Hello from Shutesbury MA

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Stephen Bannasch
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2019 7:54 pm
Location: Shutesbury, Massachusetts

Hello from Shutesbury MA

Post by Stephen Bannasch »

Have been having fun learning to build guitars from my friend John Fabel. A small group of us built small steel string guitars based off the Martin 1918 GAL plans. Started building a guitar for my daughter and quickly realized I needed to build one for me too and keep a bit ahead to make more mistakes on mine.

Mine ended up being much more experimental. Almost all the wood came from my town, used White Pine for the top, spalted Beech from the back and sides, Rock Maple for the neck, Beech for the fretboard, Hop Hornbeam for the bindings, and a Norway MNaple veneer on the head.

My daughters has a top of Sitka Spruce and back and sides with Spalted Norway Maple.
04-tops.jpg
We started the build process with trees. And there has been much building of tools and even making tools to make tools.

Experimented with heating the top wood and the White Pine top was baked for 270 minutes in a convection oven with a large tray of water at 200 degrees. The density didn't change but the longitudinal stiffness increased almost 25%.

I also added a system to add different side mass weights to the White Pine guitar based off work described in Gores book.

More about the guitars here: https://learnmaketeachshare.org/instrum ... itars.html

This process took over four years and after a year I felt a great need to complete an instrument quickly so over two weeks I made up designed and built a hybrid guitar/mandolin/dulcimer that I call a Dinalin. It has a push-down bridge and is tuned to an open D chord ( D A D F# ).
dinalin-body.jpg
More about the Dinalin: https://learnmaketeachshare.org/instrum ... nalin.html

Recent new projects have been repair and improvement on a friends 1985 Martin HD-28 (EVO Gold frets, fixed a crack and large scratches from a dogs claws, re-glued the binding).

There was a strange puzzle, the actual taper in the HD-28 bridge pins holes is very slight -- less than the normal tapers of 5 or 3 degrees. I made some pins with wood from a Rose bush (very hard and dense with super tiny pores) that fit well. These replaced the original pins it came with -- which made no sense for the guitar, their tapers didn't match and they were slotted. The bridge is designed for solid pins.

Here's what the new pins look like. They're actually quite light, only 3.1 grams total. I like how they came out and the tool for removing them works well!
bridge-pins-small.jpg
Another friend asked me to build him a Baritone Ukulele. Am deciding whether to make something more traditional or design one more like a larger Dinalin.
Allyson Brown
Posts: 114
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2023 2:08 am

Re: Hello from Shutesbury MA

Post by Allyson Brown »

Stephen Bannasch wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:44 am Have been having fun learning to build guitars from my friend John Fabel. A small group of us built small steel string guitars based off the Martin 1918 GAL plans. Started building a guitar for my daughter and quickly realized I needed to build one for me too and keep a bit ahead to make more mistakes on mine.

Mine ended up being much more experimental. Almost all the wood came from my town, used White Pine for the top, spalted Beech from the back and sides, Rock Maple for the neck, Beech for the fretboard, Hop Hornbeam for the bindings, and a Norway MNaple veneer on the head.

My daughters has a top of Sitka Spruce and back and sides with Spalted Norway Maple.

04-tops.jpg

We started the build process with trees. And there has been much building of tools and even making tools to make tools.

Experimented with heating the top wood and the White Pine top was baked for 270 minutes in a convection oven with a large tray of water at 200 degrees. The density didn't change but the longitudinal stiffness increased almost 25%.

I also added a system to add different side mass weights to the White Pine guitar based off work described in Gores book.

More about the guitars here: https://learnmaketeachshare.org/instrum ... itars.html

This process took over four years and after a year I felt a great need to complete an instrument quickly so over two weeks I made up designed and built a hybrid guitar/mandolin/dulcimer that I call a Dinalin. It has a push-down bridge and is tuned to an open D chord ( D A D F# ).

dinalin-body.jpg

More about the Dinalin: https://learnmaketeachshare.org/instrum ... nalin.html

Recent new projects have been repair and improvement on a friends 1985 Martin HD-28 (EVO Gold frets, fixed a crack and large scratches from a dogs claws, re-glued the binding).

There was a strange puzzle, the actual taper in the HD-28 bridge pins holes is very slight -- less than the normal tapers of 5 or 3 degrees. I made some pins with wood from a Rose bush (very hard and dense with super tiny pores) that fit well. These replaced the original pins it came with -- which made no sense for the guitar, their tapers didn't match and they were slotted. The bridge is designed for solid pins.

Here's what the new pins look like. They're actually quite light, only 3.1 grams total. I like how they came out and the tool for removing them works well!

bridge-pins-small.jpg

Another friend asked me to build him a Baritone Ukulele. Am deciding whether to make something more traditional or design one more like a larger Dinalin.
Clean looking mandolin, is that a daisy between the neck and the hole?
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Bryan Bear
Posts: 1375
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:05 pm
Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Hello from Shutesbury MA

Post by Bryan Bear »

Welcome!
PMoMC

Take care of your feet and your feet will take care of you.
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