Lyn #15 - Solid-body Nylon Acoustic

[gavinturner]

Looking great as always Robin. Watching with rapt interest.

cheers,
Gav.

[robin]

Thanks Gav, but as you will see I am finally running out of talent. lol.

[robin]

Next job was the side fret markers. As with my fretless bass I have gone with bamboo kebab skewers. They are the right size for side markers and I like that you can see the fibres of bamboo. It gives it a rather organic look.

It was a tight fit so I just pushed it in as far as I could…….



Then roughly trimmed it off………



Tapped it home with a mallet, a final sand and they are done.



Next job was to drill the holes for the tuners.

[Zandit75]

What's this lack of talent that you're talking about??!!

[robin]

Unfortunately this is where I started to run out of talent.

A lesson for the less talented among us, I think I should have drilled the post holes before cutting out the slots for the strings. As the central core of the neck is plywood as I drilled though the headstock I had several bad tear outs of the thin layers of ply. If I had drilled first and cut the slots later I think I would have avoided this. Ah well, we live and learn.

Drilling the post holes.



This is one of the bad tear-outs



This is it after some Timbermate repairs. I have made no effort to colour match the repair, so it will be quite obvious when finished.



Another blunder is that my depth marker on my bit (some painters tape) was set up for the widest part of the headstock, but as I moved up the headstock I managed to drill right though the central core. If the sides had been parallel it would not have mattered but as it is tapered it did not align with the other side and it has made a bit of a mess of the inner holes.



Again, if I had taken more care I should have avoid this. The lesson for today kiddies is, DON’T RUSH!!!

[robin]

I lost count of this one, but after about 40 hours I think I have finally finished the neck.











Now to start on the body. I still haven’t decided exactly how I will do this body. All I know is it will be another laminate of pine and plywood.

Cheer guys
rob

[robin]

What's this lack of talent that you're talking about??!!

You were too quick of the mark Zandy. Now all has been revealed. lol

[Zandit75]

Meh, that's recoverable!!
Unfortunately, my test run on my headstock did not come in quick enough for you. I had already thought far enough ahead that I drilled my tuning holes before looking at drill out the center core.
I'd suggest painting the inside of the cavities in black. That will at least disguise the issue, and it could provide some nice contrast to the rest of the headstock.

[Simon Barden]

That's one option, or you could try and use some watercolours and try to match the surrounding wood colour on the timbermate. Or fit some veneer strips on the inside of the slots.

I've always felt that the post going straight into a wooden hole without any decent support is a weak point of classical headstock design. It would be nice if they could sit in say a Teflon bushing. but that would mean drilling a bigger hole on the inside of the cutaway than the outside edge, which would be very difficult unless you came up with a special tool to do it.

You could I suppose, reduce the diameter of the last couple of mm of the plastic spindle to make it thinner and so fit a bush pressed into the normal-sized hole. But then you'd have problems where the sides of the slot weren't parallel, so that the tuner entered the hole at an angle.

[robin]

Thanks Zandy and Simon, but it doesn't worry me that much. I've tried to colour match Timbermate in the past and failed miserably, so I'm not even going to try to hide it.

All my guitars stand or fall on how they play and how they sound not on how they look. I know its a cop-out but I look at their imperfections as character. lol.

You are right Simon about the design fault of classical guitar headstocks, and I would be more concerned if the strings were steel, but being nylon strings I think that tolerances are a little more flexible.

Cheers guys.