Hell-o all you wonderful readers of ye olde blogge. I am not dead, but my bank accounts will be soon. The efforts and the cost of building the new homestead are sick. But it is moving in the right direction and before you know it a ramshackle workshop will be set up.  Anyway I wanted to show this. My daughter Li wants an electric guitar and my answer was HELL YEAH YOU WILL GET A GUITAR. In the pic she’s drawing one and I’ve laid out parts and hardware that I happened to have lying around.  ..read more

Remember the nasty, chewed-up bridge patch? That was more like a wide brace of soft spruce? I sure did, and wanted to glue a thin piece of maple so the ball ends of the strings have something more solid to pull against.  First pic shows me doing a smart thing: I held a piece of paper under the brace and rubbed the edges of it so they marked the paper. Then I could measure the width more easily, outside the guitar.  I went back and forth a bit, marking the new patch through the holes so it would end up in the right position. Here you can see the size and shape I worked out by gues ..read more

Hi there. The work done in this post was actually made a couple of weeks back, but I never got around to posting it. Sorry about that.  With the new bridge sort of done I need to remove the old one. It’s cracked and it’s a bit shit so no big loss. To heat it I’ll use a clothes iron but it will be much easier if the bridge is thinner, and flat. So I planed it down with my Veritas apron plane.  Trying to protect the lacquer from the heat with some aluminium foil, I went at it. It was sort of easy.  As you can see it came off pretty cleanly, but I’ll have to clean the surfac ..read more

An old chunk of ebony will be the new bridge for Milo’s guitar. I measured the existing bridge and made a drawing so I didn’t have to bring the guitar to tge frozen hell that is the workshop at the cottage.  First I squared two sides of the chunk, then I drilled two 13 mm holes for the half-round grooves. Then I ripped it lengthwise.  Like so. I cut it to length but kept it a couple of mm long, the reasoning being it’s better to have a slightly larger footprint to cover any boo-boos from removing the old one.  I tried to use a chisel to shape the three-sided pyramids bu ..read more

Having stumbled onto some plywood I set out to make a neck removal jig for the ancient guitar. As with all jig ideas of mine - at least the ones expected to work - I based the design on a readily available product from Stewmac. But mine will have fewer moving parts, and it might not fit other guitars.  The main idea is to apply an increasing pressure to the heel, while heating the neck joint to loosen the glue securing the dovetail. Stewmac solves this with a screw going through a threaded hole in a metal bar, but as I make this with a minimum of tools in the kitchen I’ll go for a plyw ..read more

Back at the cottage with some time to spare, so I soldiered on with the kerfing plane. In this pic you can see the mini bench or table vise from Sjöbergs, makers of the fantastic workbenches. I have it mounted on the veranda with machine screw inserts so it fairly rigid, at least as rigid as the quite rickety house.  One more pic to show you the surroundings. Even in bleak November weather, there is no place as beautiful as this archipelago.  To make the kerfs in the ends of the board I needed a bigger vise so I relocated to the workshop where my bench and shopmade wooden vise ..read more

My friend bought this ancient guitar at an auction, and I’ll have a look at it to try to fix some more or less obvious issues. It’s at least 100 years old so I will tread carefully.  The brand is ”Nya Musikinstrumentfabriken Göteborg” and the instrument is very similar to the parlour guitars from Levin.  Issue 1. A crack in the top with the accompanying loose brace. The top is on the thicker side and the crack is fairly tight so pretty easy [in theory]. Issue 2. The bridge. Not only is it lifting, it has the fret wire saddle and the peg holes are worn. Plus it might be in th ..read more

Hell-o my friendly readers. Please forgive me for being absent for four months. As you may remember the workshop is packed in crates (and heaps) and other stuff is going on. We’ve moved to a new apartment, one of those bog standard ones with no workshop, and we’re building a new house nay an entire homestead.  But when packing stuff away earlier this summer I stumbled upon that fine mahogany bookcase I got from a friend, and I’ve been longing to start working on it. So I chose two pieces with fine grain and cut the edges and ends square. Then I set the kerfing plane and started.  F ..read more

A few coats of shellac on the fretboard, and I noticed the shellac I brought is tinted red since the bass I made. Grr. It makes the alder look a bit like cherry. But let’s keep moving on. Holding the fret slotting jig with the styrene rod fret markers, I saw the slots.  Then I press the frets in. Cut to length at with the ends rounded, because it would be impossible to shape them in situ like I would on a uke with a glued on fretboard.  Ok. Not my proudest moment. Normally I’m quite good at securing the workpiece but this worked.  Continuing with a chisel and planes to ..read more

Before noon the front porch lies in shadow, which is perfect for me. I can’t stand the sun.  I started out by planing the sides with my Veritas apron plane. When it’s sharp and well set up it’s a remarkable tool.  The same plane handles the endgrain nicely. The clamping method was ok but the available bit of railing was a bit rickety.  Taking down the edges of the neck with a sharp Mora carving knife… … and smoothing out the back of the neck with an Ibex thumb plane.  I check the width and taper with the fret slotting jig, in the pic it’s more or less ready for ..read more