Hi All.
Back in 1862, the renowned Spanish luthier Antonio Torres Jurado ("Torres") built an experimental paper mache guitar to prove that it is the top (soundboard), and not the back and sides of the guitar that gave the instrument its sound. Since that time, several other folks have built them. I have even used paper mache (and chicken wire) as a kid to build a dinosaur and a moose head for an art class, and more recently a couple of Halloween masks. It seems like all I need is a guitar head, neck, and a soundboard, and the rest of the sound box can be made of either cardboard and paper mache, or perhaps chicken wire and paper mache.
There remains some doubt as to whether paper mache sound boxes can project sound as well as wooden boxes, so if they turn out to make poor acoustic instruments (volume wise), we should still be able to electrify them with a piezo or magnetic pickup or two. We also can try building one with a resonator cone to see if that could improve sound projection.
If you think about it, paper mache offers so many design shape possibilities that it seems like a natural choice for inventive instrument builders like those who participate in this website.
I can already foresee Steam Punk Paper Mache guitars.
[Photo from Wikipedia]
So, I'll begin my research and what useful information I find, I'll post it here. If you have any additional information, comments or ideas, let's hear them. At some point in the (fairly) near future, I will attempt to build one, and hopefully a few other folks will build their own and we can compare results. With a few generations of paper mache builds, we may see such things as fiber glass coated paper mache or some other innovations that could yield a new building technology for home made instruments.
I.) Information on the Original Paper Mache Guitar Built by Antonio Torres Jurado ("Torres")
1.) From a guitar history web site...
Up until this point the instrument (early Spanish guitars) were small and narrow. Antonio de Torres (1817 - 1892) worked with the design and construction of the guitar. He increased the size and experimented with anything that would improve the sound, and was especially interested in volume. He was the first maker to use "fan" bracing underneath the top. He once built a Guitar with a spruce top and paper mache back and sides to prove his theory that it was the top that produced most of the volume. He was the father of the modern guitar.
2.) From a Luthier's forum:
Post subject: Torres Cardboard (AKA "paper mache") Guitar
The sound box is actually made from a material more like a thick poster board or for those familiar with it, matte board or letramax. I saw this guitar when it was there in 1991 with an exhibit that was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has always been of interest to luthiers as it was thought to be an illustration of the lack of importance of the back and rims regarding guitar sound.
The soundboard is made with two pieces of spruce and in it's interior it has two harmonic bars with six lateral reinforcements on the sides of the mouth (sound hole) and one "pitch bar?". The range consists of seven longitudinal rods, but does not have the two typical Torres "barraje" (frame or bracing?), but between each of the seven is a little (one) that unites them. It is a truly unprecedented "barraje" in the work of the Maestro.
The bottom is internally reinforced by three cross bars and two longitudinal, (which are) much wider and higher than normal, with cedar. The "aros" (rings or hoops? - sorry) have reinforcements along its entire length.
Romanillos states it is the thinnest Torres soundboard in existence, less than 1mm at the edges. That is veneer like. It's hardly believable Torres made it so thin in the first place.
You'll need to join the web site for more details. I'll do that on another day.
II.) Information on Modern Implementations of Paper Mache Guitars
A.) More recently (1986) a guy called John Hunt made a "Papier Mache, Chicken Wire Home Made Guitar" and a video of him playing it is on Youtube (which I can't see from China). Here is this link.
This video was reviewed for me by Oily "Strat-O'-Nine-Tales" Fool, who wrote:
It's a good video. The guitar sounds pretty good, it has a warm tone, and the song is a jPiedmont blues with good lyrics. Can't see his amp in the pic, but he's playing it fingerstyle, no slide, and lightly amplified. The guitar is a 6-string jazzbox size and shape, with a Venetian cutaway, f-holes (which allow you to see how thick the papier-mache' is - which looks to be about 1/2 inch thick), trapeze tailpiece, Tune-O-Matic-style roller bridge, no pickguard, SSH pickup configuration, and what looks like a commercially-made regular six string neck with a shallow carved heel.The bridge is angled to address compensation / intonation issues, probably, and looks to be pressing down into the top so that it bows some.The papier-mache' itself looks like old newspaper, with perhaps a greenish tinge to it from the glue / ink?. The entire guitar body, top and sides (and presumably, back), are papier-mache'.
