Wise Luthiers in Margaret River, Western Australia | Automotive, aircraft & boat

Wise Luthiers

Locality: Margaret River, Western Australia

Phone: +61 8 9757 3224

Address: 27 Elizabeth St 6285 Margaret River, WA, Australia

Website: http://www.scottwise.net

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23.01.2022 With the low braces glued I temporarily put the X brace back in and around it I locate and glue the two tone bars below the bridge area and the finger braces at... the sides. Glueing these next without the X braces in place ensures that the vacuum diaphragm can hold them down optimally as the glue bites. See more

22.01.2022 Cutting out the hole.....a beam cutter (used in making washers for plumbing) in the drill press. I can't remember doing it any other way. With the hole there I can start the top bracing.

21.01.2022 The last braces to be glued down by vacuum are the main X braces, but for ease of working I do some preliminary shaving of the tone bar and finger brace ends wh...ile there is better access. I also roughly profile the braces. For me there is normally a lot of fine tuning of the braces after the X brace is glued and after the top is glued on as well. See more

19.01.2022 The back braces are glued and clamped in the red vacuum press slightly oversized. This ensures there is sufficient pressure on the ends to clamp them properly.... The next day I shave the braces down to the blueprint spec and start fitting the back. The brace ends are notched into rebates cut into the linings on the sides. I use a digital or vernier caliper to check the fit of the brace ends. The picture shows that fitting going on. See more

18.01.2022 The top, back and side panels are thicknessed in a dual drum sanding machine before joining. The picture shows the back panels being fed into the sander. I s...tarted with a home made version of this machine in 1979, which I still use for some jobs. After receiving a big music royalty cheque in the early 2000s I was able to buy this machine, a vertical belt sander, a small planer, a benchtop blade thicknesser and the bobbin sander shown in the last post. They are all still in use, but this dual drum sander is such a valuable machine for what I do....and of course I wish I had a better one! See more

18.01.2022 And then the X brace goes in. It has an arched profile at the neck end of the X, which resists top deformation under string tension and allows for a slight backward neck set, to give an optimal bridge height.

15.01.2022 The spruce top for this guitar is from a billet of Sitka Spruce I obtained in Alaska in the 1990s. It has varying grain width but most importantly even the w...ider grain has great cross grain stiffness. In this regard it is very like the Adirondack spruce used in the original pre-war dreadnought guitars. As you can see from the previous picture of the bandsawing, the wider grain is nearer the edge of the guitar, where more flexibility is desirable. This spruce is very tough and stiff and will suit the heavier strings often used by players of dreadnoughts - most commonly Bluegrass players. I'll discuss more about the bluegrass use of this style of guitar in a later post. See more

15.01.2022 Finally for the top braces, the number one transverse above the soundhole is glued. This time it is more orthodox clamping, with cam clamps. Like the top of t...he X braces this brace has a slight arch built into it which resists the rotational torque of the neck and fingerboard under string tension and also the tendency for the top to sag in front of the bridge. The chisel in the photo is a glue clearing tool, cleaning up the glue squeezed out from under the brace just after it has started to set. See more

10.01.2022 With all the top bracing done, some final brace shaving is done to closely match the blueprint drawing as possible, then the top is glued to the sides. Before ...that at each point where the braces intersect the linings on the sides, the linings are carefully cut with an azebiki, a small curved japanese saw and recesses or mortices are chiseled out using a vernier caliper to check the depth for an accurate fit. Sorry I have no picture of that bit this year. The same process occurs glueing the back, so I'll show that. The top is glued using Go Bars and clamps. See more

10.01.2022 With the top and back plates joined and cleaned up, the shape is drawn on and cut out on the bandsaw, slightly oversized. Before the top is cut out, some strips are cut from the ends of the joined panels. These cross grained strips are used to reinforce the centre joint of the back.

05.01.2022 What I'm up to here is doubling the lower bouts (from the waist down to the tail block) in the sides. I use bamboo veneer, cross grained, which I get from a hi...gh tech surfboard maker (Love Margaret River) Bamboo is amazingly strong in tension and will prevent splitting in the somewhat brittle Jarrah sides. Some of the best tonewoods have this brittle characteristic. Do not be alarmed! The very first Fairbridge guitars are over 25 years old and have Jarrah back and sides and they are doing just fine, and sounding great. See more

05.01.2022 The Fairbridge guitar building blog....

05.01.2022 The Fairbridge guitar blog....

04.01.2022 As I first stated in starting this 2020 Fairbridge guitar I have used a well-defined model, the dreadnought, working from a blueprint for the shape and dimensio...ns. Some the things I have to consider when making such a commonly known guitar model are both to do with tradition and deviating from it. The soundhole rosette is an example. If I was copying the time-honoured Martin dreadnought exactly I would make the rosette out of defined layers of straight black and white plastic strips. However I want to keep my own wave motif and also use some coloured wood in the rosette bands which will tie in with the red colour of the jarrah back and sides at the same time keeping the dimensions of the rosette bands the same as the blueprint ones. This is what I have come up with. The rosette rings are inlaid into channels cut by a router revolving around a pin in the router base. The rosette has a structural as well as aesthetic purpose. It prevents the wood around the soundhole splitting along the grain in such a vulnerable area. See more

04.01.2022 This guitar needs a back. I showed the back jarrah pieces earlier being prepared, joined and inlaid. It is now time to brace and glue the back. The first thing... is to reinforce the centre joint on the inside of the guitar with a cross grained strip of spruce, cut from the end of the joined top blanks.Here's a picture of the strip glued in place and the blanks for the back braces laid out where they are going to be glued. They are located from the blueprint drawing...except one. There's an extra one which will be up against the neck block. If you want to know why, I'll give you one of my long winded explanations..... The knife is there to mark where the braces cross the centre strip so I can cut and chisel out a rebate for the brace to pass through the strip. See more

03.01.2022 Back to the actual construction of the guitar. The glue linings to which the top and back will be glued are clamped and glued to the edges of the sides. Thes...e folding office clips are good for the purpose, but I also use wooden clothes pegs reinforced with rubber bands. The sides have already been profiled to match the curves I build into the top and back to enhance stability and strength. With the sides and blocks (also called the rim) assembly done, I need to get on with the top. See more

03.01.2022 The reason I double the sides like this in the lower bout is that this area is subject to the most damage from dropping, guitar stands etc. The bamboo is light coloured, so I dye it after glueing with a spirit based Jarrah stain.

02.01.2022 With the hole cut I'm ready to brace the top. First I mill the brace blanks from a split billet of spruce similar to the first photos from this build. There ...is a bridge plate there of panama rosewood too. I'll glue the braces in stages, starting with the low flat pieces and working up to the main transverse brace above the soundhole. Most of the clamping will be done in a vacuum press, which pulls a tough rubber diaphragm over the pieces to be glued, resulting in a pressure of just over a kilogram per square centimetre. Many guitar factories clamp this way. See more

02.01.2022 Having marked the rebates for the braces, I cut them out and clear off the glue from the centre strip.

01.01.2022 After a while away from the workshop, these two solo tenors are ready to go.

01.01.2022 The 2019 Fairbridge Festival raffle guitar is all finished! The final day of setup is where a luthier gets very obsessive and focused. Such a relief to have... it done. I'll post some pictures of the finished guitar with some notes and then some little videos of it being played pretty roughly in a few different styles. It turned out just how I wanted in terms of voicing and playability. The whole blog of building this and the 2018 guitar can be seen in previous posts. Like the page and it will help the festival. See more