Elecy-Ukey-Layley

When I was at Shrewsbury Folk Festival, I just couldn't resist this cute little electric ukelele!

Yet another thing to do - now I need to learn how to not be as crap at that as well!

The Next Big Thing ......

I really enjoyed this little mini-restoration and started thinking about what I might do next. I've been looking on and off at the acoustic guitar kits that companies like Steward-MacDonald do and thought I might try making something like this mahogany dreadnought.

Then I though I might look at their little Ukelele kit first, the logic being that I could try out the techniques on something cheaper first before committing to the full thing. But when I looked at the process for this, the "hard stuff" like the bindings and purfling doesn't occur on the uke, so there didn't seem to be a lot of value to doing it.

Lots of internet research later and I kept coming back to a few blogs about people that had built their own acoustics from scratch. These weren't guys with huge workshops - one was built pretty much on the kitchen table! 

Looking at the process in detail, I decided that I'm pretty handy and have done a fair bit of woodworking in the past (nothing as fine as this though) and individually there is nothing in each part of the process that really terrifies me, so I'm thinking of building one from scratch!

Two books are constantly referred to:

Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology - A Complete Reference for the Design and Construction of the Steel-string Folk Guitar and the Classical Guitar (Guitar Reference) - William R. Cumpiano & Jonathan D. Natelson

and

Build Your Own Acoustic Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans - Jonathan Kinkead

I have bought both of these as research to help the decision before I commit and I'm currently deeply absorbed in them! The first book is very much the set text - there appears to be nothing it doesn't tell you about making a guitar, but it is quite dry. The second is more like a Haynes manual by comparison, with lots of colour photos showing each step. Between the two, it is fairly easy to get a good grasp of the processes involved.

There are some fairly consistent messages coming out of all of this research:

1. you will probably spend as much if not more on tools as you do on materials the first time round.
2. It's not worth doing this just to get a nice guitar - I think this is going to need about a £600 investment in tools and materials for the first one; that money will buy you a very nice guitar.
3. as long as you take your time and are careful, your first guitar will probably sound very good compared to mass-produced, but the detail finish may be a bit lacking.
4. you are unlikely to just build one, as it can become addictive.
5. by the time you get to the 3rd or 4th one, they should be pretty good!

I have quite a lot going on at the moment with a new job etc so, unusually for me, I'm not going to rush into this. I am thinking that I might try and do a trial of the bit that I'm most nervous about, which is constructing and carving a mahogany neck and building the dovetail joint between the neck and body. If I can make a decent job of that, I reckon I'll be OK to go for the full thing.

Watch this space!

Meanwhile, I'm keeping up the guitar practice - still trying to do at least half an hour for 4 days a week, and I am definitely still not as crap today as I was yesterday :-).

Update

Well I guess I should post an update on how this finished, as I got so carried away at the end, then lost the progress photos off my camera, so can't really detail anymore of the restoration.

The neck ended up really nice after about 6 coats of the oil. I left it for a week after the last coat, then gave it a good rub down with a cloth and it turned out like all the internet wisdom suggested: a nice smooth satin finish which was very playable.

The body was finished then and I had to decide whether to make and fit a scratchplate. I made a couple of card templates and it just didn't look right with one, so I decided to leave it off for now. I was growing quite used to the battered look and didn't feel the need to cover up the scrapes and bumps!

Next job was to make a saddle from a new piece of bone that I'd bought. This was a fairly simple exercise. First I glued the old one back together with superglue and used that as a template to mark out the approximate shape on the new blank. This was then sanded to shape and also the thickness reduced so it would fit into the carrier on the bridge. Lesson learned from this was that I assumed the original one was the right size - actually I could have made it 3 or 4mm longer and it would have been a better fit, but it's worked out OK for now.

That was it then - refit the electrics and tuning pegs and string her up!

I am delighted to say that all of the bracing repairs etc held together when the string tension was re-applied and she played nicely for a £50 guitar! The overall character was exactly as I had remembered the current model APX500 when I tried one of those, which was a bit of a "thin" sound compared to a full dreadnought size guitar, but the body is significantly smaller. These are really designed for the electro-acoustic side I think. I had some fun playing through the amp too. It actually turned out exactly as I thought, which was nicer to play than the basic entry level F310 I have (a much nicer neck on it), but with less bottom end sound due to the smaller body.

The action was a little high so, after letting it all settle for a couple of weeks, I reduced the height of the saddle to give about 2mm clearance at the 12th fret and this made it much nicer to play. No need to go into detail of how to do this here - there are loads of YouTube videos etc about it. Just take it easy and don't take too much off at a time.

