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I strung up my #5 guitar today. It has abalone inlays, a scalloped nut, a walnut/carbon composite laminate bridge (14 grams), Royal-lac french polish finish, and ebony headplate and end graft.
This was my most ambitious build to date. If you look closely at the fish inlay, you will see I inlayed the pupil into the iris, both of abalone shell. That didn't happen on my first try! Linda and I worked together to design the note into the fish.
It is always a good feeling when the strings are up to tension, and nothing implodes or flies off!
Mike

Oh, back and sides are EIR, and top is bearclaw German Spruce

That's really pretty.

Any chance we can get a sound clip?

Thanks

Thank you John!
Yes, I'm going to make a sound clip and post it here in a week or two when the strings settle down. I think this one has a lot of promise,
Mike

Lovely! It's nice to see a classical. I like the design of the inlay in your end graft.

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George :-)

Nice!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Beautiful work Mike. The fish is especially nice.

How did you do the pore fill? The french polish pumice thing?

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Thanks Joe! I used aquacoat. It takes 6 or 7 coats but sands easily. I leave the sandings in the pores and just wipe with a cloth after sanding and apply again.

Being waterbased, it always shrinks back some (at least for me), so as I'm apply my base shellac coats, I sand them back and leave whatever I can in the pores and seal it again with shellac, sand and repeat till happy!

On the next one, I'm going to try just using shellac and sanding it back filling the pores with a mixture of sanddust and shellac. When I'm finishing up after the aquacoat using shellac it seems to fill just about as fast, and there isn't a risk of leaving any aquacoat on the wood (if you miss sanding back to bare wood in a spot, it looks ugly under the finish).

Using only shellac, if I miss spot sanding back, it will blend perfectly with the first coat of shellac.

Probably more than you wanted to know, but I hate to leave someone with only half the story!
Mike

Good to hear I'm not the only one who feels this way. Very nicely done. I too like the end graft inlay.

Very nice!!

Beautiful!

Are those Rubner tuners? I've got a crossover guitar about to happen, and they are a serious contender. What do you think?

Nice work!

Beautiful! Love the inlay work.

Edit: Stupid phone


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Mike said,
Thanks Joe! I used aquacoat. It takes 6 or 7 coats but sands easily. I leave the sandings in the pores and just wipe with a cloth after sanding and apply again.

Actually the more detail the better for me! I'm planning to try RL later this year. I'll be spending the next several months trying to get my ducks in a row.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Thanks! yes those are Rubners. I think they are the best value for the money. Very smooth operation. On this one I splurged for the ball bearing on the end of the tuner shafts, and it made an already smooth tuner model operate like "butter".