New Martin Guitar Factory - City Music Martin Guitar Factory Tour Part 2

you we're nearing the top grading and handling area and we're looking at tops and there's things that we can't see with the naked eye on the outside so we're going to use a process that DS going over here handling the top means that we're shining light through the top he's been with us for about thirteen years she's been doing the handling for a while if she finds anything in this piece of wood that's not acceptable which you can use a pattern to manipulate where the top is going to lie and if the pattern won't eliminate that area we can also use the top for something else we might use it over in the road setting area to set up the machines or we'll use it later on for Center strips so this is a good top she'll make some determinations as to what size it is and also start to assign a shop order number that will help with production we're now at brace blue see the X brace is going on over the little blue wheel she'll apply them to the top you come the other half of the x-rays and then we'll work in the other pieces of bracing slowly get those on there the dish that the top is in right now is heat it up to about a hundred degrees 110 degrees Fahrenheit and that will help with glue dry along with the bladder of this material that you see on the top when she pulls that lid over it's going to come down over the bracing and all the air is going to be removed and that will help the bracing to sit there and dry under the heat so very flexible material if the camera can catch that you can see the bracing on this top which is in the press right now so once that's done in about six to seven minutes top-up them up you'll take the pulley brace top out of there and put it on a rack to dry so now we're in bray shaping and this is standard shaving that happens for all models a little bit later we'll be looking at custom shaping as well right now she's trimming off some of the excess pieces of the X brace want to keep everything in the dimension of the rim that we'll see later so those pieces fit together properly once she has a couple of those pieces trimmed off then we'll get into the shaping with the chisel is very carefully but quickly done by hands it's a very very sharp chisel that each operator is responsible for and she's going to whittle those pieces down to being thin as thin or even thinner than paper all while doing this very carefully to make sure that she doesn't touch the top and remove any wood from yourself the idea here is that we're getting the the bracing as thin as possible towards the outer edge of the guitar and that will help facilitate the entire vibration of the top now she'll start to plane some of the sides of the bracing nice detail that just round off the edges and once she's complete with this process she'll come back in with sandpaper and sand everything smoothly we're here at the laser profiling machines as you can see here I have some side material turn this a little bit you can see a dark edge on the inside this entire piece has been cut out by laser very effective and efficient way to cut out wood material go in or on to a platinum go into the laser where it gets cut come back out and this will happen very quickly this excess wood will be used by someone they might garnet if I tweeze it for inlay and we even have landscapers and other people this material later on we're now here at the side bending process and Ray has been with us for 14 years and he's doing a demonstration of bending so this is over a hot iron that's heated up to about 420 degrees Fahrenheit during hand bending every side needs to go on to a form to make sure that he's getting the the proper shape he's also incorporated a little bit of water to help with the process so the heat in the water creates steam that will break down the cell structure and allow the wood to bend more easily see some of these irons are in different shapes so depending on the part of the body that's being shaped at the moment it's switch irons you'll also get a peek at the North Street Factory where you'll see some of the old irons these were just replaced about a year ago very very careful and slow process it takes approximately or up to about 20 minutes per side to do and the hand bending is effective because ray can not only feel but he can see and hear what's going on with the wood so if anything were to start cracking he can slow the process down and add some more water in it we're here in the inlay department and we're with Mary whose government company for nine years she's been doing inlay for almost a year now and we can see her slowly moving this material around the rosette this is a guitar that's going to have a pearl ring so the centerpiece that we see is simply an insert that would be removed later on this one looks like it's working in there pretty well this is also what we're looking at this top this is a torrefied tie let me look a little bit darker than and the rest of the tops this area up here is going to be covered by the fingerboard so there's no need for her to mitre that area but the material moves all the way around it's it's a little bit high from the top and she'll wipe most of that glue off but all the excess material and all the blue will be sanded off later in the finishing processes hi we're here at mark guitars pearl inlay department and we're looking at an example of an abalone pearl shell here and also an example of a d45 in some areas where pearl get inserted into previously when this guitar was found they had inserted a filler strip that will make a channel for the Pearl to be inserted into so all of these little pieces of pearl coming from the shell and a lot of what we're using