Making the body PART 4
The book comes with a template for the final shape but as I mentioned in Part 2, I changed my mind on the shape. I was leaning more towards a dreadnaught style. My real good friend, Terry Fraser from Brantford has been coaching me on the quality of good tone-woods. I value his opinion tremendously and his favourite style is the dreadnaught.
I hand drew my own custom dreadnaught style shape onto a piece of bristolboard. I then proceeded to trace that shape onto the top and back and went ahead and cut them out, all the while staying about ½ inch outside the line. With that done, I got some spruce blanks for the bracing. I decided to use what’s called a ‘forward X bracing’ style, popularized by Martin Guitars. I went ahead and drew out their placement onto my bristolboard template, and poked pinholes through to transfer the marks to the wood. That worked very well.
After some sanding, I now had the bracing for the back complete. I fabricated my own ‘go-bar press’ and used it to clamp the bracing onto the back. Very important detail – I used some shims around the edge of the back so, when clamped, the back will be bowled slightly.
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September 9th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
In the last paragraph you say, ‘I used some shims around the edge of the back so, when clamped, the back will be bowled slightly.’
Why does the back need to be bowled slightly?
September 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
It’s bowled all in an effort to bounce the sound around the inside of the instrument evenly and efficiently. A slightly bowled back combined with properly scalloped bracing should provide a very rich tone that you’ll feel vibrating when held up close.