Three piece backs with joint faces dressed, glued and clamped. The decorative strips are red, gold and green with rosewood centre.

Jig and router for dressing join faces

Three piece back joined, this one with MS model red and white with black Rocklite centres

All five soundboards glued and clamped. The glue dries in an hour or so, but I leave them overnight to be sure.

Here the fingerboard is glued and clamped to the unshaped neck. Lots of clamps, not for lots of pressure but to clamp even pressure everywhere.

Now a jump to the instrument ready for lacquer.  You can just see the tape over the soundboard area that will be covered by the bridge; after lacquering, this is removed so the bridge can be glued onto bare wood. You can also just see some of the side dots on the fingerboard, showing this instrument to be left handed.

Now it goes to Dave Wilson.  He will have it for around a month, spraying and rubbing down several coats.  It will come back gleaming.

With the back trimmed, it’s time to fit the side reinforcements.  Here they are glued and clamped.

Finally the back and sides are complete, lightly lacquered, ready for final trimming of the lining and final adjustment to receive the soundboard.

And here is the soundboard glued and clamped.

While the glue is drying is a good opportunity to work on the neck.  Here the head has been cut to shape, had its veneer added and the tuner holes drilled.  The rough heel block is glued and clamped.

I have to scribe the curve of the soundboard onto the sides, so it fits without being distorted when glued and clamped. It’s important to do this accurately, as modifying the fit later is fiddly and time consuming, involving taking wood off, testing, and repeating as necessary.

Here is the scribed line, drawn in white pencil to show up on the dark wood. I trim off the area above the line, then check that the soundboard is a good fit. Then I’m ready to add the top lining.  This has been bent on the heated bender and left to dry overnight.  The ends of the back braces will be routed away and covered by the binding.

Fitting, gluing and clamping the lining is the same as for the back lining.

Adjusting the sides and lining so the back fits perfectly is a time consuming job. Here are back and sides adjusted and notched to receive the back braces.

The back will fit perfectly, without having to be pulled down by clamps.  The clamps will only glue it on.

Back glued and clamped.

Here is the latest on the guitar – bouzouki build.

After gluing the heel and tail blocks yesterday, today I scribed the curve of the back onto the sides and cut them down.  This means the back will fit onto the sides neatly without having to be pulled down.

The lining has already been bent to shape on the bending iron, just as the sides were.  Now I partially shape them and glue them to the sides.  The lining will give gluing area when I glue the back to the sides.  Here they can be seen clamped while the glue dries.

And here are the sides with linings glued and ready to smooth and trim.

Before preparing sides and lining to receive the back, I started on the neck.  I routed a channel for the truss rod, then prepared and glued the head stock onto the neck.  Here it is glued and clamped.

Cody from the US says he’d like to see more in my News page about what goes on in my shop.  So OK Cody, here goes.

Currently I’m building a guitar-bouzouki for an Irish musician.  He plays accompaniment and tunes, so I’m building it octave mandolin scale, which will suit it to both. He will tune it GDAD.

Back and sides are African Blackwood, the soundboard is figured Sitka. It should be a great instrument.  The full scale guitar-bouzouki has 16 frets to the body, so this shorter scale instrument will have 14.

This musician already has two of my instruments, so is familiar with my work.

Here the braces have been shaped and glued in place, the go bars having been removed from the bottom two braces.

African Blackwood varies.  Some bends easily on the heated bender after light damping, some less easily.  After an hour soaking, these sides still felt like iron so I left them to soaking overnight and the next day they were fully cooperative.
After bending on the iron, I clamped them in the mould and left them on the top of the stove for another night.

When the sides came out of the mould, they retained their shape perfectly, so can be built into a guitar creating a minimum of stress.

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Here is the back, with outline and brace positions marked, having the centre join reinforcement glued in the go-bar jig.  The decorative centre strip can be seen at the end of the reinforcement.

It’s my understanding the go-bar jig comes from Japan via the US.  So useful, it simplifies all sorts of gluing procedures and makes cleaning up much easier than working round clamps.

I have colour coded the different bar lengths, each length living in a separate compartment by the side of the jig.

Here the soundboard braces are gluing.  It looks a bit of a forest, but there isn’t too much force being used, just a lot of bars to spread the pressure.

Here are the sides, joined with heel and tail blocks, the back and the soundboard.

Always interesting when a guitarist comes to collect his guitar. Today it was Mark Dennis collecting his Mark 3 Martin Simpson model, identical to the one Martin himself plays.

Mark and Vanessa showing how disappointed they are.

Mark already has one of my earlier guitars. Both he and partner Vanessa commented on how different this one sounds and how much they liked both guitars. After playing it for an hour or so, Mark returned it to its case, looked at it, and said ‘That is fantastic’.

Mark Dennis is a remarkable guitarist, playing with energy and great variation in both volume and technique. Here he is playing my latest Verona model on an earlier visit.  He liked it a lot; it took him the best part of a day to choose between the Verona and the MS.

But after several hours of playing each, Mark settled on the Mark 3 MS Model.  Here he is today, clearly not regretting the decision he eventually made.