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I haven't posted much lately, here's a recently finished dread.

Cocobolo b&s, red spruce top, mahogany neck, mac ebony FB, ABW bridge. Combination of hand applied and sprayed 'burst, nitro finish. Sorry about the dusty pictures

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Very nice, I really like the straight bridge

Absolutely stunning!!! As always very, very well done Arnt!!!

This is a guitar that I would love to have and I don't say that often either....

Much as I dread dreads, lovely Arnt!
Nice Coco, great appointments and tradition.

Beyond yummy.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

WOW!!!!!

Beautiful!

Love the burst and the classic styling, great work!

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It will probably be alright.

Nice one Arnt.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

That is an exceptionally handsome guitar, Arnt. Absolutely stellar work, as always. I would love to know how you went about achieving that wonderful sunburst.

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George :-)

Beautiful, thanks for sharing.

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Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement.

Wow. The guitars I make for myself are exactly what I want, so it has been a long time since I've felt guitar envy (despite stunning instruments I see here all the time). That one I want!


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Great craftsmanship!

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Doug

Don't let fear or common sense stop you from trying to build something

I like it a lot. Very nice. Beautiful woods and great looking finish.

James

The thing that I particularity like about this instrument is the size of the binding. Take note all you budding builders. One of the biggest mistakes you can cosmetically make is making the binding too deep. I think anything above 1/4" is not so good looking, and I liked to keep it less than that. 7/32" is a nice round number and if you have side purfling, even 3/16" looks good for the ivoroid or white.
You can get a little larger (1/4") on the deeper boxes and for parlors and concerts, like I said, 3/16" works well.
Just a part of keeping things in perspective...

Thanks everybody, I appreciate it!

George, you should really ask Hans or someone else who is more experienced than me with 'bursts, I only do them now and then. Anyways, I have tried several methods, this seems to give me OK results, with a fairly predictable process:

I start by rubbing yellow "Colortone" dye in alcohol directly onto the bare wood, seal that with clear, before medium brown and finally tobacco brown, mixed in nitro, are sprayed around the edges. I mask the binding and rosette, but there is always some scraping before I can put on clear coats. After those, there is leveling, curing, and finally polishing and buffing as usual. I like to rub the colors directly onto the wood as much as possible, as I think its a more interesting look than some modern 'bursts, which often look a bit sterile to me. However its hard to make it very dark that way (which was the goal with this instrument), which is why I often spray the darker colors. Rubbing is also somewhat risky, as you can get blotches if you are not careful, but its not that difficult to control if you do a few practice runs on scraps.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I agree Hans, I don't like very tall bindings either. The ivoroid on this one was a little less than 5 mm, which I guess is close to 3/16".

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

You nailed that burst! Not easy to get right but you sure did. And ditto on Hans comments about bindings.

I just had a feeling that didn't look like 1/4"+, Arnt. Think it comes from mandolin building where you learn real fast when your are off on the binding...
I have just finished the book on "Building the American Mandolin" and I will try to take out the section on sunbursts and give it away to ya'll. I'll see what I can figure out...

Arnt

The red in the sunburst is a perfect compliment to the color of the back and sides. We don;t see enought red in gutars.

Ed

Well done Arnt!!

Absolutely stunning work as always, Arnt. Makes me want to do another sunburst...


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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Where do you put the batteries in it to give it that glow?

The cocobolo with the sunburst is perfect.

Great job..bet it sounds great too

Beautiful job. You know me a sunburst and I go Gaga. I like like it


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