the end we'll tell you a little bit more well i don't know just got gobby little hand smart well i have anyway you get it out of my grubby little answer bubbly squibbly that's all i can say to you bobby scrambling well if you want to find out how to prize it out of my little hands hang about till the end all the links in the description actually so let me catch you up to date then um should we just get right into it carol or should we do some questions first um well it's up to you but there is a couple of questions if we've already got some let's do some questions first sorry i didn't tell my comment so um first of all thanks we've got a real cross section of people in the chat already today um from california where it's warm right across to iran and in between most people are freezing most people have got minus yeah there's i've seen there's a bit of a competition going who's coldest yeah and we've just got newton new york cities on the line as well so anyway lots of people in the chat so good they named it twice the the first question is from matt tauman um and he was asking what do you you uh would you use in for the neck and heel block and i said that we've been using we used some pure wood but i would check with you what that one is yeah it's mahogany so um the the reclaimed pure wood that was talking about is also mahogany um so we used a lot of reclaimed wood um but not all of it's reclaimed this isn't this is just ordinary mahogany um when you make a lot of guitars like me um you end up with a lot of off cuts and we end up using offcuts for things like smaller pieces like these so they're generally off cuts i generally don't have to buy um special wood for this because i use my what's left over from neck blanks and that kind of thing so it's mahogany in this case it doesn't have to be though could also be spruce if you want your guitar to be as super lightweight as possible then you might want to choose spruce for that um or cidrella is another one or any kind of mahogany substitute of course in a factory situation i've seen a lot of plywood yeah in a factory they're usually plywood but if you're building it yourself it's a good idea to use quality materials isn't it and that's one of the advantages of building your own it's what it's all about so mahogany is what i choose for this or if i want to make it really lightweight then i might choose spruce and can i ask you can i ask you another wood question go on i'm typing as well of course you can so uh dave david gibbon hello david and he uh asked a good question he's got um he's got some 400 year old douglas fur and he said if he quarters it yeah would that be okay for bracing do you think well yeah sounds ideal um is it not big enough for tops because that would be nice douglas fir makes lovely tops um preferably you're looking for 18 to 22 grains per inch and quarter sawn so certainly go for it and make sure to take pictures before and after let us know how it goes cheers david okay yeah take pictures go to the forum because it's free to join folks you can become a free member he's a premium man yeah dave is a premium member so he gets access to all the courses as well cheers dave okay another quick question from bagpress he said which direction is the grain running on the neck and how blocks um you've got options there's two options traditionally this would be end grain making um making this and this normal side grain but gluing end grain down to the sound board is not the strongest you know how um if this was end grain glued down to the wood there um end grain doesn't glue as solidly as side grain there so um i've found you get a much stronger joint and it is optional um i'm referring to compiano and natalson book guitar making tools and technology where he just mentioned you can use the grain either way round so traditionally this is end grain end grain glues down to the board but i find you get a much stronger joint if you don't use the end grain on any of the gluing surfaces so this is my end grain that's end grain and this side here is engraved that's just normal straight grain there and there so in my case if i i don't really want to draw it on but uh maybe if i just zoom in a bit you can see it a bit clearer yeah end grain side grain the grain's going across that way if the grain was coming up this way then this would be the end grain and that's what i was talking about you don't get quite such a solid joint when you're gluing it down it's much harder to work on this surface when it's end grain so my preference is to have the end grain here where there's no glue and surfaces and can i can i ask a follow-up um from david butner he said does the heel and tailbone need to be a softer wood or can it be a harder wood well in this case it's morgany which is hardwood spruce is a soft wood so um i suppose technically then it can be either can't it um i'm not 100 sure how it would affect the tone but what i will say on this subject is that i do believe that well when i was making arch top guitars i've made a few archetype guitars now we use mahogany as well and but we have used spruce for the arch tops to make them more um in line with classical instruments so if you look inside a violin or a cello pretty sure the block will be spruce so i think we tend to use mahogany to make it stronger for steel string instruments so a lot of classical instruments obviously they've got strings it doesn't need to be as solid as if you're using metal strings like on an acoustic guitar so um for strength i would go for mahogany um but maybe if i was making a classical we've done a few classical guitars with spruce blocks and um i know a lot of um steel string makers also use spruce as well so my preference is mahogany or a mahogany substitute something similar to mahogany like cinderella or something like that um but yeah morgan is my choice sometimes occasionally you use spruce hopefully that made some kind of sense right you've got one more question there are no laws though so you can do whatever you want like i say factories to save money they'll just use plywood still works so we'll take one more do one more question and then um okay so robin um has asked is the top still oversized before the sides are glued on yes good question um this the the front is deliberately left oversized you ask brilliant questions stuff i would just forget to say so let me see if this is one another one that i'm making you can see the outline there that's where the side goes so when i glue this on actually i don't if i can see that you can see it now yeah can you see that carl um the line yeah yeah so when you glue the box together then the sides are over at the the top and the back actually all overhang and it's a really simple procedure just to run around with a router and trim it off