LoonSong Guitars

 The Celtic braid design for the rosette created on AutoCAD.  Each knot is made of five separate pieces which is then repeated 20 times to complete the braid. 

 First the ebony base must be made. Here a channel is routed into a blank board to fit the individual ebony pieces. Made from tiles because the ebony grain must radiate outwards 

 Now the sound board is routed just beyond the perimeter of the sound holes to accept the ebony tiles. The sound hole itself will be cut out much later. 

Close up view of the 3/16” router bit used to route out the inlay channel into the sound board

 Along with the ebony tiles there will be an inner and outer band of black and white trim or “purfling "

 The ebony is now almost fully inlaid into the sound board. It and the purfling trim will be glued and sanded flush with the sound board surface. 

 Paper outlines of the individual Celtic braid pieces are glued to the surface of sections of white mother of pearl shell. Here, a very fine coping saw is used to cut each piece out 

  As the shell pieces are cut they are laid out to inspect the progress of the braid. Then they are numbered and stored in order. 

 The full paper pattern of the braid is also glued to the ebony ring surface. This serves as a routing guide to place the pieces of shell. 

 The channel for a section of shell braid is routed and fine trimmed 

 Each shell piece is also wet ground and fitted to its routing channel by hand 

 Then the pattern paper on the shell and ebony is sanded clean and flush to the soundboard 

 The neck is built up of five wood layers; Outsides are Mahogany, then Maple and finally a center of Ebony. The five wood layers give the neck increased strength over a single block of wood. The mahogany and maple is cut down the center and one side is reversed to give opposing grain to the other side for even more neck strength. 

The five pieces are now aligned, glued together and clamped overnight..

The major issue here is to keep the individual pieces from “skating” on the glue out of alignment when the clamp pressure is applied. Sometimes the use of alignment pins is necessary.

 The raw neck is now complete. It must be shaped and be brought to the correct dimensions for mounting onto the guitar body 

 The top of the neck must be perfectly flat for the fretboard to be attached. Here the neck top is sanded on the perfectly straight granite sanding surface like the sound and back boards

 The general shape of the final neck is cut out on a band saw. The cut is made well outside the neck outlines to allow for final shaping later. 

 A channel must be cut into the center of the top of the neck for the insertion of a truss rod. This rod can be adjusted to compensate for any bowing of the neck that might occur when the strings are installed or general bowing over time. 

 The neck will be connected to the body of the guitar by a mortise and tenon joint secured by ¼  bolts and dowel nuts. 

 The shaping of the neck’s contour  is done quite quickly using two grades of  specialized rasps called “dragon” rasps. These are covered with hand formed with dragon “scales” that remove a large amount of wood in each stroke 

 The neck is now roughly formed to its final shape. Further sanding will be required… 

T he side wood is thinned to about .08 to .1” and must be wetted and heated to bend. This is an electric, temperature-controlled heating 

 The wetted side wood is placed on the pipe once the temperature is about 300oF.  As the wood heats and steam is created in the wood fibres, the fibres  will “relax”. Then a small amount of pressure will cause the fibres to bend. 

 Care must be taken not to over stress the bend the Florentine cut-away wood to the point where the side wood will crack, just enough to facilitate the bend. 

 In later years I designed a guitar side  bender.

This design uses a 6” by 36” silicon heating blanket sandwiched with one guitar side wood sandwiched between two spring steel slats.

With the vertical waist press opened, the “sandwich” is placed on a wooden mould of one guitar side. The waist position on the wood is marked and this mark is lined up to the centre of the waist position  of the mould. Then the press is closed and snapped tight.

The heat is turned on and set on the temperature controller to 330oF. Once the temperature almost reaches the 330oF the waist press is slowly lowered, pressing the wood in at the waist point.

 The mould above is used to hold the bent sides into the correct position for assembly of the sides to the neck block, tail block and if there is a cut-away in the guitar, the cut-away block 

 With the sides in place. The mould is closed and the sides are pressed into position. The blocks are dry-placed to check their shape and position before gluing the side assembly together 

 A cut-away block is required to connect the treble side of the guitar to the Florentine cut-away section of guitar side. To properly align the block, clamping must be done from the front as well as the back of the guitar. 

 Once the neck block, tail block and Florentine cut-away block are all glued in place , the final shape of the guitar is  set. The connected sides can be released from the mould. 

 The sides are now ready to be assembled with the guitar back and then the guitar front to form the guitar body 

 One of the more critical requirements when cutting the channels for guitar binding and purfling is that the cut be made vertically. This usually means in line with the sides of the guitar. 

What is required is a way to allow the router to be moved through three degrees of freedom; 1) forward and backward, 2) sideways right and left and, 3) up and down while holding the router perfectly vertical with the guitar held perfectly horizontal.

This router allows for the three degrees of freedom  while an adjustable bed holds the guitar body such that the facing surface is reasonably horizontal.

 Here, the binding and purfling channels have been cut into the guitar body edges in preparation for the application of the trim wood strips

  The maple binding is bent to form along the top, back and cut-away edges. The binding is glued and taped in place with “high-tack” tape until the glue is dry. 

The edge binding is then scraped with cabinet-makers scraper to bring it flush with the guitar body wood 

On the front of the guitar the purfling consists of multi-coloured Abalone shell bounded by two black-white-black bands 

 The outline of the properly positioned bridge is cut through the finish with a sharp knife. 

 Then the finish under the bridge is removed very carefully using paint remover and chisels as a scraper 

 The footprint of the bridge must be clear of finish to get a strong glue bond between the sound board and bridge. 

  temporary clamping caul is placed against the bridge plate inside the guitar and the bridge is glued and clamped, here with four wide C-clamps with Teflon pads. 

 In this 12-string there are two “insurance” screws inserted through the bridge after gluing .  The holes for the screws are filled with wooden Ebony plugs and made flush with the bridge body. 

The Bridge on this 12 string guitar does not use any pegs to hold down the strings. Following the Ovation guitar design, there is a hole in the bridge itself through which the string is fed.