Noel, the Very Amateur Luthier gets serious!

5 years and 4 days ago, in October 2015,  I posted this:  https://noeltheamateurluthier.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-next-big-thing.html 

I had decided that I wanted to take the plunge and build a guitar from scratch, but concluded "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." Well, I certainly haven't rushed into it, and have had another 3 new jobs since then!

I also said that "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." Well, I have successfully made a new neck and it all went fine, so I've decided that now is the time to go for it.

I bought two books 5 years ago and have read them lots since:

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

Both of these books regularly come up as reference material on self-build forums  The first is very comprehensive - there appears to be nothing it doesn't tell you about making a guitar, but it is quite dry. The Kinkead book is more like a Haynes manual, with lots of colour photos showing each step. Between the two, it is fairly easy to get a good grasp of the processes involved.

Jonathan Kinkead's book includes full size plans for his Kingsman model, which is based on a 1929 Martin OM (Orchestra Model). But he also describes how to adapt the process to modify the guitar to your own requirements.

I had originally planned to build a Bouzouki and, earlier in the year, panic-bought the timber for this at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown! But the wood is (just) big enough to make an OM from, so off we go.

The spec is going to be: 

• American Walnut back and sides
• Western Red Cedar soundboard
• Mahogany Neck
• Rosewood bridge, fingerboard and head veneer
• Maple bindings

The "standard" design is for a 25.5" scale length. I built a fretboard from scratch for the Gouzouki project, and fairly comfortable with that process, so I'm pondering about doing this as a "fan fret" or "multi-scale" design. Why? Mostly because I can; but with some logic in that I have been doing a lot of playing in dropped open tunings recently and a conservative fan fret design is allegedly very suitable for that style. Fan frets look something like this - the frets are not parallel like a "normal" guitar.

I'm also thinking that I might add a sound port in the upper bout, but these ideas can develop as I go along.

So off we go on the biggest project yet!