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I’ve got a number of ideas rolling around for this, I’m hoping as I start to pull my materials together I’ll be pushed in one direction or another. I’m leaning towards a 24.9” narrow bodied parlor, steel string with slotted peghead.

Something old: a number of years back my wife picked up a pile of derelict looms, while one did get fixed up and make its way into use, I’ve been looking at this pile of wood for years. I’m pretty sure there’s a maple neck in there.
Something new: I’ve never done a slotted peghead
Something local: There’s a white spruce 2x12 from a local mill that’s been sitting behind my shop for the last couple of years, I’ll try to get a soundboard from it. I also may use local birch for back and sides, but as my design comes together that may change.
You pick two: I’ll go with parlor and price cap

I’m planning on scrounging up the materials from what I already have for this, I think any money I spend will mostly be on hardware. My resaw capacity is limited so I’ll likely stay to a 12” lower bout width.

I’ve got a bunch of projects in the works now, so this will probably be a project that will be slow to come together, but since I’m thinking about my plan and hope to pull out some materials soon, it’s time to throw my hat in.

Welcome aboard! I can't wait to see where the wood takes you. I know what you mean about the resaw capacity. My wood top banjo design just happens to be twice as wide as the resaw capacity of the only bandsaw I had when I designed it.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Well I pulled out the 2x12 from behind my shop and it really wasn't what I remembered, I either used it or maybe it never existed.

so.... to plan B for the top... I had a number of goats for several years, in their pen was a pretty nice spruce along with several other trees. They girdled them all. so for the last 5 ish years I've been wondering about the spruce. so....



I'm not going to use this top for this build, it's not really big enough. The tree was barely big enough and I was hoping to get something out of the bottom, unfortunately there was an ant colony living in the bottom and they took out a lot of the bigger wood. I do like the color and it has some potential for a different funky build someday. The other really cool thing about this tree is that it was as dry as can be and has been really kicking out the heat in my sauna.

so... on to plan C...among the pieces of loom, were some Fir? 4x4s with pretty tight and straight grain which I have been looking at for some time, so I pulled one out along with some Maple? and something else?

the top

back and sides, unknown wood

neck blank, maple?


I have built a couple of 4 piece top and backs, including my last challenge build, and was hoping not to go that route for a while, but what the heck

I'll let the wood acclimate in my shop for a while, and in the mean time get a few more pieces and some drawings together

I'd like to have a couple of bandsaws in the long run, I've been limping along for a long time with 6 1/8" capacity. I started out with ukuleles and continue to build them, so for that it's adequate, but now that I'm building a few guitars I definitely want an upgrade, especially for using local woods

I'll try to get some better pics on the next round of updates, they seem to have lost a lot of definition compressing for the thread

The back/sides look to me to either be cherry, maple, or birch... Maybe beech... From here at least.

It's pretty common for maple heart wood to be pretty dark.... Much of it would pass for cherry if you didn't know better.... I have heard of folks selling heartwood maple as cherry - it just doesn't smell like cherry..... I may even have a guitar body made of such from an eBay purchase I made years ago. It looks kinda like cherry but kinda not when you have real cherry in hand.

Thanks

On to plan C! FYI in case you haven't been reading the rules thread. The Spending limit is being relaxed. I mention it in case that factors into your top wood selection. This is in no way casting dispersion on a 4 piece top, you just mentioned you'd rather not go that route. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

FWIW, I have seen literally dozens of four piece backs. Usually in the form of tiny wings added on the lower bouts to make up for narrow boards. Usually with Spruce its nearly invisible. I would say, especially in the spirit of this challenge, go right ahead with your four piece top!

I typically do 3 piece backs, you only need 6" of width for a dred. I like the aesthic of the 3 piece, being able to use narrower wood is a bonus. As a matter of fact, my entry in this challange will be my first 2 piece back.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I'm finally getting back to this project after a bit of life and work getting in the way.
My ideas for this have narrowed a bit. I've decided that I want to use wood from the loom for almost all parts including fretboard, bridge and binding. It may be a little low contrast, but I'm ok with that. I've also started working on a rosette that references weaving, I haven't tried tile rosettes yet so I'll add that to my new part of this guitar. Also for local I'll use local materials for lining and back bracing.

For some photos


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I really like your rosette.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

One thing would be to just stain the back and sides a bit.

Back in Ye olde days - most of the finishes were pretty dark due to the varnish cooking processes and the shellac refinement techniques. Straight unbleached shellac is pretty brown/red... As are most old varnishes... And you see this sort of finish (say a cherry stain) more or less mimics what you would get from an unbleached shellac finish....

I second that I want to see how you made it if you have photos.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I don't have a lot of experience with stains and such, but on a whim last year I picked up some dark shellac for experimenting. I can't remember what I was going to do with it but I still had some on my shelf so I put a few coats on a scrap after reading your post, and it looks pretty nice. So a bit more experimenting is in order. Thanks for the suggestion, I wasn't thinking along those lines but maybe I'll have something else new to add to the build


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Thanks

I've got it mostly filled and leveled now too, a few little spots to clean up. It turned out better than expected generally, In my mind it was going to fit a little tighter around the outside, but I kind of winged it so all in all I'm pretty happy and learned a few things.

First I drew out my ideas, I had thought through the layout and figured that there were three sized pieces I needed. After picking some woods that I thought had a good color contrast at the end grain, i thinned down some pieces to about.06". Next I cut those into strips, stacked them, glued them together at the ends so I could cut them apart later, and ran them through the sander to .06, .12, and .18. As I assembled them, it turned out that it was best to clamp them together, then wick in thin ca. Eventually I had a log of my pattern about 8 in long. I cut thin slices and placed in the chanel.


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Very cool and thanks for the explanation

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Progress has been slow, but wanted to start posting a little more regularly on this. My humidity has been problematic all winter, when I was busy in the fall I let it go a bit, but it kept me from working when I had time. Now that I'm trying to get some work done the weather has been problematic. It dropped to -40 here for about a week and dropped my shop humidity to about 25% for a few days. So I cleaned up my humidifier, new filters etc... And got it back up. The weather jumps to around 20ish for a week and some and humidity was up to 60+ for a few days. I finally have got things under control for a week now and have begun glueing again. In the mean time I started roughing out the bracing.

It turns out that I'll be using entirely local materials for the bracing and linings. I began to mill up some Sitka bracing stock (from a reputable supplier) and was surprised to find that it came out like spaghetti. I grabbed some white spruce from the interior of Alaska to compare it to. It was night and day lighter and stiffer. I wouldn't make any conclusions about spruces from this, just these pieces. It's funny though, I had recently come to the conclusion that Sitka is just stronger/stiffer than white spruce, but apparently not always. Among my flawed line of thinking is that...I have a reforestation business and have planted millions of spruce on spruce clear cuts. I have climbed over and walked and stepped on thousands and thousands of spruce. White spruce branches break more readily underfoot than Sitkas. One thing I did learn from this is that I should not step on my Lutherie woods to determine their strength:).

Oh yeah.. Also started on the neck. I need to build a decent jig for this, I put this one together a long time ago and it could use an upgrade or two.

Yeah, skip the step test

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"