MIMF

A 2" thick chunk of red maple from a tree we cut down a few years ago at our home in SC provided the material for the neck and tail blocks: D015 - Neck and Tail Blocks _r.jpg The neck block is 1-1/2" thick since I am planning for a dovetail joint, and the tail block is a generous 1" t...

Bending the curly maple sides on a hot pipe and clamping into the mold to set. I did a video and uploaded to YouTube: https://youtu.be/NRdh_jVhQUY The video is real time and 36 minutes of your life you will never get back :roll: You will get the idea in the first few minutes and can skip ahead if yo...

The sides are 0.075" thick, 32" long, and taper from 4-1/2" to 3-3/4" before trimming. Each section from the board yielded 4 bookmatched pieces after resawing. From the template I could measure the total length needed, and the apex of each of the bends: D008 - Laying out sides _r...

Plates stickered after SuperSoft 2 treatment:

The donor board is 3/4" thick curly red maple, 8 ft long and 9,5 in wide. D004 - Curly Red Maple Board 8'x9.5 _r.jpg A church friend Mike Martin has some tools we don't have - a large bandsaw for resawing and a 16" drum sander. I broke down the board into 21" sections for front or bac...

{Back to it! Have been posting the build in a FB album, so downloaded the compressed images from there. Maybe there is a better way?} Design created by starting with the LMII dreadnought plan outline, then working out all the interior body details based on inspection of my existing instruments and ...

All my building experience so far has been with archtop guitars and octave mandolins. I have the LMII and Stew-Mac dreadnought plans to refer to, and the Beard plan is for an R body. So, I need a design. Starting with the LMII dreadnought plan, I traced the outline onto white paper and then drew in ...

Started a new build in the new shop in Murphy NC - a squareneck resonator guitar. I have attempted to document all the steps in my process, and humbly present the description and photos below... This is likely way too detailed and tedious for many participants on this forum. I have received many goo...

Thanks, Peter. Good to hear that overall your build has held up up pretty well and you got to enjoy playing it. I play my dobro at church each Wednesday and Sunday, thankful that our little church can regularly meet and worship. Nearly everyone at the church has already had Covid so it's pretty safe...

Hej, Peter! Reviving this thread from 4 years ago since I have started a squareneck resonator build. Curly maple for the dreadnought body and a 5-ply curly maple and walnut square neck that has been my standard. Will have a solid maple brace running from heel to tail bock that also incorporates the ...

Welcome, Will! I like you joined years ago but only recently have returned to building and the MIMF. I also share the blessings from focusing on using my efforts as an expression of music ministry, and through that have supported many wonderful people, whether experienced or just getting started in ...

I'm building a new shop and definitely using LED 4 ft fixtures. They draw less power and no future fussing with replacing ballasts, etc. If you have a choice look for "warm white" rather than "bright white" lamps. The warm or daylight bulbs seem to give a more natural color when ...

Even the round neck resonator is closer to a speaker box than a typical acoustic guitar. The Gold Tone is likely laminated wood body. Probably work work out fine. Let us know Brian!

Brian, seems like you have a path forward. Have fun!

(BTW, my attempt at a graphic on dobro vs guitar was a solid failure

Comparing standard guitar light gage to dobro strings: 0.056 0.045 (D'Addario EJ42)) Dobro: G B up up : : 0.053 0.042 0.032 0.024 0.016 0.012 (D'addario EXP16) Std guitar E A D G B E same same same : Dobro: 0.035 0.026 0.018 down D 0.016 Hope this helps

Brian: I play square neck dobro and have two instruments, a Wechter-Scheerhorn and a custom dreadnought size. Both are 25" scale. The scale length affects the string tension at pitch, so the 25" scale instruments have a lower string tension compared to a standard 25.4" scale for acous...

My GOM plan is essentially a 14.5" wide and 2.5" side depth archtop guitar. I built to a 23.5" scale length. So far I have completed two octave mandolins (8 strings, 4 courses) and one guitar. The guitar uses the 23.5" scale length and a standard 1.680" nut width. Has a gre...

My GOM plan is essentially a 14.5" wide and 2.5" side depth archtop guitar. I built to a 23.5" scale length. So far I have completed two octave mandolins (8 strings, 4 courses) and one guitar. The guitar uses the 23.5" scale length and a standard 1.680" nut width. Has a grea...

Karl, another tip: wrap the outside of the stickered pile with black landscape cloth. It lets air flow through and water vapor escape, and keeps direct sunlight off the wood. Also discourages bugs and birds. Worked great for me with the red maple and some red oak.

Steve: I haven't found feeler gages to be reliable in judging the nut slot depths. The half-a-pencil technique has worked very well for me. The pencil rides on the 1st through 3rd frets and I am careful to not go too near the line when roughing in the slots. I usually go through a set of cheap setup...