MIMF

Here's a shot of the tailpiece on the 'Winter' archtop. You can see the top of the ball on it's post, and catch a glimpse of the ebony inlay reinforcing the hole in the top. The tailpiece is Macassar ebony, as is all the dark wood on this one. The black outside of the pearl purfling on the tailpiece...

I may have to take a couple of new ones: the old ones are buried deep.

I did something like that on my 'Autumn' archtop. I used a 1/2" ebony post, with a piece of brass tube epoxied onto it, and that ran in a piece of stainless tube set into the tail block. The over sized top end of the ebony rod is shaped as a ball. It goes through a hole in the tailpiece which is for...

The discoloration from the spalting is obvious in the end grain shot. Maple is only a little more resistant to this than birch, of which Frost said: "Two good storms and a rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can build". Spalting is caused by fungus, of which there are a number of sorts. On...

How accurate do you need this to be? How many do you need to make? Start by drilling a 1/4" hole across the grain of a piece of something hard, like maple, of an appropriate size. Then drill a 3/4" hole along the grain that intersects the 1/4" hole in the right place. Cut down to the top of the 1/4"...

I know some folks who would love that wood; it's highly figured and spalted. It would make some nice turnings, or jewel boxes, and, of course, any number of sound hole rings. I would not even try to make a guitar out of it. It's really too bad that it was not processed right away when it was cut. Th...

I've used 2 mm on mine, and thinner in the cutaway areas.

I make the high point of the arch at the bridge location on the top. As I may have mentioned I only make a pattern for the top, since, in the way I do it, the back is lower. I'm using the 'curtate cycloid' method of laying out the cross arches. Once you have determined the lengthwise arch along the ...

The lip is there to support the router when I make the rabbet for the purfling and binding. It's easy enough to carve it down to fair into the recurve once the binding is on, and I don't think it adds so much stiffness around the edge that it messes up the plate tuning noticeably.

I have a few photos of that stage on the most recent archtop: I hope these are not too big. Here is the layout for the pattern I use to transfer the contour lines to the plates. Since I generally make the back arch lower than the top I only make a 'top' pattern. The manila pattern on the top is one ...

Making the contour maps is mostly a drafting problem. You start with the outline, and lay out the lengthwise and crosswise arches on it. Start from the low point of the arch as being at some reasonable level above the bottom of the plate. Measure up from the base line of each arch to where the heigh...

I've been using a Wagner Safety Planer in the drill press for the outside of the plates. I use the lengthwise and crosswise arch templates (or make up your own) to develop a set of contour maps at 2 mm intervals. These are marked out on the wood, starting from the top, and the DPP used to hog off ma...

Barry Daniels wrote: "I have been here for over 20 years and have been trying really hard to be helpful all this time (especially to newbies). I feel like I have paid my dues, so to speak." I've been here about as long. Back when, iirc, you were not even allowed to mention a commercial web site, eve...

Brazilian rosewood is pretty unstable, too, but that doesn't stop us.

"I bet ol' Antonio was a real grumpus."

Assuming you mean Tony Strad; by all accounts he was a workaholic who never took his shop apron off.

Well,now we know where your 'main air' and 'main top' resonances are....

The 'falcate' bracing should give larger vibrating areas for the lower 'signature' resonances, much like an archtop. I've only seen a few of these, and never made one myself, but it's interesting.

If there's a hardwood place nearby you might be able to get a wide board of poplar or birch for a back. If you have a bandsaw you can re-saw a 6/4 board 8" or 10" wide and get a book match. These, and especially the poplar, would be fairly easy to carve, and can actually make a nice instrument if th...

"... to enhance the long dipole movements." The problem is that bridge rocking of that sort is, at best, unimportant on an arch top. There are two string 'signals' that can drive the top through that sort of bridge rocking. The main one is a product of the twice-per-cycle tension change of the strin...

Some folks say that the wax tends to make the pad stick more. With some of the less refined types of shellac, particularly seedlac, the wax particles seem to be larger and easier to filter out. I find with the 'teabag method' particularly useful there. you tie up the shellac that you are going to di...

Brian Evans wrote: " I find that the lighter the bridge, the better it seems to transfer energy. " I would say that the lighter the bridge the less it loads the top, so it's easier for the top to move. Added mass on the top cuts down on the output more in the treble than the bass, and that might ten...