Lyn #15 - Solid-body Nylon Acoustic

[robin]

Hey Guys,

Time to start a new build. Actually I started about 3 weeks ago but had grave reservations that I would get even this far, but as I have I thought I’d better document my progress and mistakes.

I’ve never owned a classical nylon string guitar before so guess what, I’m going to try and build one. It will be similar to my solid body acoustic with the piezo pickup only with nylon strings. And like my last few guitars it will be built using only hand tools.

This may come as a surprise to most of you but I was not able to buy a classical “bolt on” guitar neck. I guess those things are frowned upon by the classical guitar aficionados. Go figure! So I thought it was about time to build my own neck.

I know that most of you will say I’m mad (and you're probably right) and it won’t work (and you're probably right), but as this will only be a prototype it will be made out of what I have laying around, that being a laminate of 2 pieces of pine and 3 pieces of marine plywood (for stability). Apparently a nylon string guitar has about 1/3 the tension of a steel string guitar so I thought it might even work so I would give it a go.

I thought if I can’t make a neck out of pine I sure won’t be able to make it out of Maple, so I might as well save the $$’s and try a pine prototype first. If it is a success, bonus, but lacks stability I will just strip the hardware off and build a maple one. I figure I have nothing to lose.

When I started my research I found out that there is no such thing as a “standard” size neck for classical guitars. So I bought a cheap (and quite frankly, nasty) Rosewood fingerboard, so that has determined the width. The profile? I have no idea, so it will be done completely by feel and what feels comfortable to me.

Pretty much a make it up as I go along type deal.

So progress so far:

Cut the pine and the ply.


I thought it would be easier to give the individual pieces a rough shape before gluing. It also gave me the opportunity so rebate the centre strip of ply for the truss rod channel.


Glue the lot together


Add Headstock wings


And you end up with this monstrosity

[robin]

After roughly shaping the headstock, I used a plane to shape and square the sides.


Used coping saw to shape headstock


Drilled starter holes for tuners


Finishing off the tuner space.


So that's the Headstock roughly finished, showing some of the tools used.


Next job will be to glue the fretboard on, and profile the neck. But that as they say, is a story for another time.

cheers guys
rob

[Simon Barden]

Looking good.

I'm a bit surprised that you're putting a truss-rod in, another classical no-go area like bolt-on necks. As classical necks are normally wider, thicker and the nylon strings have far less tension than on steel stringed guitars, they don't really need a truss rod. Of course it will work, but you'll probably find that the neck just stays flat without needing to tension it at all.

[gavinturner]

Looking great Rob. As always, jealous of the skills man. I am interested in how you measure and cut the fret slots so if you could detail that part I would be very eager to read! Do you do it before or after the fretboard is radiused, and what do you measure with?

cheers,
Gav.

[FrankenWashie]

Another sterling job from Mr. Robin! The pine/ply laminate looks really great.

I assume it is going to be similar to a bolt on neck, without the traditional Extended neck heel?

[robin]

Looking great Rob. As always, jealous of the skills man. I am interested in how you measure and cut the fret slots so if you could detail that part I would be very eager to read! Do you do it before or after the fretboard is radiused, and what do you measure with?

cheers,
Gav.

Hey Gav, just a follow up on the how's, where's and why's of fret slots. (From an absolute rank amateur)

This is the mitre thingie, and the Dovetail pull saw that I will be using


a different angle of the thingie


The saw fits behind the front plate, like so.


It was originally designed to take a saw blade about twice the thickness of the Dovetail, so accuracy will be a bit problematic.

This is the trial I did on the off-cut of the fretboard. Because accuracy is so important I used a very sharp pencil to mark the slot line, but my tired old eyes had trouble seeing it when I positioned the mitre above it. I found the best solution was to use a Stanley knife to score the wood, which made it much easier to see. On the left is a trial cut, next to it is the Stanley knife score line. The fret was hammered home and seems to be quite secure. If there are problems I guess I can always glue them in.


As I said earlier, I will cut the slots into the fretboard while it is still square to make sure they are true 90 degrees to the FB, I will then shape it to the taper of the neck.

Accurately measuring the fret positions will be paramount and will be done and checked, and then checked several more times. According to Mr Google the key is to measure fret positions from the nut so if a mistake is made with one fret it is not compounded as you move along the neck. I will then double check my measurements by measuring the distance between each fret as against measuring from the nut. I think I'm getting paranoid.

I hope to get the slots cut this weekend, I'll let you know how it is goes.

Cheers
rob

[FrankenWashie]

Hey Gav, just a follow up on the how's, where's and why's of fret slots. (From an absolute rank amateur)

This is the mitre thingie, and the Dovetail pull saw that I will be using


a different angle of the thingie


The saw fits behind the front plate, like so.


It was originally designed to take a saw blade about twice the thickness of the Dovetail, so accuracy will be a bit problematic.

This is the trial I did on the off-cut of the fretboard. Because accuracy is so important I used a very sharp pencil to mark the slot line, but my tired old eyes had trouble seeing it when I positioned the mitre above it. I found the best solution was to use a Stanley knife to score the wood, which made it much easier to see. On the left is a trial cut, next to it is the Stanley knife score line. The fret was hammered home and seems to be quite secure. If there are problems I guess I can always glue them in.


As I said earlier, I will cut the slots into the fretboard while it is still square to make sure they are true 90 degrees to the FB, I will then shape it to the taper of the neck.

Accurately measuring the fret positions will be paramount and will be done and checked, and then checked several more times. According to Mr Google the key is to measure fret positions from the nut so if a mistake is made with one fret it is not compounded as you move along the neck. I will then double check my measurements by measuring the distance between each fret as against measuring from the nut. I think I'm getting paranoid.

I hope to get the slots cut this weekend, I'll let you know how it is goes.

Cheers
rob

I favoured using a marking knife for clarity's sakehttp://https://www.carbatec.com.au/w...ble-edge-pfeil

I found it also made it easier to use a thicker straight edge and maintain squareness.
With the varying grain in the rose wood that I had used on my test board I found it difficult to gauge cut depth, but that comes from experience and care I'd guess.

[WeirdBits]

Wow Rob, that's my kind of crazy. Fantastic!

[dave.king1]

My young brother made a steel string acoustic using basic hand tools, no truss rod so the neck was a bit thicker.

From memory it was a slightly odd size in both scale and body so he had to do the calcs for the fret locations, it both played and sounded remarkably good.

Good luck with the build Robin, like the rest I will be looking on in awe

[Kick]

I'll be following this thread Rob! Nice build and I have lots of respect for guys like you!