You might remember that one of the reasons for getting this was to be able to take it to festivals without worrying too much about it getting damaged. In the end, when Shrewsbury Folk Festival came around in August, I just couldn't bear not to take my "good" guitar, which is sounding better and better the more I play it (I'm sure IT is getting better, not ME!) so this one stayed at home.

But the story has a nice ending, as my son started making noises about getting a guitar to take to Uni with him, so it has found a happy home at Lancaster University :-).

Applying the goo...

And hot on the heels comes the next part.

With the prep done, I gave the neck a final rub down with 0000 gauge wire wool and wiped down with white spirit to make sure all of the dust/grease was removed.

I am using Tung Oil to refinish the neck. I haven't used it before but perceived wisdom on the internet suggests it should give a good smooth, satin finish which appeals to me. Also it means I don't have to spray it, as it is a "wipe on, wipe off" type finish. Oh and it's cheap - I think the tin cost me less than £5.

Again, researching on the net, it is recommended to use coffee filters to apply and rub  the excess off! The tin says to use a "lint free cloth". I never really know what that means and a box of filters was a couple of quid, so I'll give it a go.

The tin says to apply a couple of coats thinned 50/50 with white spirit; apply sparingly; leave for 30 minutes then wipe any excess off.

Here's the result after the first coat. The change of shade you can see on the headstock is where the neck has been scarfed together from 2 pieces (from new). 

And below is the area of the repair (see last post), which I think will blend in just fine with more coats on.

So now, the process is: leave 24 hrs; apply more tung oil; leave 30 minutes; wipe off excess; repeat. I think it will probably need 5 or 6 coats. Then I'll leave it for a few days to make sure it has fully dried.

I think we are onto making a new saddle next :-).

Neck Preparation

After a slight pause while I went off on a cycling holiday and then started a new job, I've made a start on the guitar again last night. After my last post, the neck had been rough sanded back to remove the existing lacquered finish.

The next stage was to fine sand the neck to get a smooth finish. I am doing this in two stages - first with 120 grade fine sandpaper and then before I apply the finish I'll take it down finally with 0000 grade wire wool. Here's the neck after sanding with the fine sandpaper:

As part of this prep, I need to fill in and try to conceal a previous repair. One reason for doing the fine sanding early was to "harvest" some of the sawdust to use in that repair:

Here's the old repair - a really ugly scar. It's not flush with the surface and you can see the glue that was used.

The first thing to do was to "gouge" out the surface glue with a knife. It starts looking worse before it gets better!

Next, I propped up the guitar so that the site of the repair was horizontal and stable. You can see my sophisticated workshop and equipment here!

I then tipped some of the sawdust into the scar, tapping the neck to make sure it settled well into the crack.

Next, I applied a few drops of Super Glue to the sawdust. The theory said that the sawdust should suck the glue straight through it and into the crack, but I found that the glue sat on the surface. It did bleed through after a short while though.

The problem was that I had to put a bit more on because of that and some of it ran round the neck ....

(It was OK though - that sanded off fine at the next stage. Phew!) After leaving the glue to harden for a couple of hours, I sanded the repair back down with medium sandpaper, being very careful to just sand the repair and not the surrounding wood, as I didn't want to create a "hollow" in the neck. Then I fine sanded again. I was really pleased at the result - a nice smooth repair. Although it is darker than the surrounding wood, this is the colour that the whole neck is likely to end up after the next stage and I think it should blend in really well.

Finally, a wipe down with white spirit to get rid of dust and it's looking even better. I'll do the wire wool rub down just before I start to apply the new finish at the next stage.

Refinishing the neck

I've glued and clamped up the next small part on the back today, so while that's clamped and setting, I thought I'd have a quick go at stripping the finish off the neck. 

As a reminder, there has been a previous repair:

I have decided that I'm going to strip the neck back, sand it very smooth and then apply Tung Oil, which is supposed to give a really nice smooth satin finish.

The initial plan was to use Nitromors paint stripper to remove the lacquer. I removed the machine heads and masked everything up really well, then applied the stripper but it didn't touch it. Maybe it's just me, but I have found that modern Nitromors just doesn't do it anymore - I assume they have had to tone down the chemicals in it compared to the stuff I used to use years ago?

Anyway, I cleaned it all up again and then started rubbing it down with medium sandpaper to remove the lacquer.

Really, I was just having a go to see how hard it would be. Before I knew it.....

It has come up really nice, even just with the medium grade paper. Once I have given it a go with the fine sandpaper, it should look beautiful!

Onto the back

The clamps are off the strut regluing now and that all feels nice and solid.

Time to move onto the back. There are 3 sections where the back has come away from the side. I'll approach each one in turn, starting with the largest. This one is about 3" long, then the others are roughly 2" and 1".

