MIMF

I'm hopping to tap my favorite brain trust. For giggles I was thinking of making myself a 335 style semi-hollow bodied guitar with a full center block. Because I happen to have and use a CNC machine, I was thinking of making the center block so that it already has the interior contour of the plates,...

I don’t know about Long Beach, but Cerritos and Palomar both have excellent woodworking programs. The skills you learn in two years would take you a decade to learn as an apprentice. Palomar even has instrument building as a part of its program. As for learning guitar building from working in a guit...

Hmmm. Don’t tell anyone one, but it seems like every guitar I have made has been experimental with slight differences. I’m hoping for a guitar with INTENTIONAL differences next.

Straight cheap webcam mic.

I have made a half dozen or so, and am currently working on another for a customer. My approach is different than Daniel's. Here is me playing it as a demo for a prospective customer. I'm no Pat Matheney, of course:

https://youtu.be/0wo3xpoIOoM

With a drill press you can turn some nice wooden tuning knobs. Start with brass threaded inserts and then use a cap screw as a mandrel in your drill press chuck. The inserts get pressed or threaded into wood blocks to become the knobs. That is just about the coolest thing I've ever heard. Is there ...

My arch top builds are all “acoustic”, even some nylon string. But you are right, there is precious little market for that. For 95% of all arch top buyers (which is already a tiny number) the arch top guitar is a Cadillac of bling ELECTRIC guitar. There is good reason for that. Most acoustic guitar ...

A couple of years ago I was asked to build an 8 fret archtop (fanned frets, no less!). I simply refused. It seemed like a project that was way more trouble than it could possibly be good. You are definitely more creative, talented, and courageous than me! Nice job.

Beautiful guitar. But I have to disagree with the binding. I feel it is too busy and fights with the stripes in the top wood.

I suspect the disks themselves are fairly standard. But I find that the wiring and protective backing you get from K&K worth the money. That said, I've started using JJB for half the price and can detect no difference. One caveat, JJB uses some pretty mediocre Chinese end pin jacks. On my next o...

Chasing the ever lighter arch top carve is what lead me to using CF for my soundboards. Your specs are about where I began to have tops fail. But, of course, CF doesn't sound like wood. I personally like it, but it is not the same. I have never taken a FFT snapshot of the guitars and tops. Maybe I s...

Yep, I use the tool the same way. Actually made my own tool using a counterbore bit and a 1:4” aluminum rod. Much deeper cut than you would expect, but if you go slowly it works fine.

I use carbon fiber in my guitars, although they are acoustic instruments not solid body electrics. It would never occur to me to mill a block. First, the largest solid block of carbon fiber I’ve ever seen is a 3/4” pultruded rod. I can’t even imagine a solid block large enough to mill into a neck —o...

I make my own double stick tape by running two strips of masking tape on my work bench and two on the work piece that mate when the piece is placed on the board. Run a line of CA on one set of tape strips and hit the other with accelerant. You can place the piece down and it will hold against planni...

If you want a deep, glossy, flawless finish you will want to do some kind of pore fill and some kind of high gloss finish like nitro, shellac, or polyurethane. Generally, for high gloss you want to spray a finish and then buff/rub it out. You can get high gloss from French Polishing, but that is a s...

As some may have gleaned in my posts, I am an attorney who works with small to medium size businesses like you describe. Mostly that means helping the owners get out of hot water or minimize costly mistakes. One thing caught my eye in your post. I know many people like to throw the dice with the IRS...

I am surprised that a store would make more on a factory guitar than a consignment guitar. It seems unlikely they would ever sell any of your guitars if that were true. Why would they, unless your guitars don't compete with any factory guitars they carry? Not doubting you, just find it an odd situat...

I tell the students at the guitar program at Palomar College the same thing:

Build a $6,000 guitar. If you can't justify $6,000 for your guitar, keep working at it. You cannot compete with $1,000 guitars from China.

Thanks to all. The answer seems to be to dye the raw wood, not tint the finish. A shame, as I’ve had only mediocre results with dyeing the wood. I’ve never tried spraying shellac, although I assume it would effectively seal a sprayed tint. I’ll experiment, and in the meantime this next one on my ben...

Is it possible to do a burst AND French Polish a guitar? I tried (on scrap, of course) by first bodying up with shellac and then spraying the die in just alcohol. It made a runny mess. Then I tried wiping on the die, again a mess. Finally I sprayed the die in very diluted shellac. The pattern was fi...