today as we does we talked about wood and some of the difficulty in procuring wood we have similar concerns with pearl shell as well especially the abalone it's very rare and to help alleviate that we use something called a blam so we're often laminating a piece of abalone on to mother-of-pearl and using less of a pearl shell so let's take a step over here see some of this pearl inlay in action so we can see the channel has been removed it has a little piece of string that's going in there and that he'll start to color match and grain match each of the pearl pieces make some cuts and then insert some glue watch that happen right now this is a great example to see inlay done on this is a D 45 so this is a guitar that has purl on the top the back besides the end piece the rosette the neck joint and then also up on the neck and headstock as well this is a considerable amount of work just to just to complete one guitar earlier we looked at the handling process which reveals things in the wood that might not be acceptable for the top of the Martin guitar this is an example of what happens to some of those tops they can be placed in a laser you see here and we'll cut these pieces cross grain and also embossed the mark logo with nazareth PA blow it and each of these pieces it's going to get inlaid into the back of the guitar as a center strip so each one will get turned in one of these pieces here and this laser is also cutting out Center strips but I want to point out this block the lasers are also used for embossing the logo and the serial number into the front blocks you come visit us for a tour we'll give you one of these laser embossed sound hole cutouts at the end of the tour the inside of your Martin guitar has a little tiny embossed logo on the bridge plate and all of these are just little details to dress up the inside of the guitar in a nice way that is not easy for the average New Year Institute so these are all things that help protect our brand image so we're here in the ribboning area with vanessa and vanessa has only been with us for about a month but she's doing a great job and we anticipate her being here for a long time she just applied a little bead of blue to the side of this lining at the back of the lining and she's going to start to manipulate this around the body this ribbon lining is made out of cedar which helped for lightness flexibility and of course we're using some of our most sophisticated technology here the clothespin we probably have 100,000 clothespins here in the factory but they're all very good ones it's very important than they they have the right amount of spring in them start to work that ribbon all the way around the side here at every inch or so with a clothespin the reason we use these is they're they're light and flexible enough and they're not going to damage the wood the cedar is very soft this is Indian rosewood but mahogany would be very soft as well towards the end there should put a little bit of a stronger clamp on the end to make sure that that was tightly and she has a couple more steps to do to clean that up make sure there wasn't too much glue squeezing out and then she'll start to work on the entire top surface as well now we're here in the top and back assembly area Mike is working on the top he's routing out areas of the ribbon lining so that the bracing can sit right into those areas and lock the pipe lock your mouth tightly together with the body so we'll watch him trim those out now he's going to quit which the body over to the back that will start the drive bidding process now he's going to start drive hitting the back for parallel back raises those should drop right into those areas that have been cut out if it's not fitting exactly the way he wants they'll make some modifications get inspected from the inside to take a look and also makes a pencil parts where you Racing looks like it's fitting pretty well and making marks right now on the center strip to be able to trip that off of me looks pretty good we'll go through the same exact process for the top and sharing that all of these rates has fall into their appropriate areas then he's going to glue the top back onto the rim assembly and set it in one of the presses so you see behind us is dry that press has heated up to about 110 degrees Fahrenheit and the black bag that you see at the top is going to fill up with air and that will compress the body together well so now we're here with Perseids who's been here for 10 years and she's going to raise the back of the guitar this is a process where we cut around the edge of the body very tricky process to make sure holding the body on there perfectly straight otherwise combining will go in at an angle to ensure that the binding is done properly so over here we have some samples of the binding that's going to go on this style of instrument running around that channel and make sure you did everything smoothly and then we'll pass it on to the binder now we're here at the binding Department with Emily Emily been here for 21 years and you can see she's working the binding around the phrase channel starting to put on a little bit of blue she'll work the binding on to the body and then taper off with a special masking tape there you go you get about a 16-inch section and then she'll start to tape that off and finish up the binding around the cutaway now if the binding material or the binding itself is giving her any trouble in the cutaway area or keeping the waist right now but on the other side you can wrap it up with additional material to help hold it on there when a piece of that Emily's going to show us the rap so this material this is the way we used to bind or used to bind the guitars when