um if your router averse then it's again it's a simple case traditional method is just to do it with a chisel a scraper and finish it with the sandpaper um but yeah glue glue the sides on you'll see in a minute because i'm going to actually do it we glue the sides on and the front will be overhanging there when we glue the back on the back's overhanging and then the easiest quickest thing is just to run around with a router to trim it trim it level of course because of the dome the back will be domed because of that the router never trims it perfectly and you have to be really careful not to route into your next slot if you've got one or the mp's tailgraft slot if you've got one but just routing round with the routers the easiest quickest way to get you 95 there and then we finish it by hand with a scraper and a sander good question and can i just um say that rock and roller at 902 he's he's back in the workshop hey rock and roller few weeks off um anyway welcome back but he said that violins use spruce blocks glueing onto end grain but it's sized with glue before final assembly brilliant thank you for that good comment there you go we don't do many violins do you yeah i'm not that clever i'm just a lowly guitar maker um so let me just bring you up to date then now okay can we just have one more question one more question follow up it's relevant so james james blizzard says um hi james is the same overhanging technique used on an arch top or a hollow body um yes it is if we do it in here so i'm not saying that that's the way everybody makes guitars but it is much easier generally to make things oversized and then trim them down especially as we're going to have the sides in place to act as a guide for the bearing it will take literally two minutes to go around with a router um yeah brilliant brilliant question so let's get on with it then what i'm going to do now is just show you what's happened between the last time you saw it and now okay so i believe if i do this [Laughter] anything could happen now all right we've missed one of the pictures already but here's my um what are you doing i'm trying to find them oh don't i'm doing it from here that is a end piece that's a tail block a tail block and it starts off life as just a square lump of wood and i like to just add some nice shape on on the inside face we're going to round off the corners you could just leave them chamfered like that you look inside most factory guitars and they'll look like that inside but i like to just round them off a bit so um there's um there it is the the top face that's going to be glued down to the soundboard there i'm just checking that it's square and then it can be glued on so obviously we dry clamp first and then glue it and then if you look carefully you'll see the square just making sure that that tailpiece end block is sitting square same on the front glue in the heel block we only need to leave the glue for about 20 minutes in these cases and there's nothing under the sound board there it's just flat on the deck and square making sure we glue them on square so here i'm test fitting the sides and this is where i mark the length of the sides so that i cut them to length and as you can see i've already cut the notches from the curved lining and i'm also marking the end of the x braces there so that i can cut the x braces to length that's me marking the end of the x braces so i've removed a couple of bits of kerf lining and i've got my side all clamped up lined up exactly where it's going to be so that i'm marking there you can just see the pencil mark there if you look and then we can cut them off so there it is all clumped up in place as you can see i haven't cut the side to length yet if you look at the heel block there just below me look at the heel block there you can see the sides extending past it so what i do at this point as well is i mark the center line onto the sample onto the sides from the soundboard so that i can cut the sides to length and there's me cutting the brace ends to length so as you can see they finished just before they hit the side the side's going to butt up tight against them and that is where you saw it this morning so there is my sides dry clamped when i'm gluing i'm going to use more clamps than that um and i'm going to use i'm going to glue both my sides at the same time um you know one thing a lot of people are short of is tools when they're building instruments um you do need a certain amount of tools so um clamps is one of the things i mean who wants to spend money on clumps it's boring not me but you have to well you said that now nobody wants to spend money on clubs let me tell you i would much rather buy some fancy machines or something but you have to have clamps don't you you have to have them um so another of your strap lines is you can never have enough clamps you can never have enough clamps no i'm not saying that i'm excited by them am i clamps are boring but you need them my point is if carol ever lets me get a word out fight now fight right my point is you can get away with only six of these right and you'll see me using more than six because i'm going to glue both my sides at the same time but you could just glue one side at a time and then you only need six clumps so yeah i recommend two small ones two medium and two long wooden clamps and then um you should already have a couple of metal clamps um for the ends you'll see that in a minute so i'll show you how we do it and and then we'll go from there so i've already dry clamped it so i'm not going to dry clamp it again i'm going to go right ahead and start gluing it i've got everything that i need here um yeah by the way here's the the offcuts from the side there look so um after marking them from where you saw me had it clamped up i marked it from the center line and then just cut them i used my bandsaw for that but um and by the way all these little bits that i'm skipping over all the inbetweeny bits are all really important to make sure that your guitars all going to fit together nicely so obviously i'm skipping over them a bit fast on the live stream there's only so much we can cover if you want the full details then you need to go to the guitarmaking.co.uk website and become a premium member and then you get access to all our courses past present and future and um then you can ask me any question you want and you'll also get years to get a discount in the shop and all that kind of thing there's loads of bonuses to becoming a premium member apart from the fact that that's how we're surviving at the moment so you guys who are premium members are keeping us going and yeah stick around to the end and i'll show you how we would like to say a little thank you back to you um especially tv 101 cheers tv one who just signed up