Here's that Martin again

 Neighbour Kier came round the other day, with a broken Martin:

Nothing too disastrous, just an open top joint in the lower bout:

You can see it here. The x-brace is loose too:

Here, I’ve got the joint held open with wedges while I glue it up.

The usual spool clamps do the business on the rib, while the cam clamp takes care of the x-brace:

Following clean up of the top, a strange creak revealed more damage. The opposite end of the x-brace is also loose:

That's a bit of a fiddle to fix, but with a 'spoon' made from bent wire and wielded through the sound hole with a torch and a dental mirror, it was soon glued and clamped up.

Another fall

Another guitar appeared this month, attached to a sad looking chap concerned about the health of his daily player. "The sounds is not coming out" he said, as he explained how it had landed on the kitchen floor with a sickening crunch.

No wonder. The back to rib joint of this Martin OO-X1 Java has opened from upper bout to lower, fortunately quite cleanly:

No matter though - it's an easy fix. After a practice run with the spool clamps, we can open the joint with some wedges and introduce some Titebond:

One glued up all the way along, we can align the back and rib and clamp up, cleaning off squeeze out as we go along:

After a couple of days, we can release the clamps and clean off any more glue. Fortunately these guitars don't have any binding, so we just tidy any marks in the joint with a little matt black acrylic to match the original finish on the bevelled edges.

New OM Project

I built a OOO/OM cutaway for my son Tom, years ago for his 18th birthday, and I like this small guitar over the dreadnought I usually play. Inspired by the Martin OMCPA4, I'd like to build another.

Sometime in the dim and distant past I acquired some part finished items for an OM sized cutaway. I have most of the parts in a semi-finished state. I have this spruce top, with a tacky rosette and full length split... usable? maybe...

I have a set for the back in Sapele, in usable condition:

There is a matching set of ribs, partially bent

There are some nasty plywood end blocks:

I have a semi finished neck, design for bolting. It's very shallow and could be very comfortable

It's got some damage at the peg head. I might do a peghead overlay on the back as well - it has a rosewood overlay on the front already.

As I said...

I've got a couple of rosewood fingerboards, saddles & bridges in stock:

 And some fretwire left over from another project, along with a mock tortoise pick guard:

To supplement that lot I bought a nice block of spruce for the bracing. We'll split that down on the bandsaw.

I'll need to sort out some back bracing and some tuning machines & some binding & purfling; but I'm sure I have some bits and pieces in stock.

Precious

‘Precious’ was my first build. It is a dreadnought style guitar (looking a lot like an HD28), featuring:

• Indian rosewood back & ribs
• Spruce soundboard
• Mahogany neck
• Ebony fingerboard & pearl dots
• Rosewood peghead overlay
• Herringbone purfling & white binding
• Herringbone soundhole inlay
• Finished in clear waterbased lacquer
• Bone nut
• Ebony bridge & bone saddle
• D’Addario medium gauge strings
• Gotoh tuners

It has wonderful sustain, loud & strong tone... A little bassy, but then it is large & Rosewood.