While I was in the mode of bending wood for the bindings of the $100 Challenge guitar, I decided that it was time to bend the rest of the sides for the viola da Gamba. I'll let them sit for awhile before doing the fine joining and gluing. All those clamps are simply holding them in place.

Got some brace wood cut. I'll wait till I have all the body parts prepared before I start to assemble.

The copper fits inside of the Tornavoz laminate like this.

It gets epoxied to the inside of the laminate like this. The laminate acts as a clamp pressing the copper against the mold. This is just a dry fit, I wouldn't do this over the soundboard for real!

FE17 has a Tornavoz, which is a section of cone mounted just below the soundhole. Tornavoz literally means to turn the voice.

It is a controversial device wrapped in mythology. The trouble with it is that we don't really know how to optimize it, how it originally made the guitar sound, and why it stopped being used. There are very few extant examples of guitars with Tornavoces still in place.

Many, many, builders denounce the Tornavoz as mumbo-jumbo. I'm putting it in anyways!

Some copper sheeting and some mold making material.


Draw the diameters of the cone section and cut it out on the bandsaw.

Sand it fair and cover it with packing tape. Packing tape is my universal mold release agent.

And wrap it in fiberglass, about 4 layers do the job.

The laminate is off, the pattern made, and the copper cut to shape.

I've finally decided upon what to do for the neck. I will be using a old neck of mine, this is the first neck that I made for my first ever guitar build back in 1987. I never used it because when I cut the slots for the tuning machines they were seriously wonky. Wonky is a technical term meaning awful!

About 2 years ago I cut of the old head and glued on new wood and shaped a new head.


I wasn't planning on using this neck as it has a Panormo shaped head which doesn't leave quite enough room for the arches of the Torres shape. As expediency is the name of the game, I've decided to use it anyway.

It does, however, have a little something extra. This is why I never tossed it out years ago.

Not having a fancy specialized rosette cutter, I've been using a drill press mounted "fly" cutter. I don't have much to cut, so I just spin it by hand a couple of turns, then chisel out the inbetween.

Glue in the rosette and plane it smooth.

Detail.

The Green Ash that I am using bends so easily, just wet it, let it sit, then bend it cold using only hand pressure. Then clamp it into the form and let it dry. Once fully dry it is "set" to the bend.


I made up some brackets to mount on the solara so that the sides can be moved here, allowing me to free up the side mold for other tasks.

Just when I thought that I was done with the guitars I decided to get involved in the Musical Instrument Maker's Forum $100 Acoustic Challenge. The idea is to build a playable instrument for less than $100 expense. I've decided to build an exploration of the Torres FE17 guitar-Francisco Taregga's first and most famous guitar.

Start date is Christmas 2009, completion is March 14 2010. Not only is cost an issue, but so is expediency!

Step one is to gather the material. Don't worry, I'm not using the saw for this stage! It is just a convenient table.

Ash body, Pine top. There is some evidence that Torres may have used Pine on some of his guitars, so that is good enough for me. The Pine that I have on hand is nice and it was cheap-I bought it right from the sawyer.

Here is the drawing for the plantialla (body shape), and bracing. The drawing was prepared by Luca Waldner who performed the restoration work on the original. The drawing is sitting on the plantilla that is prepared for the high 5mm dome that FE17 has.


I will be using some of the rosette material that I had made up some time ago.


I was going to make up a rosette like I used on the SE117s, but ended up making one that uses three of the herringbone lines rather than just the one.


Detail

A few more details.

My guitar was fitted with pegs, in keeping with the original instrument. The tow little holes at the top of the head would have traditionally been used for ribbon, which I plan on adding. The ribbon was used to hang the guitar from a peg on the wall.

While small in size, these guitars are NOT small in sound! They sound great! The small body is a treat to hold, and the short, 604mm scale, is a treat to play. Especially if you have small or weak hands.


The two other guitars were fitted with machine heads to make tuning the strings easier and more precise for the girls. I used a Selmer style head shape as it is smaller and fits in well with the size of the guitar.

The heel on the maple guitar.

And the tail graft on the maple guitar. Cocobolo bindings were used. Cocobolo is a rosewood.