Building my first classical guitar

This blog will follow my progress building my first classical guitar. It will be fairly slow moving, but will contain plenty of photos and detailed instructions on how I did it all. I will be mainly using Roy Courtnalls book 'Making master guitars' to help me. I will be using the plan for Antonio De Torres Spanish classical guitar, purchased here - http://www.guitarplans.co.uk/Torres.htm Materials: Soundboard : Lutz spruce (AA grade) Backs/sides: Walnut (AA grade) Neck: Spansh cedar Fretboard: Ebony Tuners: Schaller with ebony buttons

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Blog moving

My blog has moved here.

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The final piece. It's oversized by 3-4mm so I've got some room to play with. Once this is done I'll shape the neck.

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The heel on this neck will be made from 2 laminations, not 3. This is the first one being glued up.

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Squaring a block of cedrela from tonetech luthier supplies with my axminster jack plane. After an hour of regrinding the chip breaker to be flush with the blade, and honing the blade this is a really good plane for £27. I had it set thick to get those shavings, but set to fine you can get a level piece of cedar quickly with this thing.

In the background is my rosewood back, which is proving to be a total nightmare to thickness. It requires attack from multiple directions and it tears out constantly. I am going to get this down to 2.5-3mm and finish it with my 2 scrapers, even if it does take hours.

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Another load of photos showing the cutting of the headstock. The veneering was spot on, no gaps anywhere. I used my card template and used a mixture of my bandsaw, chisels and file to shape the headstock.

Pretty happy with it. It's slightly thinner round the middle compared to the headstocks on my guitars but only by 2-3mm. I like the simple shape.

I'll leave it as it is until the neck is joined to the body, then I'll do the final sanding.

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I bought some rosewood veneer from touchstone tonewoods. It was about £2.50 for a piece, and about 5mm thick if I remember correctly.

I planed and scraped it down to about 3mm and sanded it flat with an improvised flat sanding block. I then thicknessed the cedar headstock down a bit with my block plane and sanded that flat. It's now glueing dry. My headstock design is basically the standard Torres headstock from the Courtnall book, but without the squared edge. I like it - nice and simple and easier to get right on my first build than a more intricate design. 

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Here is a much better scarf joint on the second neck. The angle is 22 degrees (oops), but that's not important. I had to use wood for the laminated heel on the headstock because my scarf joint cut wasn't good enough and the original headstock ended up way too short.

For some reason this is the part I struggled with most so far, but I'm glad the second one was better. No gaps on the joint anywhere.

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4 piece back completed and roughly sawn. The photo makes it look wonky - it's not.

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Joining the extra rosewood to the left of the lower bout.

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Joined rosewood back which was not big enough. I'll have to make up the width of the lower bout with spare wood from either side of the upper bout. A 4 piece back on my first guitar!

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Template finished.

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Starting to cut the bracing pattern out as a template to use on the top.

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The tracing of the Torres plantilla onto some card.

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Lamination done. Got loads to take off the sides yet so I can clean the joint up a bit. Not an invisible lamination by any means, I'll have to work harder on that next time. Used a bit too much glue.

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Rosewood back issue

The rosewood I received after jointing is not wide enough to fit the plantilla shape on. Bit annoyed about that as it's hardly a big guitar plantilla as it is.

I've decided to get a backstrip when I get paid and use that to pad out some of the shortfall, the binding and purfling channels will cover the rest.

On the other hand, for B grade wood the Indian Rosewood looks fairly good when planed and scraped a bit. Nowhere near straight grained but a nice wave to it.

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I did my scarf joint yesterday. Cedrela is so easy to work and planing it was a real pleasure.

I cocked up the sawing of the joint, but managed to rescue it by planing the joint to fit. My headstock angle is now almost 19 degrees. Doesn't matter though apart from aesthetics. Need to thin the width of the neck and headstock a bit and laminate the heel next.

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Indian rosewood back and sides, and cedrela neck wood. Hopefully I'll be able to start this tomorrow.