for another year um brilliant so uh yeah i brought you up today now i'm going to just go ahead and glue it so i've got everything that i need here and i'll talk you through it as i go so first thing i'm going to do is put glue on the sides here the glue on the sides here and then i'm going to go over to my um sound board i'm going to put glue on the brace ends and i'm going to put glue on the uh heel block and the end block on the anywhere that's a glue in face so carol is going to be on cameras switching because i can't be gluing and switching cheers carol so if you've got any questions leave them in the comments and we'll get to them in a minute this is one of those jobs where you put on a little bit more than normal we put on a little bit more glue than normal because it will give us a little bit longer working time and also um what we're going to do is go around and spread it into a peak in the center i'll show you what i mean so like this i go with my finger and i make it into a peak in the middle that's actually a bit dry still can always add a bit more glue can't we a bit more glue if it's needed so what i'm trying to do is make it into a peak again it gives us a bit long working time any excess glue is going to go down these slots of the kerf lining so that's why we use that's another reason why we use curved lining so number one rule when glue in don't panic take your time don't rush make sure that you've done everything okay so there's one done put that to one side like i said you don't have to glue both at the same time you can just do one if you prefer depends how many clamps you've got and how brave you are i would recommend if you're doing this for the first time you would run through it a few times with no glue involved just to get the hang of it obviously i've done this plenty of times before so fingers crossed touching wood we should be all right i've got a little run there so i'm going to get that off straight away just go around spread that glue try and leave a little peak in the middle so the idea is put on a little bit more of the glue than normal and then it can spread out cover the whole surface and any excess goes down the slots so there we go you can always pinch a bit of glue from elsewhere if you've got a dry bit beautiful so i'm not going to hang around i'm going to go straight ahead and put glue on my heel block tail block we don't want to put so much on that you end up with a big puddle at the bottom so i'm gonna put just enough on a nice thin yellow film is what we're looking for i'm just using a bit of scrap wood as a spreader but you could use an old credit card or even your finger so i'm doing the same on this end although you can't see it and then these these brace ends just need a little dobber glue and that's all my gluing surface is covered now so we can go ahead and fit the sides okay so i'm just going to drop it roughly into place concentrating on the waste at the moment and i'm going to put a piece of wood on top to spread the weight first two clamps go on the waste here so if you just clamp in one side you don't need to put any clamps on this side just put the clamps on the one that you're doing so as you can see it's not it's not a perfect bend but very easily i can very easily just fit that side no effort at all just clip it in place make sure it's up tight against the brace ends same on this end so these are temporary clamps here we're going to replace them with some more sturdier clamps later on make sure it's tight against the brace ends so looking around the edge now looking at the um the pencil line i'm gluing both clamp sides at once so i need to put this clamp on as well basically trying to get as close to the pencil line as possible looks pretty good there we are it's roughly clamped in place now so now we can just add clamps anywhere where we put a clamp we'll put a spreader bar make sure the clamps go over the side so let's whack a few extra clamps on again i'm just checking constantly that it's as close as possible to where we want it to be like a load of clamps on [Applause] i'm gonna put one on each corner here it's not a great clamp up just hold it down and then we clamp the end block and heel block so these are temporary clamps i'm going to replace them now and we're going to use some blocks as well to help spread the weight so this one goes here we'll use um something inside to protect the block whilst i put a good solid clamp on so i'm going to put a metal clamp on here there's one and same at the back scrap wood to protect the heel block the tail block and then another block to help clamp it flat clamp on i'm just going to adjust the block so that it doesn't it's not sitting on the glue at the bottom what can happen is the glue can run down to the bottom of the block come out the bottom and it can glue these blocks if you're not careful there we go beautiful that's it folks that is how we glue the sides on now what i would do is go around make sure all these clamps are tight we don't really need that one but there's no as carol was alluding to earlier this is what i mean when i say you can never have too many clamps so you can never put too many clamps on um but just use what you've got you don't need this many clumps okay so what we've got now is beautiful squeeze out if i just nick this camera i'll show you what we've got in there hopefully you can see just a little bit of squeeze out that's it and they're all butted up against the the brace ends there butted up against the sides um better squeeze out from the side of the blocks it's a bit dark in there sorry um we're working on some new lights to give you some better pictures um but at the moment that's the best we can do just see if i can the light's not working but hopefully you can see the squeeze out all the way around so what i'll do is i'll leave it for 20 minutes or so half an hour and then i'll clean off um the worst of that this kind of job is a job that i would leave these clamps on for at least half a day before i do any more work on it because it's quite a structural um part of the operation obviously we don't want to be working on it um until that glue's proper hard now so i would leave that for half a day give it 20 minutes clean off the worst of the excess glue and then leave it for half a day or as long as possible basically to proper dry before we continue working on it so um one thing i might do at this rate stage is just go around and see if there's anywhere else where it might need any more clamps so it looks pretty good to me i think uh i think yeah i might get another one on there i think what i'll do is put a bit of scrap across the top and another a couple of small clamps because i've got a little gap at the top there so put extra clamps on if you need them it doesn't need