"Snapper" Archtop

[Lefty]

Wow Grant. This is going to be a great build to watch.

Can't wait,

Lefty

[whitespruce]

Well, I have been looking through my old "to build" topics and see I have left a lot of them hanging (although a few have been completed and I need to post up the "endings").

This one is nagging at me again, so I will see what I can dig out to get going, soon as I get my bar fret guitars under control.

Once I get this "retirement thing" figured out, I should be able to get more done

G

[Pat Foster]

<snip>

Once I get this "retirement thing" figured out, I should be able to get more done

G

I'll be watching for tips!


Pat

[whitespruce]

Pat, lots of folks on here to watch

Just so you know what approach I will be taking. The back and sides will be carved from one block (probably basswood) that will be between 4 and 5" thick, since the entire body gets shaped into a 3-dimensional carving. The top will be glued onto that after most of the shaping of it has been finished. The top will be spruce.

The first step will be to carve a full sized mock-up (from foam) to work out the shape details. This is typically what I do on my larger bird carvings (the smaller ones, I model from clay or wax). I will be doing a bolt-on neck, but since there is no sound hole, I will have an access panel in the back. This will be the shape of one or two of the big "scales" in the center of the back shell (carapace), and should be pretty much invisible (just lift up the edge of the scale to open).

So, the construction of this instrument will in no way resemble any traditional build. (oh, I did take time to draw a basic pattern today and cut out a few pieces of foam)

I will work on this a bit at a time as I need a break from other things.

G

[whitespruce]

Well, the need for a short break came sooner than I expected. I used the big turtle shell to draw a half pattern of the body. Mailed the last of our income taxes, and had a bit of time available. So I cut out some insulation foam pieces to the body outline pattern and glued up a 5" thick block. Forgot to take any photos of that stage, and just got busy with the surform rasp for about 45 minutes.

So here is what I did.








This is just a rough out of the shape. You can see the line drawn around the edge...that is the bottom edge of the shell. So, a part of the top detail gets carved into that and the spruce top will get glued onto a flat surface on top. This shape is actually the guitar back and I will refine that a bunch before I commit to wood. This will all make more sense as it goes along. Yes, I am "winging it" as I do this, so don't feel bad if it doesn't make a lot of sense at this point.

G

[michael]

Can't wait to see how this turns out. I see you started thinking about it 5 years ago!! Hopefully you'll get to put it in action soon. I'll be watching.
Mike

[Eben]

Okay, probably left field here, but I think a turtle leather pick guard would be pretty killer...



Urb

[whitespruce]

E, that part will be carved and painted to look like turtle skin, so the leather won't be needed.

Well needed a few more breaks the past couple of days, so dabbled a bit more on this

Refined the foam turtle shell shape a bit and established the lower edge of the shell. Then sanded everything smooth




Then glued up some scrap spruce and cut out a dummy top plate


Fits like this




Now I have to work the trickey parts....how the legs et. al. fit in the whole deal as a reasonable facsimile of a guitar body. For this, I go to my typical process when I was doing bird carvings....make a wax or clay model.

I reduced my patterns to 1/3 scale and started working things up in a chunk of modeling wax. Here you can see the shapes coming together




I will refine this until I am satisfied and then work these shapes into the foam and scrap spruce mock-up. Then I will have the basis for doing the real thing.

I dragged a 4 foot chunk of 5" x 10" basswood that has been air drying for 30 years into the shop. That will glue up into the body blank.

Stay tuned

G