Walnut SJ
This one was built as a high-school graduation present for my son. Even with a pandemic and graduation delays, I still didn’t manage to finish it in time.
Body: Walnut back and sides with a western red cedar top
Trim: Abalone rosette, mother-of-pearl logo, and Madagascar rosewood binding
Neck: Mahogany with East Indian rosewood overlay and ebony fingerboard
Finish: Target Coatings EM6000
Sides are bend on this contraption: a silicone heating blanket provides the heat to bend against the form.
After bending, the sides look like this. They’re a bit springy, so we need to put them in a mold to keep their shape.
…like so.
The sides are relieved for the braces, and the back is glued to the sides.
The abalone and black/white purling strips are glued in place and a wash coat of shellac is applied so we can see what the pearl will look like under a finish.
After the braces are shaped in the radius dish, they’re glued to the top, providing a domed top with a 25-foot radius.
I’ve posted neck builds before. so we can skip that part, but I did try a new method of counterboring the truss-rod access hole.
I add a headstock veneer, set the truss rod, and glue a maple spline over the truss rod.
The logo is cut from mother of pearl and inlaid into the headstock.
The finished bridge.
…and the back after buffing.
Back view.
Back braces are shaped to a 15-foot radius and glued on using the radius dish.
Routing a channel for the rosette.
This template helps me lay out the braces — they’ll be on the backside of the top, so this is sort of an x-ray view or what is to come.
I skipped a lot of photos, but with the top and back attached, I routed and installed binding and applied an epoxy grain filler that I’ll sand back to flat.
The final result. You can also see the structure of the headstock here: there are 4 pieces of mahogany: a scarf-jointed neck shaft and two ears for the widest part.
A 16-inch radius is sanded into the fingerboard before attaching it to the neck shaft.
A jig is used to cut the angled slot for the saddle. The angle allows the strings to play in tune up the neck.
After spraying a waterborne finish, we have the neck and body ready for assembly.
We remove the finish where the bridge and fingerboard are attached, assemble, and set up.
Headstock with truss-rod cover from Thalia Capos.