massive amount of pressure just to nip it up and um there we go beautiful fantastic of course when you're doing any kind of gluing job like this it's always a good idea to just keep an eye on it for five minutes um just to make sure nothing's moving things can move when you put the clamps on so i'm going to keep sticking around and checking it what we're going to do those the brace ends that i showed you where we cut out the curved lining i'll just show you again so these bits where we've cut out from the kerf line in there what we do is we glue we glue these extra bits of kerf lining down um on top of those to to to reinforce those brace ends but i'll tell you all about that next time so on the next installment i will be fit in the back what about that we're gonna work on getting some more lights and uh hopefully improve the whole setup slowly slowly slowly catchy monkey um so next time i'll be gluing the back on won't that be fun and i'll show you how we rope the back we don't use rope but it's called rope in the back so next wednesday at 1 00 pm we're here every saturday and wednesday live streaming the reason we're doing this is obviously because well i used to run um full-on workshop courses people used to come from all over the world to my tiny little workshop here in the hills of ayrshire because of lockdown we're forced onto the internet so um this is how we're surviving at the moment our premium members are keeping us going so massive thanks to you guys carol's jumping up and down what do you want carol do i look like i'm jumping up and down yeah what do you want you've made that look completely questions you sound like you're winding up a lot i asked you well we better get them done then honestly right anyway well i want to give a special shout out to mrs b power right they're they're in the car they're going somewhere and mr b power as in b power he's he's made a listen to this well done extreme and she's got a question keep your eyes on the road she's got a question for you okay the question is will i ever get my husband back good question thank you for that mrs b pal and or should i just give up like carol and make myself a desk in his workshop honestly lost cause yeah do that he doesn't know what to say to that but isn't it when um when you see her show what can i say to that and before we had digital um online courses obviously the only courses we had here at the workshop and the way i used to frame it was you know like um if you send you know the guys that come here because it is mostly guys i mean women are welcome as well but it's mostly guys and it's i feel like we run a kind of a residential response at least he's told you about it we had one one one of our customers who uh he told his girlfriend he was popping out to get a point of milk on and he admitted this to us on day three of his course so he'd been missing for three days at this point but he was going home later he was going home he lived nothing anyway so that's i mean yeah so what i'm saying we used to offer yeah we feel like we've been the cause of a few breakups haven't we i think we might have caused a few divorces well i think you have to be careful about libel well but we've also brought people together so there we are yeah and that's it if if uh you know you've got good and if they if they support what you do and obviously we can tell that you obviously support each other really maybe the doors are locked in the car and she can't get out you know so i hope everything's well done there and the other thing is that no you're not having him back anyway no but what she's saying is that hopefully she'll get a good guitar out of it which she should so and and um hopefully you know in in the last few years we've actually you know we've been able to run workshop courses and so our residential courses have been like respite for the the damaged guitar builder that's what we offer here where they can you know mix with it's therapy isn't it fellow sufferers let's face it it's basically therapy talk about routers without people glazing over anyway that was one question you need to stop it because it's playing the audio what's happening when you've cocked it up on you you want to get that ready for when we're finished i'm in trouble then just when you thought you'd got the hang of it right so carl's over there on the master controls honestly you should see at the tiny amount of space i've got to be in mrs b try pressing the buttons less randomly currently in the workshop make sure you have a bigger bench than i've got do you know i used to have my office in the workshop but he actually one day he used my desk to make patterns with i came in and my desk had gone my computer was on the floor and he'd actually used my destination priority isn't it let's not have that fight so um anyway i needed something some serious questions serious questions serious questions then right so uh steve adams said is it easy to remove the bits of curve to make room for braces um nothing's ever easy that's the honest answer yeah if you're getting into guitar making thinking it's going to be easy then you're welcome to the school of hard knocks but it is what's the word incredibly rewarding building guitars especially when you see them you know starting to take shape like this the way we remove those blocks is basically with your little micro saw and a chisel so it's dead easy really nothing's ever easy there's plenty of scope for error but what i do on the course is i show you every single part of the job so on the live streams we'd be here till christmas if i was showing you every single part of it so i'm trying to do as much as i can live and then keep you up to speed by taking photographs and maybe some video in between so i can get you up to speed with where i am but on the on the actual courses if you go to guitarmaking.co.uk sign up as a premium member then you get access to all our courses past present and future build your own acoustic or electric guitar and you literally start with a blank piece of paper and draw out your dream guitar depending on your requirements so that's all taken care of on the course we go through it all and then there's the module section the module where we go through all the preparation joining the blanks making the blanks and any patterns that you might need that kind of thing and then it goes on to actually building the guitar step by step with every single part of the operation shown so for an electric guitar it's about between 50 and 60 jobs for acoustic guitar it's a few more but i believe anybody can do it and what i've done is broken it down into lots of basically simple jobs that should take about 10 or 20 minutes so fit in the sides is one of those jobs fit in the sides involves removing the blocks for the kerf lining