20 Jan2025

My upcoming talk in Slaley village hall

Between 2008 and 2013 I gave talks on guitar making at the Whitley Chapel parish hall. Pat Wilson, who lives in Slaley, heard about this. When asking would I do one at Slaley, she unfortunately spoke to my wife Liz. Liz got back to Pat saying I would do it and that my arm would probably have recovered by then.

So a dozen years after the previous one, I will be giving a talk at the Slaley Commemoration Hall on Monday 27th January. The entry charge is an outrageous £4.00, and a donation will be made to Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Guitarist Tom Fletcher will be playing music on one of my guitars.

Here is the flyer advertising it.

27 Dec2024

Old mahogany for necks

Liz and I spent this Christmas with our daughter and her friends. Lots of good food, lots of laughter. At one point, probably to keep me out of the way, she suggested I might like to play her guitar. This is a Model 0 (the predecessor of my New World) I built for her 21st birthday in 1995. It’s in perfect condition, with a sweet, gentle sound. I was so pleased to be playing it again.

While examining it, I was struck by the appearance of the neck, which was made of old mahogany, dense and dark. When I was first building, I occasionally came across mahogany like this, but it became harder and harder to find and eventually impossible. Since then I’ve used mahogany from a stock I bought in the early 2000s. Nice wood, but not as dramatic as this. My daughter’s guitar must be one of the last I built with it.

In recent years I’ve also used Wengé, another stiff and resonant wood.

1995 neck mahogany

1995 Model 0 with Brazilian rosewood back

A few weeks ago I had one of my regular clearing up sessions. Going through my shelves and cupboards I was astonished and thrilled to find I still had some pieces of this old dark mahogany. Enough for perhaps half a dozen necks and heel blocks.

I also have two boards of Honduras rosewood, one for necks and another for backs, lovely dark perfectly quarter sawn wood . I bought them from Craft Supplies (now long defunct) in 2002 but didn’t use them because the boards were too big for me to cut in my shop.

I’ve not built with Honduras rosewood before, but it is very well regarded as a tonewood for backs and sides. It is heavy like African Blackwood but has a ring like Brazilian rosewood, an interesting combination. Now I’ve decided, I can’t wait to have it cut and build with it. I’ve arranged to have it cut by a business with suitable equipment.

My plan is to build a short series of guitars with Honduras rosewood bodies and old dark mahogany necks. Soundboards will be German spruce, figured Sitka spruce or Douglas Fir.

Old dark dense mahogany

Honduras rosewood

19 Oct2024

Sobell Dulcimer discovered

SOLD

A beautiful 1974 Sobell dulcimer is for sale at the St Luke,s Hospice charity shop. Details on my ‘Available now’ page https://www.sobellguitars.com/available-now/

Information about St Luke’s Hospice here: https://www.stlukeshospice.org.uk/

17 Oct2024

Broken truss-rod replacement

Truss-rods can fail. Sometimes because of over-tightening, sometimes when the hexagonal keyway has been rounded (with an undersized or worn allen key), sometimes when they rust and seize after being kept in damp conditions, and sometimes because they were under-engineered in the first place. And sometimes for no obvious reason.

I now grease all truss-rod threads, so that even should the guitar be kept in damp conditions (which of course it shouldn’t for several reasons), the threads should not rust. And should turn more easily in all conditions.

Daniel Clark recently sent me his 1989 Model 1 guitar with a non-functioning truss-rod. This truss-rod was made of a steel rod in an aluminium channel, as were most at the time of building. One end of the rod is fixed to the end of the channel, the other is threaded with a long Allen nut working against the other end of the channel.

Tightening the long nut against the threaded end of the rod shortens it, and as the channel is of fixed length, the channel has to curve. Because the truss-rod is tightly enclosed, it bends in its entirety with the longer channel back to the outside of the shorter rod, bending the neck with it.

Old type steel and aluminium truss-rod

Modern truss-rods are simpler and more compact. The rod is threaded at both ends, one standard and one reverse thread, and runs through long nuts attached to each end of a narrow flat steel bar. So turning the rod (with an Allen key in the rounded end) one way shortens it (and the other way lengthens it) against the fixed length bar, thus bending it.

Not only does this have less work to do (not having to bend the sides of the channel), it also eliminates the problem caused by different expansion rates of steel and aluminium. It also permits pulling the neck forward if required.

Modern double action all steel truss-rod

When Daniel’s guitar arrived, turning the long Allen nut was effortless but had no effect. So the truss-rod had to come out.

