Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Some more progress shots of carving the neck and making a headstock overlay. I used the technique of roughing out the neck profile at frets 10, 5 and 1, and then carving out the material in between. I must have used every carving tool in Jim’s workshop, plus a few a brought myself, but the most usef...

kiwigeo wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 04, 2025 6:03 pm

Nice score. Looks like you're now fully in the clutches of WAS

Oh yes, I’m chasing the timber dragon alright.

Ah, that’s the tricksy medullary rays that you see on the horizontal. They’re always perpendicular to the grain, which you can see less prominently going vertically.

I stopped in at Timberzoo in Geelong today for a stickybeak, and because I have no self control I came away with a few bits of northern silky oak. It’s beautiful stuff, and I picked out a few well quartersawn pieces. Initially I was thinking of necks, because they’re 140x32mm, but as I was driving h...

Beautiful! I’d love to have a go at a resonator some day, although there’s a lot of appeal in a brass bodied one. Maybe if I ever get decent at slide guitar…

Sad to hear, Rod! It sounds like he lived a full life, though.

Hopefully you’ll still be sticking around, but without the headache of moderating. I may pop in from time to time but to be honest Tom my heart is no longer in guitar making. Events of late have forced a life re-focus. I'm glad some of my tools went to someone who's going to put them to good use. T...

I’m only a newbie Martin, but I’ve very quickly come to understand that your input into this forum has been huge and wouldn’t be what it is without you. I’ve also appreciated the warm welcome you gave me, and all the beautiful tools you sent my way! Hopefully you’ll still be sticking around, but wit...

I might have to try it with and without on some scrap.

I think I picked up the epoxy pore fill regime from recommendations for use with TruOil, which I figured was similar enough.

Following this one with interest. I bought a tin of PolyX satin to use on my current build, and I was planning to do a Botecote epoxy pore fill underneath.

Thanks Mark! I had that same issue with the depth - I was taking three shallow passes with the router to get to the target depth, but that meant I was resetting my depth for each slot, so they ended up very slightly different final depths. It didn’t look right, so I used the deepest slot to set the ...

Cool, I'll get some normal shellac and give that a go. A small tin - I don't think I have the patience for French polishing .

That said - I’m aiming to use Osmo PolyX as the finish on my next build. Would that work to seal the channels as well, or would that compromise the superglue’s bond?

I've tried to be careful with that. I glued the bindings on with Titebond Original, but for future builds I quite like the look of the technique where you tape the bindings on and wick superglue in between the tape. But the general recommendation for this approach seems to be spraying the binding ch...

Yep, I have become a committed supplicant at the altar of superglue and ebony dust, and I have learned to love the linisher, despite it taking my fingerprints off a few times.

Oh yes, my bad! Not sure if I can edit the poll without losing everyone's votes - Martin?

Do you have a preference for a particular species of spruce, Alan?

Do you know if there's any visual indicators of stiffness with King Billy, Martin? Apart, of course, from the obvious quartersawn grain, free of knots etc.

Hi all, I'm interested to hear people's experiences with different wood species for acoustic bracing, either falcate, x bracing or other traditional patterns. In particular, I'd love to hear how Australian natives work for bracing, such as bunya, King Billy pine, Australian red cedar etc, and also f...

Thanks Alan! Some great ideas on that Pinterest link.

I think I can really appreciate the benefit of a CNC for some of that more intricate inlay work.

Thanks Martin! I cut off a slice of the needlewood and ran that through the drum sander to get it about the right thickness (or height, I guess), but from that I cut the strips slightly wide and sanded them down to the width I needed to fit into each slot. I routed the slots with a 6mm and 3mm bit (...

Some more progress shots. I spent pretty much all day working on my fretboard inlays. I could have banged out some 6mm dots in about 15 mins, but of course I can’t make my life easy like that, so I decided to make full-width inlays of what I now am pretty sure is ivory needlewood, not macadamia as I...

It’s ‘lived in’, Dave! This is Jim Cargill’s home workshop, where he runs luthiery classes on Saturdays, after working eight days a week in the storied Cargill Guitars shop in Seaford. It’s had years of numpties like me making a mess of it, so I’m amazed it’s as organised as it is.

Some more progress shots. Spent a good chunk of the day getting sore hands from scraping ebony bindings, and thanking the gods for ebony dust and superglue. Started work on the neck, which is laminated Fijian mahogany with an ebony strip. I also sliced off a bit of what I think is macadamia to use a...

If I remember right, he said he uses polyurethane glue that foams up a bit, which fills any little gaps and gets into the kerfing for a good hold.

I agree, the weight’s a bit much, but I guess he’s trying out a few things at once. The experimental back and top bout bracing didn’t appeal to me much, but the sides seem like an interesting idea.