and trimming the brace ends and cutting the sides to length and that is all covered step by step on the course so yeah steve we just recently did a um a zoom meeting with steve and he's going to be building his own acoustic so hopefully he'll give us some updates on that and keep us informed on how he's going and steve's also going to be doing um steve made the the intros that carl just played by accident sorry sorry about that steve yeah um we'll get the end of it one day he's asked a follow-up question so he said um do the sides need pressure uh to push against the end of the cross braces no i just need to be touching the end of the cross braces um also thanks steve for pointing out that um yeah after an update recently all the lesson orders got mixed up so the acoustic course it's all laid out in in specific order so that you can follow it through and that's one of the most important things about the website is that you can follow it through step by step so somehow um all the lessons got out of order after a recent update sometimes these things happen with the internet it's crazy and it computers they've got a mind of their own i like like women don't listen i'm gonna have to work with you because this is not that kind of channel right you can you're gonna be a big and he won't be here it'll be me just me and then you know she's got a mind of her own right okay so actually i was saying that it was actually all my fault because do you remember it was my idea to run courses and you did you didn't know if anybody would want to come to a community workshop well i didn't believe i didn't think that people would trust me enough to think that it was possible and to be honest when i first started doing it i wasn't even 100 sure whether it was possible but the first two people that did my course it turned out when they arrived at the workshop which was a community workshop by the way we just yeah we showed it last week if you're interested some of my old benches that i've worked on so the first two people that came on my course to the community workshop that we'd hired um it turned out they both went to the same school and they both made the same teapot stand which wobbled so um that was their the extent of their diy at that point um and they were both convinced that they were rubbish at diy and so were their family it was an insane thing to me it was amazing that they signed themselves up on a course to make a guitar but um but fair play to him lawrence and nigel our first two but martin to me the thing that that thing that i took away from that was that the problem was not them it was the patterns it was it was what they were using they obviously because they had the same it had the same flaw so obviously whatever they were using and the teacher and they're the same teacher so they met you talking about the teapot stand now yeah yeah i doubt if they had a pattern for a teapot stand whatever okay they just so um i don't know i have to look into how to make a teapot stand now no well i i thought right and maybe i'm wrong but i thought that just that showed to me that they didn't have a very good teacher and that whatever patterns they had we'll see wrong and so that's and also part of it i think we are going to have a fight misty cops anyway so here we go proper question now um ross says why doesn't camping affect the curve on the soundboard won't it flatten now it was answered in the chat but i think it's yeah so you must have missed the bit at the start where um where i uh demonstrated the workboard shim let me grab another one because that one's trapped underneath the guitar now here's one that i would use if i was making a guitar with a cutaway so here's a workboard shim so it's basically the same shape as the guitar with a half inch support that goes under the curve lining to support the side there and it's basically an eighth of an inch thick so it accommodates the curve of the top so when we clamping it down it's not clamping flat is clamping with enough space to accommodate that that curve of the top brilliant question shame you were near earlier my cabinet said he wants to sign up for the teapot course where does he sign up for that go away somewhere else all right and you have another question now i think this was oh sebastian sebastian percival he's asked is there a technical advantage to curf lining like why why good question um a lot of classical instruments have solid banding for their lining the curved by the way a curve means a saw slot kerf just these are kerfs the width of the kerf is what we look for when we're buying a fret slot for instance if you're buying a fret saw you need it to cut the right curve depending on your frets um by the way if you bought your fret saw from the same place your body frets then they're gonna fit um don't worry about it but this is curved lining so it's a line in with a load of curse cut into it the reason is it makes it flexible so with solid banding that you often find on a classical instrument it needs to be heat bent whereas this stuff doesn't so that's the advantage of using curved lining um i mentioned i did talk a little bit about this on the last live stream where i was making the sides um you also get reverse curved lining where the slots are on the inside just looks a bit neater but it doesn't make any difference back in the day the old classical instrument makers would often just use individual blocks so instead of a line in they would just use individual blocks and they don't even need to go all the way around so they used to just glue blocks in where they think they needed it not all the way around but of course that was before the advent of steel strings and with steel stringed instrument we generally build everything a bit more stronger so that's curved lining and there's a follow-up question on that jerry frizzy is watching over in california i don't know if his dog got him up today but he's he's there anyway and it's very early over there and he says are the curves angled to match the top curve no that i'm guessing you mean this angle here let me see if i can get it on the other camera this one's got a close-up lens on it so it should it should focus better on this so that's just that's just square obviously there's an angle on this side it's basically about a quarter of an inch by three quarters of an inch around that size and then angled and there's different shapes sometimes they're straight and just rounded off at the bottom i'll show you the bit of reverse curved if i can find it here's a piece of reverse curved lining so from inside it looks like solid banding and this this is just rounded off on the inside but the side that glues down to the fretboard is just it's just square actually if you if you look back to the previous live stream where