It has been a few days and a lot has happened on the Colonial Guitar build. The sides were bent using a Fox Style bending form with a silicone heating blanket, (NASA uses these things on satellites) so if its good enough for space, I suppose it is good enough for guitars?

Sides Bent...

   

    I must admit compared to bending by hand
these machines are the equivalent of driving A rolls Royce after years of breaking down in a Datsun.
    The form is based on a very popular body design that I would call a mini - jumbo, with a 16" lower bout a big deep body with a lot of sustain and volume, the GS.

    The sides are highly flamed curly maple and that can be a difficult wood to bend. Curly maple likes to break along the figured curl where the end grain runs through the side, for this reason very little water and a bit more heat is called for. I personally use two pieces of parchment paper with a misting of distilled water to "Sandwich" the wood. The only reason I even wet the paper is to keep the wood from scorching. Typically I start the bend at around 270 F taking the waist down to within a quarter of an inch from the form. Once that is done I do the lower bout followed by the upper bout, by this time the blanket can be well over 300 degrees. Once both bouts are bent I quickly lower the waist all the way to the form and switch the heat off. It truly only takes about 4-5 minutes to bend the sides, the setup for the "sandwich" actually takes longer than actual bending.

                                                                     In the Mold...                                                                

 

 

    In this photo you can see the body beginning to take shape and the Florentine Cutaway being fitted. I prefer the Florentine over the Venetian for many reasons even if it is a Lot more work to do.

    If you look closely you will see some small gaps between the mold and the sides of the guitar, just to the front of the lower bout. At this point in the process I like to keep them slightly loose while I play with the layout of the cutaway, once I am satisfied with the look and feel of the cutaway I recheck my centers and tighten everything down fully.

    Then its on to setup the top geometry, which I do before applying the kerf linings. The Colonial will have a 25' radius on the top, that's pretty extreme compared to the normal 28' radius but I find when working on guitars this big a bit more radius helps to bring some of the "punch" back to the tone.

 

 

 And here is a close up of the cutaway beginning to take shape...





 

 

    The next step is... slow but in my opinion necessary to achieve the quality of sound I want in my guitars. I hand scrape every single inner surface of the guitar with a very sharp cabinet scrapper until I achieve a glass like surface on the soundboard, the sides and all other components inside the box. That may seem like an extreme measure, and at times after hours of doing this on one guitar, even I think its a bit extreme. For the sake of argument though, I truly feel the inside of a guitar deserves as much attention to detail as the outside of the guitar. Acoustically speaking it makes perfect sense to make the inside of the guitar as smooth as possible, because every grain of wood that's lifted, every scratch, every torn surface from sandpaper, every dimple and rough edge can act as a sound baffle slowing down the movement of air. Is it a bit overboard? perhaps, is it tedious? sometimes, does it make a difference? you bet.

 

 Next we will be covering some bracing!...