The standard procedure is to remove the fingerboard (complete with frets), so the truss-rod can be changed, replacing the fingerboard afterwards. My problem with this method is that it damages the finish, not only between the fingerboard and the neck but also, more importantly, between the upper portion of the fingerboard and the soundboard. Touching up old finish on a soundboard is a problem, it will always show. So I decided on a different method.

Rather than remove the whole fingerboard, I take out the frets and cut a slot in the fingerboard above the truss-rod so I can remove and replace it. I do this with a router mounted on a simple plywood jig.

1. Here is the jig mounted over the fingerboard. I removed the frets and routed out the area above the broken truss rod, enabling me to lever it out. The mahogany neck is visible at the bottom of the slot. The old truss-rod is alongside.

2. The new truss-rod is in place. As it is narrower than the original, I set pieces of Blackwood on either side so the truss-rod is a snug fit. As the rod underneath now has to turn, it is lubricated with graphite powder to minimize resistance.

3. I cut a piece of ebony of the exact size to fit the slot and fitted and glued it in place, pressing it gently onto the truss-rod. I checked that the truss-rod can still turn freely.

4. I trimmed the ebony insert down to match the level of the existing fingerboard, cut the fret slots in it, and replaced the centre Mother of Pearl dots.

5. The old frets were worn, so after checking the fretboard is level, I replaced them with Evo Gold fretwire. This is much harder than the original nickel silver and will last much longer without pitting.

6. Now strung up, it needed just a tweak on the truss-rod, and it’s perfect. The only way the repair shows is that the new ebony is a little blacker than the original, but a quick oiling minimizes even this. With the 3rd and 4th strings over the joins, it is almost impossible to see. And no damage to the finish.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

When I removed the old truss-rod, I found the thread had stripped, allowing the nut to turn freely without shortening the rod. On examination, I saw the rod was thinner than on some, as was the threaded end. It was also installed at a time before I greased the threads.

The fingerboard repaired, with new frets and new truss-rod, is now better than new and the instrument sounds excellent. In fact, better than before. This guitar will become shortly become available to purchase and will appear on my ‘Available now’ webpage.

25 Aug2024

Douglas Fir bracewood

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Douglas Fir is a lovely honey coloured softwood. When close grained, it makes excellent guitar soundboards. These give a strong, characterful bass and a clear treble. Being light and stiff, Douglas Fir also makes excellent brace wood. Here are rough cut bracewood pieces resting just above my warm workshop stove.

It has been suggested that when Stradivari first set up building violins he was short of well seasoned spruce (he will have used Italian spruce coming from the north), so put less seasoned wood into his chimney, letting the hot fumes ran past the face of the soundboard wood and drying it reasonably quickly. Kilned wood is dried much faster by high temperatures which changes the chemistry of the wood in a way air drying and the relatively slow drying in the passing warm fumes from a stove or fire do not.

I should add, I don’t know how reliable the Stradivari theory is.

When having a classical guitar built (in a time before I was building instruments), the sides picked were hanging in front of a radiator, so drying in a similar fashion.

Having bought three blocks of Douglas Fir for braces, I cut the first into slightly oversize pieces, taped them together and placed them on my warm workshop stove, left on day and night. They were edge on to the heat, allowing the warm air to run past the face of each brace in much the same way as Stradivari is thought to have dried his spruce.

After a few weeks, the wood is dry and resonant, ringing beautifully when tapped.

10 Aug2024

1980s F-hole mandolin

Yesterday Robert Boyett visited with two of my older mandolins. One was my standard model of the 1980s, with Indian rosewood back and sides, a German spruce soundboard and an oval soundhole. The other had maple back and sides, a carved back and a German spruce soundboard with f-holes.

This second one greatly surprised me. I later built a small (Gibson size) mandolin with f-holes, but it was in my mind this was the first and only one. However, there is no doubt I built this one. All my design and build features are present, along with the address card type label of the time.

The f-holes are unusually large, and I now recall matching their combined area to that of the oval hole in my standard mandolin. The soundboard is braced with tone bars running the length of the body rather than the X bracing on oval hole models. The label is unfortunately undated, but I used this style until the late 1980s.

Deeper than our current mandolins, it sounded truly wonderful with a fat, rich sound. Robert has many mandolins but said he always goes to this one. Clearly well looked after by its three owners, it’s in virtually new condition. Robert was thrilled with it, and rightly so.

Food for thought.

02 Aug2024

Well on the way

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As a contrast to the soundboard below, this is a guitar is approaching completion. Here the Wengé neck has been jointed to the body; next the truss rod and slotted fingerboard will be added.