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Moving right along. Here are some photos from the start of two new guitars. Carefully joining tops and backs. I take my time to get a perfect fit with a freshly sharpened plane blade for the cleanest joint possible. After that, I spent some time planing two spruce tops and a two sets of rosewood back and sides down to thickness and cleaned them up with a nice sharp cabinet scraper. As much as my hands are sore after all that scraping and planing, it's very satisfying to see the curls.
New Concert model strung up today and headed for Germany in a couple weeks. This guitar is bold sound with a big dynamic range and a balanced frequency response. That being said, it still has an open and lively Spanish character and plenty of color.
Strung up the newest Torres model today and I'm really happy with how this one turned out. It has a lush open voice with plenty of clarity and liveliness. Custom rosette of dark natural tones by request of the client. The motif is inspired by the Torres guitar owned by Miguel Llobet and is made of maple, rosewood, padouk, cherry, walnut and spanish cedar.
Back home from the GFA and pluggin' away at these two guitars. One is a Torres model and the other is a new Concert model. Here are a few photos from the last couple weeks cutting binding and purfling channels, slotting fingerboards, carving necks and wiping on the first wash coats of shellac. Happy to see these almost done and excited to string them up.
Finally strung up these two guitars this last week and I'm very happy with how they turned out. The first is a spruce/European flame maple Torres model. It's light, lively and sweet. The next is a spruce/Indian rosewood guitar inspired by Antonio Marin Montero. It has strong singing trebles and loose gravely basses. Both have Spanish cedar necks, ebony fingerboards and Gotoh premium tuning machines.
The last week in the shop has been a bit chaotic. I've been finishing up the French polish on two guitars for the GFA and then getting back to work on two others.
In other news, I tried out a few new products that I feel compelled to write about because they are really great. I finally got around to trying out some Jescar fretwire and it is far superior to any other fretwire that I've used. It's consistent, the tangs are accurate and the barbs are a bit smaller and sharper than most other fretwire. I also purchased a small Japanese fret saw with a .022" kerf from a German supplier over here; I feel that it is smoother and cuts much faster than the English fret saws one finds from suppliers like LMI and Stewmac. The last thing that I received in the mail today was a big stack of Mirka sandpaper. As it turns out, it is seemingly impossible to find good sandpaper in Austria. After wasting much time and money on various sandpaper that was all unbelievably and frustratingly terrible, I finally broke down and ordered a bunch of Finnish sandpaper from an auto supplier in Germany. It was well worth it.
Put the first wash coats of shellac on the two latest guitars. It's always fun to see the figure pop on maple and all of the woods deepen in color once they get some finish on them.
Haven't had too much time to update the blog recently, so this is a pretty big collection of photos. These are the two guitars that I'll be exhibiting at the Guitar Foundation of America convention in Fullerton, CA this year. One is a spruce/rosewood Granada/Bouchet style guitar and the other is a spruce/flame maple Torres model. I'm very happy with how these are turning out and excited to get some finish on them later this week.
Here are a handful of short clips and photos from the last week of building. Planed and cleaned up tops, backs and sides for three guitars, started bending sides, glued the bridge on another and started the final polish. Had to make new bridge cauls since I didn't bring them in the move. If you are wondering why there is aluminum foil on the bending iron, it's so that the residue from bending rosewood doesn't get all over that nice white maple.
