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Russell Rose, the proprietor of Avandel Guitars, is
making a Special AGW 000 Model, with walnut back
and sides. We thought this would be an interesting opportunity
to take you through the process of building a quality acoustic
guitar. If you have any questions, or want to make general
enquiries about Avandel Guitars, please contact Russell
Rose
1. Top and Back Plates:
The first stage in the building process is to join the
top and back, on most guitars the top and back are created
from two pieces, which are known as book matched, this means
a piece of timber half the width of the top or back, and
twice the thickness, is sawn in half then folded out like
the pages of a book and glued together along the side seam.
In order to get a really
good joint (which is critical), I plane the two edges to
be joined and hold them up to a light source to ensure no
light can be seen through the seam to be joined. I then
place them in a clamping jig (Picture 1) which applies both
downward and side to side pressure to ensure a clean joint.
Picture 1
Once the glue is set
the plates and then thicknessed to there final thickness
(allowing a little for final sanding).
2. The Sides: The
Sides are thicknessed in preparation for bending and then
bent by one of two methods either by hand on a bending pipe
(Picture 2) or In a bending machine (Picture 3), most of
my guitars are done in the bending machine, except for one
off shapes which I bend by hand.
Both methods use steam
which passes through and softens the fibres of the wood
allowing it to be bent. The Guitar in the bending machine
is the AGW signature model Guitar. The bent sides are then
set into a body Mold to dry (Picture 4)
Picture
2
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Picture
3
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Picture
4
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I would like to say
a big thank you to Andy Fellows of Prime Timbers for donating
the timber being used to construct this AGW Guitar.
If anyone is looking
for a quality supplier of excellent quality Tone Woods drop
Andy a line by emailing, andy.fellows1@ntlworld.com,
he is happy to deal with orders from the trade and hobby
builders.
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