A Pair of Ditsons

[Dean Kumbalek]

I sure enjoy seeing your build Joe and hope to share in your Ditson adventure!

Good luck to you and all you guys!

Freegift Wells

[Joe Sustaire]

Well, I got a little bit of work done today.

First off I built a pattern to taper the sides with a router. Saw this jig on one of Jesse's builds and he explained how to lay it out for me.




This one tapers from 4 1/8" down to 3 1/8". So I measured to the waist on my pattern, then I started my curve 2" before the waist. Curving down to where the shoulder comes around at the top end. Drew a nice graceful curve, then straightened out for the 3 1/8'' part. Cut my pattern out on the bandsaw, screwed a piece of 1x4 to the back to clamp in the vice. And there it is.

I band-sawed most of the waste off to make a cleaner cut with the router, but even so, on the first try, climb cut, the router grabbed the grain and split the side. Luckily, these sides were thick and I had managed to re-saw them before I started so I've got extra sides. This time, I back-cut with the router first to remove the waste without the chance of the bit grabbing, and this worked great, all sides shaped and ready to bend.





Backs are joined and sanded also.


So on to the bending. I use a propane torch heated bending iron, (aluminum really) and use a paper towel sprayed with water between the iron and the water sprayed wood. The wet paper towel idea came from watching a build by Ed Schaeffer. I had had problems before with scorching the sides, which then entailed lots of sanding to clean up. This pretty well eliminates that problem.



My iron.




Ready to bend.




And the first side in the mold.




And both locked in safe, for drying.

This is the first time I have shaped my sides before bending, sure looks nice in the mold. And is going to be sweet not having to carefully plane down the fragile sides while bent.

That's where I stopped today,
Till next time,
Joe

[D_H_G GUITARS]

Joe really looking good, and shaping the sides before bending saves a lot of time too!
I am too lazy to make a jig for shaping before bending.

Thxs
Hugh

[Joe Sustaire]

Back again having gotten a little further down the road with these two.



I parked the first set of sides on my building board, so I could get after the second set.



Got the second pair of sides bent and safely in the mold.




While the sides were acclimatizing, I got started shaping braces for the backs.



Gluing down in the go-bar deck.



And shaping them into a nice parabola, I had cut them into a nice V shape on the tablesaw, so this went pretty fast.





And here's how they look.


Then I started shaping some nice mahogany into neck blocks and end blocks.





They shaped up nice, and following Hugh's example I even cut up some extras so they're ready to go when I need them.






And then it was on to the clamp juggling act. Trying to figure a sane way to line up bent sides, neck and end blocks for gluing. So far, I've gone at it a different way each time. This worked pretty good using the simple mold held in the vise. I also cut my sides to length on the bandsaw, with the top square edge of the side on the table, and just touching into the blade at the marked point. I don't remember who told me about that but it worked good.

So, slowly but surely as I try different ways of doing things, hopefully I'll arrive at a place where I know what I'm doing. At least part of the time!

Thanks for watching,
Joe

[Joe Sustaire]

Continuing on.



Bent sides glued up with neck and tail blocks.

Last time, first time I built on a building board I attached the top to the sides by breaking up kerfing pieces and gluing them in by hand, tentalone style. This time I decided to attach the kerfing to the sides first and then glue to the top on the building board.




Kerfing glued.




Getting after it! Shaping the end blocks and kerfing on the dish
.



And shaping the kerfing along the sides with a sanding board with a top angle on one end and back shaping angle on the other side. I wanted to keep the top edge of the guitar fairly straight along it's length.




And the sides being glued to the top on the building board, using the minimal bending form to retain the body shape. Kind of a combination of mold building and building board method.




This is the ladder-braced one.




Back kerfing glued with millipede legs.




And the x-braced body. These things are so sculptural.
I had intended for the lower x-braces to end into the top, but when I got to attaching the sides they were about 1/16" tall so I cut shallow pockets for them into the kerfing. Felt right at the time. Who knows what I'll do next time.

The ladder-braced body has also been brought to this point, just haven't got a photo of it.

That's it for today.
Thanks for looking,
Joe

[Raymond]

Joe,

Now I can say I'm looking forward to hearing the difference.

Nice clean work. And you are cranking them out too. Thanks for letting us tag along.

Raymond

[Eben]

You truly have an artist's hand for bracing, Joe

Looking great!

E

[Garry Hallam]

Joe I'm just loving watching you build these too. You sure know how to make progress. Keep up the good work joe my friend.

Garry