I'd say this one sounds good enough to try in this amplified config. Don't know how it would sound just acoustic.
The original paper mache guitar built by Torres used a spruce sound board as I recall, and it had internal bracing under the sound board, as well as some bracing in the back. If John Hunt's bridge is sinking down into the top, and it is a wooden sound board, then it likely needs additional bracing around (under) the bridge. If his sound board is paper mache, all I can say is he's doing great to get that far with it. The idea of a strong sound board made of paper mache sounds unlikely unless it also includes internal bracing.
I think I'd prefer a more traditional wooden sound board, but if paper mache can be made to work as a sound board, then great. And why stop there? Maybe a chicken wire neck and head assembly coated liberally with paper mache and perhaps some internal wooden support. Maybe bamboo skewers for frets. Any ideas for tuners? I'd guess nylon strings would be best.
Well that's all I have for now.
-Rand.
Replies
Hi All,
My first bamboo chopstick & wet wipes cloth & polyurethane "box" sagged a lot, so it looks very ugly. It does resonate some, so I think the technology is still feasible, just need to learn how to build them so they look good. I should be able to do a better job, so will try again using a sturdier framework and likely string wrap it to help keep the cloth material from sagging when the polyurethane is added. I also need to buy another can of polyurethane, as the three layers of cloth on this first box ate up the 1/4 can of polyurethane that I had on hand. I think I'll get some more super glue as well, because super glue will allow me to quickly glue together the frame and to tack the cloth into place before I paint the cloth with polyurethane. The cloth is also hard to cut with scissors, so I might have to rethink how I can cut the cloth into strips. Need to give the box more consideration as to how I will attach the neck-thru. Will likely incorporate additional support for the neck thru in the bamboo structure of the box. So, will likely do a computer drawing to help me think thru the design, so it will likely take a couple weeks to build, rather than trying to slap it all together like I did for the first box. I do believe building a wooded box is easier than building a box the way I'm trying to do it. Especially if I just use butt joints backed up by corner posts.
-Rand.
Rand,
Your comment "wrapping the frame with string" gave me another idea (which may be what you had in mind?): you could make an outside wooden frame, then essentially make the pattern shown above with string! You're just making a net! That might give you enough of a frame, if you can tension it up enough, that you wouldn't need to do much wooden cross hatching at all. Just lay the soaked fabric strips directly over your net. Heck, you might even be able to find fishing net locally that could serve this purpose...more than one way to skin a catfish...
Hi Oily,
Chicken wire is my paper mache frame work material of choice, but I have yet to find a source in China. Probably have to get out of the big city and check out the stores in smaller towns in farm country. So, in the mean time the throw away chop stick seem to be a viable alternative. Just have to figure out how to work with it and the polyurethane soaked cloth. Sagging is an issue. I like the idea of wrapping the frame with string to later support the polyurethane soaked cloth so it won't sag so much. But using bamboo skewers or toothpicks with a complex cross hatching pattern seems like a bit of over-engineering, but I'll keep the idea in case my first 2 or 3 boxes don't workout.
Right now the material seems more like a drum. I'll add a couple more layers to try to strengthen the box and make it look better. Then I'll add a neck/head assembly using a neck thru design and a 2mm plywood veneer soundboard. Got to go.
-Rand.
Rand,
Interesting, the little details that suddenly become important. Fabric sag! This got me to thinking about the geodesic structure of chicken wire, and how supportive that is. What if you did something like this with bamboo chopsticks, or even better, those thin bamboo skewers in packs of 100 that you see used for BBQing?:
Could tie the nodes together with string, or just glue 'em. Might even be able to piece the smaller interior crossbeams from toothpicks? Looks like it could be a fair amount of glueing or tieing, though. Can't wait to see how the Wet Wipe box turns out!