i'm making the sides what we do is we bend the sides then we glue on the kerf line in and the kerf lining sticks up from the sides slightly and then we basically sand it flat till it's down level with the sides so you've got a flat surface for gluing down i'll see what i can show you to demonstrate that okay so i don't i've got one here without curve lining on here's your side without curved lining so when we're gluing the when we're gluing the lining on as you'll see if you go back and watch that other live stream we glue the lining on so that it sticks up slightly proud like that just a thumbnail above the side and then when the glue is dry then we basically rub it onto a sanding board so i've got i've got my sanding board and you basically just rub your side [Music] so this it doesn't need to be curved um the curve of the top is so subtle um you know it's it's hardly anything it's only about an eighth of an inch over i can't remember exactly i think it's an eighth of an inch over 16 inches something like that it's only a little curve and so the the curved line in there it doesn't need to be you don't need to do anything clever just sand it flush flat um it's a bit different on the back so now our sides are glued on and my next job is take all these clamps off obviously later on this afternoon i will take all these clumps off and then what i will do is i will shape the back so at the moment those sides are just the same thickness all the way around um in this case for a big for a big dreadnought like this it's a 120 mil okay all the way around but in the end um in the end the back is going to be domed so what we do is we glue it together like this and then my next job is to put some shape into the back there shape the back once i've rough shaped the back then i'm going to glue on the second second lot of kerf lining so the second lot of curved lining gets glued on around the back and again we glue it on so that it just sticks up slightly above the top and then we then we finish shaping the back and at the same time we knock off that last bit of curved lining so that when we glue the back on we get a perfect fit i'll show you all that next time if you tune in on wednesday it is wednesday i never know what day it is i never knew what day it was at the best of time but these days it's ridiculous i know it's either wednesday or saturday um so ross says hey russ will you be covering small-bodied uh guitars you mean small-bodied acoustics oh yes you asked a question well-remembered so i had a question from um one of our members about um making smaller bodied acoustics so i want to show you what i do if i'm making a smaller body um i need to find my pattern are you going to be doing this so the question was no the question was how do you make a smaller body can you just um the question was can you just scale this down um the thing is it would get shorter and scaling it down doesn't really work here's what i do i'm going to grab a piece of paper so hopefully you can see it a bit clearer well i'm going to draw out can you see a pencil carol i'm going to draw out the normal shape of my guitar which is um 16 inches across so this is quite a large guitar that looks crapped in it let me just fix that now when you're if you guys sign up on the course you'll see um there is a whole load of patterns for you available just to download that you can just copy but i also show you how to make design your own shape um so you're gonna have to start somewhere i recommend that you start by drawing the guitar that i've showed you how to draw first so there's there's that one hopefully you can can they see that color it's it's quite white so right there i'm gonna just see if i can make it a bit darker there we go so um if i now draw that on this side use a square to square that down i'm so glad you asked that russ because i had forgotten about that yeah unfortunately so i got all the arsenic stopped robin yeah sorry nice one robin i promised him yesterday that i'd say i'd cover it and then i forgot i would recommend that you start by designing a normal guitar okay and then to make it smaller i suppose i should draw on the um i want to draw on the um the rosette as well because it will it will help her explain what i'm trying to get out right maybe you're thinking about like scanning this into a computer or something and then just reducing the size by 10 percent or something like that but it'll reduce the size of the sound hole by 10 as well and that's that's not right that's not what you want smaller guitar can have a smaller sound hole but it's not necessarily related exactly to the size of the guitar what i would do is look up other guitars that are similar to what i'm making and find out what size those sound holes are but if i want to make this shape smaller now so here's my shape i want to make it smaller if you make it too much smaller you end up with not enough material what i like to do is let's say i want to make it an inch smaller i would mark half an inch here and then i would leave this side the same size but move this in until you get this kind of effect so i can do the same i've got i've got me mark there half inch if i'm out that on this side helps if my center line goes to the edge then i can mirror that on the other side so what i tend to do is leave the top hole in the same size and just take the back corn down so then you've got that as you can see the the top hole has come down a little bit but mostly you're affecting the the lower barrel having said that you can make guitars any shape you want um if you're following through the the design course that i've laid out then what you do first is you lay out your fretboard and your scale length and then you draw your shape from there so you'll have your bridge in position as well that's one thing to consider you obviously don't want your bridge too close to your sound all too close to the back but yeah to cut a long story short if i want to make a small guitar that's what i do if you took half an inch off both sides then again you've got another shape but basically that's what i do and i tend to keep this the same size and only affect that and when i'm changing the size of it having said that i've got lots of different shapes i'll maybe just show you a selection i've got hundreds of different um and i saw one in the book on the history of guitars that i really liked the shape of and i've copied it with them like a grid you know like a squared paper yeah and then we scaled it up from that didn't we because i liked the it was the it's not so much the size it was the wet the shape of the up about [Music] i know so yes that's a good idea as well if there's a if you can find a shape elsewhere that you like then you can draw a grid on it scale it up and that's something that