This Guitar Has Layers
Last week marked two years since I arrived at the Somogyi shop, which is how long I was originally planning on staying. I decided to extend however, to attend the Osaka Sound Messe in May, which is a guitar trade show in Osaka, Japan. And then I will come back for a few more months after that to finish my third guitar that I have started working on.
These last few months I’ve been focusing on my build for the Osaka show. I’ve now got it to the finishing stage, so while there is some down time between the various finish steps, I have a chance to share with you what I’ve been working on.
Starting with the headstock, here is a neat detail which I’d like to highlight and show how I did it.
The split part of the headstock is bevelled on the front to reveal a layer of maple veneer, which frames the shape and emphasises the curves.
The maple does not extend around the sides. The idea being to subtly draw the focus to the split.
There are three layers of veneer on the front of the headstock. Ebony on top, and two layers of maple below. How I achieved this effect was to make the centre veneer layer like this. Maple in the middle, and black stained maple veneer outside.
Due to the many small variables when glueing the parts together and shaping the headstock, it would be difficult to have the black/white transition fall precisely where I wanted it. Also I needed maple veneer under the part that would be revealed by the little bevel in the centre. So I just aimed the edges of the maple to fall partway up the sides of the headstock.
After shaping the headstock I ended up with this, with the maple wrapping around the top corners.
I chiseled out the maple, right up to the very tip of the corner.
Then I fit and glued a piece of black veneer. I did the same on the other side of the headstock.
After trimming flush, the result was to have the maple veneer revealed only in the centre of the split. Credit to Michi Matsuda, for allowing me to use his idea of a split headstock. And to Chris Morimoto, for the brilliant idea of showing the maple veneer only in the split.
I decided to play around with the purfling on the fretboard edge too, to make the side markers.
The idea being to expand on the idea of the side markers from my previous build. First I made a rectangle of Malaysian Blackwood from an offcut of the back, and then wrapped it on 3 sides first with black, and then with maple purfling. I made these layers of purfling thinner than the rest of my guitar, because on some test pieces I preferred the look.
I then routed a rabbet in the bottom edges of the fretboard, the same depth as two layers of purfling.
From the purfled rectangle I made earlier, I cut off pieces for each fret marker, and then cut some pockets in the bottom of the rabbet to accept them.
I fit and glued strips of maple tightly between each rectangle.
Then I trimmed the maple of the rectangle down to the level of the maple strips. Being careful not to touch to black purfling around the rectangle.
Finally I fit and glued strips of black veneer in between the rectangles, on top of the maple.
The result.
When I installed the binding last year, I didn’t do the end-graft inlay. I was trying to think of a new design, and was a bit stuck, so I put it off while I worked on other parts of the guitar. I finished all the other parts of the guitar, leaving me no choice but to sit down and work out what to do. Being a somewhat nature themed instrument, that’s where I looked for inspiration. In particular the layered texture of bark, and sedimentary rock. It was a challenging design process, and I made many versions to figure out how to get the effect I wanted. Here’s how I did the final version.
I made some thin layers of ebony, and cut some squiggles on the edges.
Four layers for each side. I chose pieces with different colours to add to the depth and layered feel.
I arranged, and glued the layers together. One of the challenges was managing the glue squeeze out. Any visible glue would ruin the effect. To have better control over this, I glued and clamped one layer at a time.
Four layers on each side, glued to a backing piece, with a spacer in between to create a small gap.
From that I cut out a wedge, and glued some ebony around it to make a little box.
I cut a pocket in the tail block and inlayed my wedge. I was planning on doing something with depth here, so I had made my tail block a bit thicker to accommodate this.
Then I cut a little shelf all around, to miter in some purfling and drop in a frame on top.
First I fit the purfling.
Then I fit the wedge for the frame.
After fitting the wedge, I cut out the center part. I glued it in, sanded it flush, and voila…
I would like to give credit to Chris Morimoto once again. I have been greatly influenced by his designs, in particular the concept of using 3 dimensions and texture in inlays.