Here's a shot of the body and sound board. From this angle you can see the rather too long heel. I located the position for the bridge on the sound board by tapping on it until I heard the loudest and richest tone the box produced, and from there mapped out the scale length, etc. The sound hole may be too large, as I don't feel as much air puff out when I tap the back of the box as compared to by two earlier box guitars (all of which use a 2mm thick veneer as both the sound board and the back board).
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The ply (veneer) I used was cut into 8 inch wide strips so I could easily carry it home (I depend on local mass transit, which is pretty good here in Shenzhen). On this instrument, it was too short to run vertically and so I ran it horizontally. Being ply, I knew it wouldn't make that much difference which way I put it. However, if you butt the fretboard up against the plywood sound board like I did on my square box guitar, then the weather gets hot and humid, you might end up with an impacted fretboard which can be forced upward causing the highest pitched frets to buzz and or interfere with each other. I had to cut a slot between the fretboard and the soundboard and re-glue the fretboard to fix the problem.
The long heel was done to make sure I had plenty of glue surface to hold the side strips once the tail piece was wedged in and glued in place. The problem with the long heel is that it makes it a bit difficult (uncomfortable) to reach the highest pitched fret or two. I can do it, but someone with smaller hands might not. I plan to make it about an inch shorter next time.
Interesting that you have the grain for the top running across. If it's ply then it will be running both ways anyway. The long heel looks rather elegant. Very nice indeed.
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HI John.
The ply (veneer) I used was cut into 8 inch wide strips so I could easily carry it home (I depend on local mass transit, which is pretty good here in Shenzhen). On this instrument, it was too short to run vertically and so I ran it horizontally. Being ply, I knew it wouldn't make that much difference which way I put it. However, if you butt the fretboard up against the plywood sound board like I did on my square box guitar, then the weather gets hot and humid, you might end up with an impacted fretboard which can be forced upward causing the highest pitched frets to buzz and or interfere with each other. I had to cut a slot between the fretboard and the soundboard and re-glue the fretboard to fix the problem.
The long heel was done to make sure I had plenty of glue surface to hold the side strips once the tail piece was wedged in and glued in place. The problem with the long heel is that it makes it a bit difficult (uncomfortable) to reach the highest pitched fret or two. I can do it, but someone with smaller hands might not. I plan to make it about an inch shorter next time.
-Rand.