Hawaiian Steel Guitar Project-Part 1
Jul 19, 2012
The bookmatched pieces for the top and back are carefully jointed and glued-up using a flat board as a backer. Small wedges are tapped in place to add pressure at the joint. The clamps laying on the boards add weight at the joint to keep the two halves from popping upwards.
About ten years ago I traded some art for enough curly Koa to build an acoustic guitar. The seller emailed before he sent the wood from Hawaii and let me know he just milled up a curly Mango tree that same day. He gave me an excellent price, so I added enough Mango to make another guitar, as well as a few longer pieces to build a Weissenborn style guitar some day. The longer pieces were needed because the Weissenborn style guitar is a hollow neck design, with the one-piece sides extending all the way up the neck to where a small headstock block is attached. Traditionally made of Koa, the guitars are played using a slide, and have a beautiful resonate sound. Click here for more information on Herman Weissenborn and the history of Hawaiian steel guitar.
Back at the office a few months ago Chuck Bickford, over at Fine Homebuilding, mentioned he’d also been wanting to build a Weissenborn at some point. (He’s an excellent player, as well as a builder of his own guitars.) So we split the price of a plan from Stew-mac and got to work on lunch breaks and after hours to get the project going.
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The bookmatched pieces for the top and back are carefully jointed and glued-up using a flat board as a backer. Small wedges are tapped in place to add pressure at the joint. The clamps laying on the boards add weight at the joint to keep the two halves from popping upwards.
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Chuck came over on a saturday afternoon and taught me how to bend the sides. This is a whole lot of fun. A section of pipe is heated with a propane torch, then the wood gets lightly sprayed (to keep it from burning) and then as you apply pressure over the heated pipe, it seems to turn to plastic.
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Here are the two Mango sides clamped in forms as they cool down. You can see the Maple side in the foreground that I used for the first practice run.
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With the two sides of the form back together, it's time to add the mahogany end block and mahogany kerfing.
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Here's a photo of an early morning end graft inlay of curly Mango with Ebony and Holly borders.
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With the top plate cut to shape, the rosette channel gets added by using a small hand-held router. A piece of 1/4 inch thick masonite, screwed to the router base, pivots on a small brad nail tapped into the center of the top.
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Back to the bending pipe to bend the traditional rope binding stock that will get inlayed into the top.
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Two pieces are used, so they can start at the exact center of the bottom of the circle, and meet at the top. The top joint will be hidden beneath the fret board.
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A Holly stringing is added to the outside circle and then everything gets planed smooth.
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Spruce curved braces are glued to the back panel and a center strip of mango is added to reinforce the joint between the two back plates. Then the kerfed lining on the sides gets notched to fit the bracing, as the back is fit.
In the next blog, we'll carve some beautifully straight grained spruce, and tackle the critcal top bracing.
Comments
I would love to see this in a video or some kind of downloadable plan.
Mike
Mwascom, they mention the plan they are using came from stew-mac. Here's a link to the page there. Note that some of the reviewers say that the plan lacks a lot of details.
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Books,_plans/Plans/Weissenborn_Guitar_Plans.html
Kevin, you're right. The stew-mac plans did lack some detail, but there are a bunch of great photos of original weissenborns on the web. Also, Tony Francis builds some beauties over in Australia and this blog that was a big help.
http://slide.forumactif.com/search.forum?search_author=Tony+Francis&show_results=posts
He also sells parts like original spec tuners and bridge pins, etc. - he's a great guy to deal with.
John
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