After many years I have finally built my jig for preparing soundboards and backs for joining. It consists of a metal straight-edge, a shelf for a router to run along, and a simple system for locating the wood to be straight-edged.

The photos show how holding the router guide against the straight-edge and moving it along its shelf straightens the side of the wood clamped in position. The two halves of the soundboard are clamped down together and machined in one pass; smaller pieces (as used for scantling or four piece backs) must be straightened individually and are held by a low clamps fastened into the board. They are low enough that the router base can pass over them.

The router cutter used is a large diameter straight sided cutter.

This replaces my previous system of passing the timber over a jointer – not always easy to control with such thin wood.

Brazilian rosewood neck

At the moment I’m stringing up two octave mandolins and a Martin Simpson model guitar. This guitar is unusual in that it has a dark old Brazilian rosewood neck, built from the same stock as the Brazilian used on scantling guitars. Below is the neck both before and after carving.

Minor Injury

While playing tennis a few weeks ago I fell and hurt my hand. While not a serious injury, it kept me off work for a week or two and is still hampering me. I can only apologise to those of you waiting for instruments.

Bill Flatman built my mandolin and cittern cases in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He died unexpectedly on 3rd March. He was just sixty-five years old.

Bill was a farmer who lived and grew up on a hill farm close to Whitley Chapel. When I was looking for fibre-glass cittern and mandolin cases to replace my primitive wooden ones, Bill volunteered and made them in his small garden shed. He had no previous knowledge of fibre-glass but went round the canoe building classes in the North East of England, learning how to lay up fibre-glass and where to find the required components. He rewarded his informants with heather honey combs from his own bee hives. He was an ingenious and enterprising man.  I and many others will miss him greatly.

The Fretboard Journal

Many people already know of the Fretboard Journal. For those who don’t, it’s a beautifully produced quarterly publication of serious in-depth articles on all subjects concerning fretted instruments.

Last summer Brad Warren visited and stayed a few days, talking, asking questions and taking photographs. The picture at the head of my ‘Wood and Materials’ webpage is one of his photographs.

The current issue of the Fretboard Journal includes the article he wrote about me and my instruments. Brad is a good interviewer; his conversation and questions made me think really hard about what I feel and believe is important to instrument building. Brad is also a good writer, his article presents my views well. The article includes an interview he did with Martin Simpson, concentrating on Martin’s use of my guitars and how he views them.

Usually I build two instruments together; this allows me to move from one to the other, working on each instrument while the other is glueing up.

However last week, having bent the sides for a Simpson model and a New World model, I carried on and bent sides for a Parlour guitar simply because I was enjoying bending. Because the three guitars are different sizes, there is no competion for moulds.

Here are all three sets of sides joined at the heel and at the tail. You can see the relative sizes of these guitars; the MS (top) is the same length as the NW but wider, while the Parlour guitar (bottom) is both shorter and narrower than the NW.

Cittern cases

At last I have cases available to fit large bodied citterns and bouzoukis. These are plywood cases with strap pockets, a two piece rucksack type strap and a rather garish yellow interior. They are basic but relatively inexpensive.

I hope to have Calton cases available for this size instrument in the future, but in the meantime I’m happy to offer these as pictured. The alternative option of using guitar cases lined out to accept citterns and bouzoukis is bulky and expensive.

I understand some players are perturbed to find their new instrument has little bits that can be heard rattling around in the instrument when they shake it. These little shavings are in fact the sign of a hand made instrument. If there are none in the instrument when it is finished (having been vacced out previously), I usually drop in a pinch or two.

These are also available from Stew-Mac in three grades. I use the top quality, though since I don’t use abalone, I have to be careful to pick out any abalone fragments, as these would give the game away.

Here is one of my two experimental New World guitars located in its carriage, ready for cutting the binding ledge. The carriage allows it to be run past an inverted router, which can rise and fall to allow for the curve of soundboard and back.

The cutter adjusts up and down to vary the depth of cut, and different diameter followers change the width. By adjusting width and depth of cut, I can cut appropriately sized ledges for the binding and purfling.



Here is the second guitar with binding and purfling fitted, scraped down and sealed. It is now ready to receive the neck.

Octave mandolins under construction (continued)

The ledges for binding and purfling have been routed out using the system described above. The ledges are not routed where the purflings join; this area will be finished by hand and the purfling joins mitred, as on the guitars above.

The red/gold/green purfling I’m using on these octave mandolins is made by gluing and clamping coloured wood veneers and cutting them into strips with a scalpel drawn along a straight-edge.

Comparing woods

Different woods make different sounding guitars, but sometimes we can’t say one is better, just that it’s different. Comparing Adirondack (American Red) spruce with European spruce is like this.
Adirondack gives a different sound to European, so guitars using it should be designed differently to get the best from it.

Great products

Carlos Ghosn was put in charge of the Renault car company when it was struggling. He said ‘There is no problem at a car factory that great products cannot fix’.
While I don’t build cars and don’t see myself as a company, I do agree with his philosophy. I think that’s why around one in four of the instruments I build is experimental in some way.