Emily first started she was doing it this way there's about a hundred and fifty feet of this bond wrap that she would wrap around the bodies in a very particular manner but she'll still use this again as needed to help with a cutaway area or possibly if she's installing wood binding as part of the finishing process stained and different sunburst packages need to be applied Randy's back here prepping a body to get stained and if we look over to the right we can see some cherry stain sunburst guitars over here as well so all of the colors in the Sun verse our hands grade back here in the room behind Randy then up here in this front section we have a number of inspections and little touch-up areas going on come up here in film Bill's working on the edge of a fingerboard found a little bit of something on there maybe some stain got into the fingerboard material he's just going to clean that up and get it right back to the right color before it goes back in and gets more spray on it we're now in pre-finish standing and we're with John who's been with us for about 13 years sanding the body using different grits of sandpaper he has it on a stanchion which gives him the ability to move the body around but all day now the other piece is going to do here is the sound hole needs to be doubled so this area that has been cut out with a saw now needs to be rounded off when you get to that point you'll take a piece of sandpaper in his hand a cup it inside the body it's been the body around on the stanchion with a boater and that'll stand this down hole into that special we're now moving on in the pre finishing process and part of that process too is to apply an oil-based filler Kurt's back they're applying some of that filler to a East Indian rosewood body right now as you can see it's a pretty dirty process and makes a little bit of a mess and gets all over the guitar so now what we're going to do is we're going to come out here and clean off each individual piece of binding take a look over here at this model we're starting to scrape the fill material off of the car off of the binding and bring it back to its original color it's all very carefully done by hand have a little blade and a sharpening stone and just using her four fingers thumb and a whole lot of skill now we're fully into the spring and finishing process sanding boots over here bringing the finish down and making sure that it's nice and smooth before it goes on to the next process we look over here to my left we have a number of guitars that have been through that sanding process we can also see that there's a little bit of finish on there so these guitars have been sprayed with nitrocellulose lacquer and are now being sanded down as part of that process so what happens is for a little bit of spray on there and then we shed down and more spray on it'll dry in between that process and we're building up the finish over the pores of the wood so as we look at these enough so much on these bodies for when that finish is shiny you can actually see the pores skipping through I'm going to build that finish up over the pours sand it back down and continually go through that process so we get on the outs this entire process for free finished sanding movie complete finish stages take about 21 days that's a significant amount of time and a lot of that is drying or sitting time but it's really important to make sure that the nitrocellulose which we firmly believe in as a as a finish for tone is going to sit on there properly as part of that process we'll take a look over here to where the finish drives because we're in an environment out here that is about 72 degrees Fahrenheit and forty-five percent humidity it's not the best environment for the finished and Ryan for a short period of time the guitars will go into this chamber which is heated up and also a little bit drier than the temperatures out here so in here it's closer to 100 degrees and the humidity drops to about 27% or so and that's a great environment for the finish to dry very evenly we're now in the robotic buffing area you can see a body that's been brought to the robot using the suction cups it'll now bring it over to this buffing wheel this was 21 years ago this is a very very difficult process that was very time-consuming and also very hard on the hands and wrists so to automate this process a little bit was a huge help and efficiency and productivity and allowed us to actually hire more people so once the cars were coming through here more quickly we were able to add more people in shipping and sales and all the operations that we'll see after this so the the robot is programmed for each body style and also the finished packaging of this guitar is only getting me the top-quality it'll do that bring it over to the next wheel which is a finer polish and then it'll put it back on the tray and pick up the next body I want to talk to you a little bit about the neck assembly and the truss rod we can see here a breakdown of what a neck look like with our older one way adjustable Rutan truss rod now this truss rod used to extend pretty far out from the neck and in fact if we look at this body down here you would have been able to see the end of that truss rod right inside the number one brace coming across the body the new to a truss rod terminates at the end of the neck so let's translate that into what it looks like on the body this rod is going to stop at about this point right here so it's much farther back from the sound hole and much harder to see and we still get calls from customers every day asking where the truss rod is it's in there it's just a little bit farther back it requires a longer wrench to access the other piece I want to show