I used an old thickness gauge to scrape as much of the old glue off and then to flex the joint open a bit to help get glue deep into it. I got as much glue into the joint as possible, using a small modelling paintbrush, before clamping up again and then cleaning off the residue with a damp cloth.

You can see in this photo that there is no binding between the back and sides; just a rounded edge. I assume they did that because they were trying to make it look like a resin backed guitar (?), but it is actually nato back and sides as far as I can find out and is otherwise traditionally constructed using purfling (is that the right word for the blocks between back and sides?) Whilst I think this all makes it look a little cheap, it does help to be able to do my amateur repair without having to reinstate the binding and should be easy to touch in the black colour with a little satin black modelling paint.

Starting repairs

The loose strut is now glued up. I cleaned off the old glue as best I could with strips of sandpaper worked underneath between soundboard and strut and then got as much Titebond as I could in with my fingertip and then a small modelling brush at the ends. Clamped up now and I'll leave it for 24 hrs to go off properly.

The next bit then will be to glue up the back where it has come away from impact damage.

Bend over, this won't hurt a bit!

How is this for a cool piece of kit, courtesy of good friend and guitar maestro Kriss Strings?

Now I can have a really good look inside the depths of the body and check for any other damage.

And it's weatherproof, so I can do it outside in the rain :-)

It's really handy knowing an amateur Gastroenterologist.

Ready to go

After an EBay spending frenzy, most of the bits are now in place to start the repairs.

So I have the recommended adhesive - Titebond - almost every guitar repair site seems to recommend this.

I have bought a new bone saddle blank to replace the existing one (broken in 4 pieces).

The tung oil is to refinish the neck, after I have stripped the lacquer from it - I decided to go for an oiled finish as it gets such good write ups for the smoothness of action.

The 0000 gauge wire wool is to clean up the fretboard and also to help in the neck preparation.

And finally, I bought a piece of acrylic to make a new pickguard from. My idea was to cover up some of the damage to the soundhole with this. However, my good mate Kriss Strings (whose advice I would normally consistently ignore!) has suggested that this might not be a good idea on two counts:

1. it will stiffen up the soundboard which might adversely affect the sound quality, and
2. the distressed look is apparently uber-cool, with Gibson selling "pre-distressed" Les Pauls to hit that market, so why hide the damaged finish - it gives it kudos.

Now I am in a right pickle, because I trust him on all things guitar. But on issues of style and cool ....? ;-)  I'll have a think :-)

Strip down begins

Couldn't resist having a bit of a grub over lunchtime!

First off, I took the pickguard off with the help of a hairdryer to see what horrors lurk behind. Curiously, it had a pick embedded behind it. Initially I thought it was a crude attempt at reinforcing a crack but seems in the wrong place for that. Maybe it's an original Eric Clapton pick in a secret hiding place?

 Next I pulled the strings off, with ominous creaking from the bracing as I released the tension! But now that the tension is off, the detached brace is sitting back nice and flush against the soundboard, so should glue up okay.

With the strings off, you can see that the headstock is looking nice, but needs a good clean.

Moving in to see the damage, you can see where it's been hit. The detached brace runs across from just below the soundhole to the edge of the guitar where you can see the chip of missing lacquer. If that's the only one that needs glueing up, then I'm in luck because I won't need to buy / make any long reach clamps :-)

Shame about the damage to the rosette. Maybe I can carefully touch it in?

 Now, after cleaning all the adhesive off with white spirit, a close up of the impact damage and also damaged lacquer where they have roughed up the surface to apply the lino!

In a curious time warp across to my motorcycle renovation, I thought I'd try some auto technology to get some of that deep scratching out and pulled out the chrome cleaner! 5 minutes elbow grease and some shine is starting to come back!

Next I removed the pre-amp to gain a bit of space inside the body and work out how the battery should attach. Just a case of releasing 2 connectors for the bridge pick-up and jack cables, then undoing the rings round the volume, bass and treble knobs. The velcro was already there to attach the battery - just hadn't been used properly.

I could see inside better now - the back looks fine. Need to get hold of a mirror to assess the top properly though.

In another curious time warp, the builder finished repairing the crack in my gable this morning. My life is turning into a series of connected coincidences! Maybe he can look at the guitar next?

Moving on to the bridge, you can see in this photo where the saddle is actually in 4 pieces! Helpfully, a small piece of tape had been used to hold them all back together ....

The bridge itself looks in good shape though.

What I hadn't noticed was that the fingerboard is quite worn down (compressed?) on the first 3 fret positions. Heavy handed previous owner? 5 minutes research on the interweb suggests it's not an issue as far as playability is concerned. There's a possible fix of applying steam or laying a damp cloth on it for a day to see if the fibres spring back. Not too hung up about this though - I didn't even notice it when playing it.

So there we have it - all in all probably good news I think and certainly should be able to make a presentable, nicely playable guitar out of this I think.