we've done from time to time um yeah lots of different shapes all different sorts of shapes and sizes so big variations it's absolutely it never ceases to amaze me how you can just change one line a tiny little bit and it looks completely different um i mean if you think about it most guitars most acoustic if you picture an acoustic guitar pretty much everybody's picturing the same shape you know they're all very very similar shapes but of course if you're building it yourself then that's one of the joys of it isn't it and you can make it big or as small as you want um most people seem to prefer the sound of the larger boxes rather than a smaller box so that's something you might want to consider um and what i'll say finally there's a bazooky there what i'll say um my final word on the subject would be follow the course through and then you'll know that all your the bridge is in the right place and everything's in the right place and it shows you how to lay out your bracing design and the bracing layout for any shape guitar any anything you're making basically so you should be able to follow the design course through and by the end of it you'll have a working drawing of your acoustic guitar as big or as small as you like um and then if you take a picture of it load it up on the forum then we can all have a look at it and check it over for you and i've got two more i've got a comment and a question that's what we're here for so um the comment so that's just the selection of the side of the shapes that we do here um said then he keeps missing the stream so um he'll catch up but he's got a question how do you make how do you make sure that the neck angle on the um on acoustic is right do you wedge it do you you know how do you can do neck angle on an acoustic guitar it's vital to get the strings arriving at the right height for the bridge um there's basically there's a section on the course which tells you how to do it um we use two methods in here we use a mortise and tenon which is bolted on which is actually the easiest type it's a really beautiful style of neck joint and you'll have to go and check out the course to find out how that's done from the outside you can't tell that there's any bolts in it at all and i'll show you the bolts that we use um because people don't like the sound of a bolt on neck but quite a lot of guitars are bolted on nowadays depends how you do it what we use is these barrel nuts we use these barrel nuts here so this part goes in the neck and this part goes in through the body and bolts the neck on and so that's that's how we do it and then this allows you to set the neck angle you see and it's really simple it's a really simple case of removing material from the shoulders of the neck to get the neck angle um i do go through all that on the course so there's the mortise and tenon bolt-on version and then there's the dovetail version so i have actually filmed a whole section on how to do a dovetail but it's not edited that was on the hard drive that got destroyed by the power cuts so um i don't actually know if it's salvageable but um it doesn't matter anyway because in maybe just a couple of weeks we're going to be fitting the neck to this one here so um once the back's on then we've got then we've got a solid box then um you know with a little bit of tidying up there's not going to be any binding on this guitar so um as soon as i've got the back on and cleaned it all up then it's ready to have the neck attached neck is already part made temporarily lost it so the neck is actually ready to be attached so i reckon in two weeks time or around then a week or two basically um i'll be doing the the neck joint on on this guitar here and and this one's going to be a dovetail so i'll show you how we do that um but to cut to try and explain it quickly now is we basically use jigs um we machine a dovetail hole or a mortise into the body first so we make the dovetail hole first the mortise dovetail mortise in the body and then we do the dovetail into the neck and i've got a jig which holds the neck at us at an angle and we can machine the dovetail test it check the angle and then we can adjust trial and error basically until it fits at the perfect angle i'll be doing all that um yeah i'll probably just do it live on a live stream in maybe uh a week or two so if you want to know how that's done make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss it right there's two two last things because i'm um i'm guessing we're gonna finish aren't we finish there um so uh firstly can you thank can we thank sebastian um he's sent me some money for her hi sebastian thank you massive thanks for watching so who should be sending you money for because it was sebastian was one of the people that checked that worked out the videos were in the wrong way oh yes thanks for that sebastian yeah it's all fixed now all fixed now thank you very much for letting us know we were saying i can't wait to have a plate of real guinness um and uh we i think that's all of the questions oh we've got a new person in the chat kai collins he says it's the best online guitar building course in the world oh that's fantastic thank you um in the known universe and lots of lots of comments like that like um boo was saying earlier that um he you know he he didn't know that he'd be you you'd said that you didn't know whether you would be able to do it you know whether you'd be able to teach people yeah and he said he didn't know whether he'd be able to do it from videos but he has which of course we were talking about that earlier when we first started running courses physically in the workshop but of course we went through it all again um five years ago when i started filming my courses so we tried to film because i've been doing it so long now i pretty much know by heart building guitars um pretty much by heart so what we did was we um we filmed my process which basically comes from working in a guitar factory that's where i grew up in a guitar factory and then we all got kicked out and i had to settle my own so um what what uh it was always a dream of mine to be able to somehow project myself into your garage and then teach you how to build guitars and without having to leave mine in your bed was the original but the future's caught up with us now yeah you wanted to do it from my bed from your bed it gets a bit dusty in the bed when you do it in bed um another question um eddie cameron says have you seen the pictures of his the cracks no i've not seen those yet it doesn't sound good i don't like the sound of that question about that yes so we'll check that after this afternoon come back here um so the only oh um well ross is asking about the wii documentary um right you'll have to email me ross um and i'm talking about your