you is the difference between a traditional fingerboard and bread slot and the new pocketed fret slot so if we take a look at this piece over here this was cut using a machine but similar to the old-style and coming finger boards where fret saw would go right through the entire fingerboard and what you'd see on the end is the entire tang of the fret one way to alleviate that is to use binding binding can add a lot of expense to an instrument so what we've started doing very recently is pocketing the fret slots so we have a machine with a tiny little router bit that comes in and grates a fret slot that doesn't make it all the way to the edge of the fingerboard so all you feel on the outside is wood and you're not feeling the exposed front wire on the outside all right so we're now in the free finish area for next and these are going through a very similar process of what we saw in the custom shop this step coming off the CNC machine is honed in a little bit closer but Glenn's still has to come in and do a lot of work to with the shape and the overall appearance of the neck so right now he's honing in some of those points around the fingerboard neck transition and he's been with us for about four years doing this and hopefully many other things to come we're now at the next pre-fitting area and also where we're going to trim the heel and add the heel cap so what they're going to do in this area it's all of these the next are a little bit oversized and we want to make sure they're going to fit properly so they'll get the neck into the body and then they're going to be cutting off this area and adding the heel cap to make sure that it lines up with the with the binding so this is the traditional dovetail joint this is not something that was invented here at Martin but the idea of using it on an acoustic guitar was relatively new and something that CF wanted to incorporate into building of his instruments guitars before this time we're all built as one piece and has something called the Spanish block on the inside where the sides were built into the neck CF wanted the ability to work on the neck and the body separately and that's where he incorporated a very familiar woodworking joint that he had learned from his father and Mac and Jeremy we're now in the final assembly area and one of the first things that happens here is that the the next get cleaned off this is an example of the neck that's been cleaned all the tape has been removed and he's now coming back in with stain just to even out some of the pores of the wood and also a little bit of oil and this will really highlight the fingerboard so once we get to the point where this is all clean then we'll install the tuning machines also in this area now the neck and body for the instruments that are simple dovetail are going to move over to this area so traditional dovetail that we saw earlier is everything from the D 18 and above the simple dovetail is everything from the 15 series through the PA series and you can see the simple dovetail here the compound cuts and I'll show you how it draws into the body so this would be the neck portion this would be the body portion and these two pieces lock in together like that and we come up here and take a look at this machine so this machine here which is proprietary to market are is profiling the neck and then cutting the body to match and what we end up with is Thanks take a look at one of these bodies here not only does it cut the neck joint to match the neck itself but it cuts into the side and also cuts into the top so the fingerboard and the neck are all going to drop into the body and fit very tightly we're now in the customer repair area and we're with Sue has been with us for 29 years we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment but she's working on a guitar that looks I could have the neck cold and is getting a brand new bridge so she's getting a brand new bridge so as part of the putting all those things back together she needs to make sure that the neck is refit the way that it was originally and maybe even better and then she'll put a brand new bridge on there want to make sure that that's the correct height so that you can get the saddle and strings on there appropriately so the the really cool thing I wanted to mention about sue is that and this applies to the whole factory and family here at Martin guitar it's that Chris Martin is our sixth generation or the sixth generation of his family who has run the company but there are a lot of other families that are working here and some of those families have been here for a long time sometimes we have overlapping of generations so multiple generations working at the same time Sue's story is is cool because it's very well documented and if we look at this photo over here on the corner of prevention Sue's grandfather and at that time he was 21 years old and if we look closely at the photograph we can see part of north street take from prior so they're in the extension to the old factory over there the other interesting thing about the photo is that we mainly see ogle le bodies in his photos during that time very very compression in the US it was more difficult for people to buy guitars but people the popularity of the ukulele had grown and they were also a little bit more affordable so we were building at one point about 14,000 Google ellie's and only about 600 guitars you you

Channel: CityMusic Sg

Views: 634,100

Rating: 4.7790518 out of 5

Keywords: C. F. Martin & Company (Business Operation), Acoustic Guitar (Musical Instrument), Martin Guitar Factory Tour, Martin Guitar Factory

Id: U8XiARYirro

Length: 29min 29sec (1769 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2015