Songs from the Wood

An acoustic guitar starts life as a pile of wood. Well, hopefully not a pile, exactly. In truth, we respect our woods. We sticker them up to get plenty of air. We spend hours admiring their voluptuous figures. If things go well, we take them home to introduce them to our parents.

Above all, we try to use them well. Unlike, for example, the typical "unplugged" album, acoustic construction is hardly laid back and unplanned.

For this year's class, the process started about five months ago, when Mr. V. had several past graduates bring in their guitars. It was an opportunity for us burgeoning builders to hear what all those woods had to say. We heard Sitka spruce tops side by side with Engelman. We heard mahogany say "hola" and koa say "aloha." It was also our chance to see these woods with a finish, in combination with each other, in real instruments.

Having received those glimpses of the final picture, we set about purchasing the pieces of our own puzzles. That led to the piles of wood I started this post with. Perhaps more interesting to the layman is what we've done with the wood in Acoustic Construction over the last month.

Most of the first week was spent making templates, molds and workboards, so our guitars can come out guitar-shaped. In the picture on the right, you'll see the two halves of my guitar top (Carpathian European spruce, for the curious); I was in the process of straightening their edges on the joiner plane to prepare them for gluing.

I skipped ahead a little bit and jointed and glued my back together early (Australian blackwood). It was large enough that I could cut one end off to make a book-matched rosette for my top. I lined the inside and outside of the rosette with thin strips of white and black purfling to complete it, glued the whole thing in place, and scraped it level to the top.

After that, I cut the soundhole and glued in the top braces. Just this week, I finished shaping the braces and voicing the top--that is, shaving down the braces to change the stiffness and improve

the tap-tone.

Sometime in there, I found the time to bend my sides and glue in all the blocks, braces and kerfing to hold them together. I radiused the sides to match the top and, in one of those moments of gratifying success, at one of those points where the goal becomes tangibly closer, glued the top to the sides this afternoon. I now have something that looks, from the front, like a real guitar, albeit without a neck. It's indescribably fulfilling to have put that pile of wood through a transformation into . . . well, okay, it's pretty much just a wooden drum at this point, but the point is, it's not a pile of wood anymore.

Of course, I forgot to bring my camera home, so you don't get pictures of that just yet. With any luck, I'll get my back braced and glued on next week and begin work on my fingerboard and neck. It really is nice to watch that pile shrink.

Guitar Show 2009

This years guitar show will be held May 12th, Room 314 on the Red Wing Campus at 12 noon. Instruments will be on display as well as played by professional musicians. It's a phenomenal day for friends and family to enjoy hearing the work put in by our students. It's also a great day for folks to stop by if they're thinking about enrolling in the program.

The show is open to the public and is free of charge. We hope you'll be able to stop by and enjoy some great sounding instruments played by very talented players.

Electric, so Frantically Hectic

Here we are in second semester, the scholastic equivalent to a rebound relationship: it's familiar but not quite comfortable, challenging for its own reasons . . . and fairly likely to end in tears. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the stakes are definitely rising.

What exactly has been going on? Those of us losing the most sleep are probably those in Mr. Vincent's section, who are currently engaged in the enviable & challenging process of building an acoustic guitar. The rest of us are likely sweating a little less, being engaged the first half of the week in finishing class. Mr. B has kept us occupied with more than a dozen projects, introducing us to a broad swath of finishes and application techniques, and a *seemingly endless stream of study guides. You'll see in the photo my very first project board, wearing a few coats of brush-on shellac (and, behind it, the next several ducks in the row).

Thursdays are filled with repairs. In addition to making Fender nuts and practicing crack repair, we've been asked to bring in project guitars of our own. Say--for example--your brother tried to pull the frets out of his Ibanez with pliers and sanded most of the finish off the headstock. Oh, and it had a plastic nut to begin with. Sounds like a project, right?

And then there's Friday. --Electric Construction day-- Let's just say that it's a lot of fun, although--as I hinted earlier--at times harrowing.

"What's so scary? Don't you just buy a neck from Warmoth and a body from Stew Mac and bolt them together?" Short answer: no. Long answer: read on.

The first step in production is blueprinting. This apparently simple task of slapping straightedge to paper and drawing a few lines belies a number of important design concerns. Is there room in the neck for the truss rod? Is the body cavity deep enough for the electronics? Where do you put the flaming-skull decal? If you squint at the picture, you can see that I took inspiration from Rickenbacker's 300 series, which meant figuring out how to convert a neck-thru design into a bolt-on (neck-thru designs having been nixed by the instructor).

The first day of class (or two, in my case) spent blueprinting, we move on to making templates, and it's . . . it's a toolroom blitz. Superfluous sweet paraphrases aside, template making is a time-consuming process of roughing out shapes on the band and scroll saws and then sanding and filing them down to the desired dimensions. Most of these templates are later used for routing and flush-trimming the body, so the more time we take making them flat and smooth, the better our guitars will wind up. (Thanks to Cory C. for letting me photograph his mad filing skills.)

Then things get stressful. Once our templates are complete, we start working on our actual electric guitars, with our actual wood. After prepping our stock and gluing it together where necessary, we set into it with saw, sander and router, and that's when the tears might start to flow. Witness Luke R.'s "shark attack" router incident. The area circled is an area that is of the most concern, requiring a patch of wood, contouring, filling or all of the above. To his credit, he took the loss with his usual joie de vivre.

And that's the semester summary thus far. Next week, the sections will switch places, and we'll each receive a new set of challenges--and, no doubt, make a few new educational mistakes--in our ongoing development as luthiers.

*instructors note: Yes study guides, homework occasionally - this is school remember!

In-State Tuition for Everyone

If you're thinking about the guitar program and are from out of state you should know that all Guitar Repair & Building program students pay in-state tuition regardless of what state they reside in.

If you'd like to find out more about our program check out the guitar section at:

http://www.redwingmusicrepair.org


If you'd like to get information about admission to the college check out the admissions page here:

http://www.southeastmn.edu/admission/index.html


It's best not to procrastinate, often times by the time the snow starts to melt we're getting near full for the following fall!

We're back!

This week marked the start of the spring semester. David's group has begun building their acoustic guitars and in 7 weeks the build will be complete and we'll be switching groups. Currently my group of students is in Finish Work and Guitar Repairs for the 7 week period. Tomorrow Jan. 16th I'll have folks beginning the process of blueprinting their electric guitars for the class that runs every Friday for 16 weeks.

Every year goes by so fast and even though I know that....it's still amazing how fast it goes!!!

Today was -22 degrees with a -40 below zero wind chill. Kinda tough to sell the idea of graduation being here soon but I swear, it'll be here before we know it. -22 degrees below zero!!!!! The coldest day here in 5 years. That didn't stop us from getting to work though.

Hopefully I can find a student to volunteer to blog about their acoustic build or possibly even their electric build. Stay tuned...

Semester Ends!

Well another semester has come and gone. We'll be back in January to begin instrument building. No matter how much I realize it goes by fast it never fails to surprise me. Hope everyone has a great vacation and holiday.

Be safe...

-b

Promo Video

Here Phil Heywood plays "Hedgehog Hedge" at the 2007 Guitar Show at Southeast Technical College. Each year we have professional musicians come and perform with the hand-made guitars built by our students. It's a great day to cap off an exciting year and friends and family come to see and hear the results of all the hard work. Often these instruments are less than 24 hours old! This performance was made into a promotional video for online use with permission of Phil Heywood. Thanks Phil!