Hi Oily,
I have a box frame with bottom side built, but the resulting box readily flexes, so I will have to shore up the frame some more before I add another layer or two of dried "wet wipes" cloth tissues impregnated with polyurethane. I did notice that when you "drape" fabric over the bamboo chopstick frame that you should do it in a two pass operation to avoid having the fabric and sides sag. On the first pass, just paint around the edges of the cloth where it will come into contact with the frame. When the polyurethane will act as a glue securing the edges of the cloth to the frame. After the cloth has dried, you can begin you second pass, this time painting the polyurethane onto the cloth sides. If you do it all in on pass, then the weight of the polyurethane in the cloth will cause the cloth to sag, producing a pretty ugly box [like mine]. Another way might be to tack the cloth onto the frame using fast drying superglue, then paint on the polyurethane. Just be careful not to glue your fingers together.
-Rand.
Chopsticks is what I was probably thinking of when I mentioned "thinly sliced bamboo" a few posts ago out of which to make a cheap framework to drape the PM or fabric over.
BTW, Re home plastics: Here's one half of making casein formaldehyde ( adding formaldehyde to the resulting curds gets you the real deal - drill down into the Comments on this Instructable): http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Plastic/
There are a couple of online sites that advertise casein guitar picks, so this must be how they make 'em. Huh. Who knew?
Not sure I would try this at home, though. Stick with the paper or fabric glue formulations, I'm thinking. Will you post sound files of your first PMBG when you get a chance?
Oily
Hi All,
I like the idea of building a box frame out of cut throw-away chopsticks and then to use dry handi-wipes impregnated with polyurethane to build up the sides. This really isn't paper mache anymore. But I think the results will be a harder, almost plastic-like, and hopefully resonate better than cardboard and paper mache. I'll post a photo or two of my chopstick box frame before I apply cloth to the sides.
Seems we are heading in the direction of fiber glass, which is too messy for me to do at home. I wonder if there are other relatively clean ways to produce plastic boxes. Well I guess I could build or buy them if I can find a place like Tap Plastics in China. Anyone try building a box guitar from plastic before? How did it turn out? I know the Fluke and Flea ukulles are built from plastic and don't sound bad.
-Rand.
Hi Mark.
Those foam mold ideas sound interesting, but I am planning more traditional paper mache modeling techniques once I get a good ''formula'' worked out for making good sounding boxes. My next paper mache box will again be based on the Fancl boxes, but will use water-based polyurethane saturated ''handy-wipes'', which are more cloth like than tissue or newspaper strips. I'm hoping this will produce a harder surface that will ca use the sound to bounce around and project more [sound louder]. Seems like maybe I should be treating the inside of the box with polyurethane as well.
With my current ''PMBG'', I've painted the sound box with another thick coat of red wallpaper paste and after that dried, this morning I jut painted it with a clear coat of polyurethane. I pan to add a couple more coats to see if that will help with projection. As it is now, it's pretty quiet - okay for a practice guitar.
-Rand
Simple is good, but sooner or later a creative, inventive, experimenting, whack job like me is going to get bored and want to explore out into (As my adult children would say) the "potential for epic failure" zone.
I have tried the foam as a mold then try to chemically dissolve it twice, once building an R/C plane fuselage, another on an attempt at a semi-hollow body electric guitar body. Neither was exactly a resounding success. The plane fuselage stayed a bit mushy and the inside surface would no longer allow adherance to add blocks and parts..... I ended up reverting to a conventional inside out mold and joining the halves internally.
The guitar worked, but didnt sound good, or as hoped and was later scrapped.
But here is what I am thinking of trying.
How about a ring and some sparse ribs with a coating of "linen mache" or paper mache built up in a way that leaves the top surface of the "ring" exposed for glueing a top or soundboard to. Or how about a man made "gourd" and skin for a primitive style banjo body?
Hi All.
Because the red paper mache box sounds fairly good, I decided to add a recycled head and neck. I also added two small 3/8'' sound holes. The resulting 3-string stick dulcimer sounds okay, but does not project sound as much as a wooden box would. I guess it's like the difference between building a CBG from a 'paper/cardboard' cigar box and compared to one built from a wooden cigarbox, although I can't say for sure because I never built a CBG from a paper box. It makes for a nice practice guitar.
Anyways, I applied another thick coat of my red paper mache paste. Its drying tonight. Tomorrow, I will apply a few coats of water-based poly-urethane,string. Will let you know how it turned out.
-Rad....
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