In the beginning .....

A new project dictates a new web diary thingy, so here we go.

Motorbikes? Pah! Old hat! I have moved on to the next phase of my mid-life crisis :-)  (Not quite true actually as my next motorbike restoration http://xbrcafe.blogspot.co.uk/ is waiting in the wings to start, but there are no bikes "on the road" at the moment.)

Over the last year, since my sons both went to university, I have been devoting a lot more time to finally trying to improve my guitaring skills beyond the "chord thrashing" that I have constantly revisited for the past 40 odd years. And I am not doing badly; following the mantra that "I am not quite as crap this week as I was last week......". 

Part of my motivation was to buy myself a decent guitar six months or so ago - a lovely Yamaha LL6 to replace the basic Yamaha F310 I had bought off EBay a couple of years back.

Talk about chalk and cheese - I love playing this and finally am in the habit of pretty regular practice most days. It really is not rocket science - the more you practice the better you get - amazing that it took me 40 years to realise that!

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I still have the F310 and use it to practice when I'm away from home, but I wanted to start messing with some alternative tunings, so obviously NEED a new guitar :-). (As all guitarists, cyclists, motorcyclists etc know, the correct number of guitars, bicycles, motorcycles etc to own is n+1, where n = the number currently owned.)

Also, I am trying to get over my fear of playing in front of people and have started joining in sessions at folk festivals etc (where I can hide in the crowd!) I want to play something reasonable but hate the idea of my good guitar sitting in the boot of the car or in a tent for days at a time.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I started looking out for something cheap and cheerful on EBay that I wouldn't be scared to chuck in the car or have hanging around a tent. Something I'm not going to lose sleep over if it takes a knock. But something that is still nice enough to play. I'm not afraid of woodworking etc - I reglued a broken neck on an old 12 string when I was 14 or 15 and got years out of it. So it occurred to me that I might be able to find something cheap that had taken a bit of a knock and needed repairing.

After a few weeks I came across this sad lost cause!

It's a Yamaha again (getting the theme here?), an APX4 electro-acoustic. The photo makes it look better than it is..... 

Good Bits:

• it's a Yamaha (the current APX series was actually on my short list when I got the LL6.) 
• it has a nice slimline body and is very comfortable to play.
• the neck seems nice and straight and the action is OK.
• the fretboard looks nicely worn in, but not worn out.
• the electrics all work.
• it has had new machine heads fitted.
• the headstock area is all nicely finished and undamaged.
• The bridge area seems stable.

Bad Bits:

• a crack in the neck has previously been repaired, but looks to have been done reasonably well and is "stable".
• the "pickguard" appears to have been fashioned out of some old lino flooring and has been carefully designed to cover up damage below.
• when the pickguard is peeled back, there is impact damage to the bottom of the soundhole area.
• this appears to have caused some of the internal bracing between the soundhole and cutaway area to have become detached.
• that in turn appears to have caused crazing in the finish in the cutaway area.
• I think the impact damage shown to the bottom right of the guitar is superficial. It looks like it's been dropped on that corner but I don't think the bracing has broken in that area, just the finish (either thick lacquer or maybe some delamination?)
• A small area of the back / side in the same area has started to pull away - possibly linked to being dropped?
• The finish generally is pants - lacquer is blooming in parts as well as the cracking noted above. But I'm not too worried about the look of it.
• The saddle is cracked in 3 places.
• The battery for the pre-amp is hanging loose inside.

Anyway, it was missing a string, so I strung it up with an old E string I had lying around; tuned it up and it plays pretty nicely. The strings look ancient and that together with the damage means it doesn't sound great (but probably still better than the F310). What's more it stayed reasonably in tune overnight. 

Here are the photos off EBay:

And so it joins the Shearer home for lost causes.

It only cost me £30, so if my repairs go horribly wrong it won't owe me anything. Initial thoughts are that it needs the following work doing:

• re-glue the internal bracing that has come away. That should restore some rigidity in the soundhole / cutaway area.
• check all the remaining bracing and re-glue any that has come away.
• re-glue small back/side joint area.
• remove the pickguard and adhesive residue.
• repair the broken wood around the soundhole.
• try and rebond the delaminated lacquer area with superglue. (Possibly set in a small area of veneer if that doesn't work?)
• refinish the neck, possibly just the repaired area initially?
• replace the saddle.
• reattach battery correctly or find a way to relocate it.
• restring and set up.
• then I'll take a decision on whether to refinish the top, but I won't be going for anything exquisite! (Remember the brief was to have a guitar that I'm not too precious about.
• Play, play and play again......

Most of that list is time. The biggest expense will be buying some appropriate clamps etc. 

I'll post more as the story unfolds - watch this space....