Vectric Customer

This one will have a piezo electric pickup kit installed this week, but is completed other than further tweaking of the string notches and string heights. It sounds pretty good already.

The neck is red oak with a bocote spacer layer under a padauk fret board. The top panel is 1/8" thick curly ambrosia maple with a 1/4" wide bocote separator strip, the bottom panel is a 1/8" thick lighter red shade of padauk. The bowl is 11" diameter and cut to 3-1/2" height. The 3D mode in the center of the weave is one that comes with Aspire clip-art. The chair cane weave pattern is a 3D model I created in Aspire. The sound holes are cut through the weave, but the weave on the bottom is not cut through. Java gel stain to enhance the weave and other V-carved details.

CarveOne

Wow, sweet!

Way cool!

Sweet. Looks like it would be an expensive find in a Moroccan bazaar.

Angie

Ps...how about a tutorial on that weave...

Thanks very much everyone.

Here are some close up photos of the bocote spacer layer, large pistol primer fret markers, and the sound hole weave.

The spacer layer is actually a 1/8" thick by 1" wide strip of red oak with a 1/8" by 1/4" strip of bocote glued to each edge of the red oak strip. Only the bocote is seen. This spacer layer allows the fret board to project onto the top panel.

The fired pistol primers are my "sort of trademark", and it's far safer to hammer them into the pockets than live primers. Actually, they look better and I just press them into the pockets with a flat block of wood until flush. They are a snug fit, and the tung oil finish on the fret board helps lock them in when it dries.

The weave is actually simple to create Angie. The screen capture shows a pair of horizontal vectors and a pair of vertical vectors that have been offset enough times to form the basic square grid. The a single 45 degree diagonal is offset enough times to fill in the square grid, sloping left and sloping right. Above the vectors is a small half circle that has been flattened a little by scaling. An ellipse will work also, but the flattened circle has slightly more abrupt sides. Once that is drawn, open the "Create shape from vectors" tool and select all grid vectors and set those as the rails, then select the flattened half circle as the shape and click on Done. That creates the weave model. If you want to cut through the wood in the "weave holes" use the "Create vector boundary from selected component" tool to create vectors to use for pocketing the holes through the material. This is not used on the bottom panel where I did not want sound holes.

I used a 1/32" tip diameter tapered ball nose cutter from Precise Bits to cut the weave patterns and used 10% stepover.

You can find good examples of weave patterns online by searching for Cane Weave and similar terms.

CarveOne

Eclectically Elegant CarveOne !!!
scott

I installed dual piezo electric pickups, output level potentiometer, and phone jack in this guitar today. The piezo elements are wired in parallel. This is a very nice sounding guitar, and possibly my best effort so far.

CarveOne

True works of an Artisan.
I would love to sit down and pull some tunes out of these.
Very Nice Indeed.

Purty!!

dwilli9013,
I would love for someone to do just what you mention so I can record/video it. I have heard a rumor that there is a cigar box guitar player in my area. Maybe I can find that person.

scottp55,
Thanks Scott.

CarveOne wrote:dwilli9013,
I would love for someone to do just what you mention so I can record/video it. I have heard a rumor that there is a cigar box guitar player in my area. Maybe I can find that person.

scottp55,
Thanks Scott.

If I was coming to my home town for the holidays in Ferrum Va. I would definitely look you up Eastern NC is right close.
Again beautiful work.

It's still a pretty good hike from Ferrum. I'm about 30 miles south of Emporia, Va. down I-95.

CarveOne

CarveOne wrote:It's still a pretty good hike from Ferrum. I'm about 30 miles south of Emporia, Va. down I-95.

CarveOne

Yes that is a right good jaunt then. I have a brother in Hampton Rhodes Virginia. This would put me considerably closer.
Please do post some audio of these when you land someone to take em out for a test.
I have sat in on some bluegrass sessions back home with a couple of guys that play cigar box banjos. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference in the hands of a skilled musician.
Add in a scrub board and old wash tub and some clothes line and you have hours of entertainment.

An update:

I eventually sent this guitar to a friend and her young daughter in Florida. She greatly improves the appearance of the guitar over just having me in the background ...

They are learning to play it.

CarveOne

Thank you for sharing all the pics and tips/methods to your creation! Excellent work as always!