commentary and we'll maybe we should try maybe we should make the five thousand and the sixth means the vimeo one the one the one where uh well i don't know what you mean there's several things in there um i don't know but so let's um but we'll maybe maybe we will have to make that question yeah there's only one documentary isn't that correct okay and there's so the last comment is that um mrs b power um along with all the other long-suffering partners of obsessed woodworkers fishermen and guitar builders right and anyway she she actually bought a premium membership for mr b power and what a lovely thing and i remember well actually and we've had a lot of cards over the years from partners of people that have come thanking us because um it's made them happy and um the thing that we didn't anticipate when we started doing this was that we didn't anticipate how happy doing things with your hands and making things would make people and so that's that's to me that's it isn't it that's the the best thing that that we can do thank happiness he's looking at me weirdly but i was just listening to your beautiful speech yeah i'm inspired now carol yeah you know it's it's a it's a beautiful thing here's a warning though shrink it down too much you've got a ukulele make sure you're not accidentally making a ukulele that's the smallest thing that we make look this is um sopranino ukulele oh the is that the teeth [Applause] sopranino ukulele 11 inch scale length isn't that isn't there a little film of preston reed who is one of the biggest men yeah playing the teeny tiniest uk here's another warning if you think that you'll make a ukulele i know what i'll do i'll make a ukulele because that'll be easy no ukuleles are harder than guitars if you ask me because they're so tiny everything's so tiny and fiddly ukuleles are harder than guitars um so uh it's actually easier to start with guitars and then move on to ukuleles but your opinion might vary there was one more thing i wanted to say so um how to get locked down lucy out of my grubby little hands [Laughter] so this is the guitar that we made on the first lockdown as i said earlier um what we'd like to do is dust it off restring it with your favorite gauge of strings and then send it to you i can only do that if you're a premium member so you need to go to guitarmaking.com sign up as a premium member um and then you get basically the longer you sign up for the more entries you get in the prize draw so if you sign up on a monthly basis you get one entry all our premium members basically will get one name in the hat for the prize draw um if you signed up for a year then you're gonna get how many carol four go and look at the rules on there the longer you sign up for the more entries you get so um massive thanks to everyone who's signed up for a year um silent for two years well three years but the beauty of it is that we're not we're not getting nothing for nothing we're not getting something for nothing so um obviously it costs money to become a premium member but then obviously we're giving something back to you that's how it works you support us and we support you and everybody's happy nobody starves and we all get along nicely so happy happy happy yeah so if you want if you want to get your hands on this the link is actually down there in the description to go read all the rules in full because obviously we don't want to get in trouble we're not trying to rip anybody off or break any rules or anything like that so we're just trying to be safe stay within the rules and that's what you've got to do go and read the rules and also see obviously when we started lockdown mark wanted to do some demos and the easiest thing was to make a guitar it was it was actually it was the chat it was the people watching mark that asked for you know whether they could get their hands on yeah so people wanted to support us so we thought about an auction or we thought about a raffle but you can't do certain things on youtube because of legalities and so i just wanted to give it away to a premium member but you guys wanted you guys wanted to support us so that's why we've done it this way so you guys who do want to support us can just become a premium member and then you are supporting us but you're also getting something back that's what it's that's what it's for and well done carol for coming up with that and actually i'm just thinking um i've had a couple of messages from people about what that what they would do if they if they are drawn so i think it'd be quite interesting to hear from you if um if you are a premium member and you are hoping to get locked down lucy some people have said they want their tickets yeah so some people they want to support us but they don't actually want to win the guitar they don't want the guitar so um we'll come up with a plan for that if if you want to support us but you don't want the guitar then just just let us know what you want us to do with it well and what i was trying to say was that also if you are if you are a premium member and you you're hoping you do win it and i've had a couple of people saying what they will what they're going to do with it so i'd be really interested to hear from you um email me or message message us uh to let me know what you what you are what your plans for it are because i've had some interesting things already anyway and we're going to do the drawing carol it's the last stream of february so you've got until the end of february all you need to do is be a premium member so just sign up for a month if you want cool all right then so having said all that let's have a last look at the the um the big guitar turning into a ukulele there and the sides all nicely glued on beautiful so this afternoon i'll probably take the clamps off this and carry on shape in the back and glue in the kerf lining on so that i can bring you up to speed on wednesday where i will be gluing on the back with a bit of luck touching wood join us on wednesday and we'll be in the back so meanwhile if you're at home in your workshop tinkering away remember the most important thing is to check twice and cut once see you in the community it's free you

Channel: Guitar Making

Views: 807

Keywords: guitar making, build your own guitar, build your own, DIY Guitar, guitar making courses, online courses, How to build a guitar, guitar making live, guitar making livestream, guitar building kits, guitar making acoustic, guitar making at home, guitar making tools, guitar building, make an acoustic guitar at home, Glue the SIDES, gluing the sides, how to glue acoustic guitar sides, acoustic guitar sides thickness, bending acoustic guitar sides, cutting acoustic guitar sides

Id: nZ9_K-ilFTk

Length: 91min 10sec (5470 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021