Sal's Flamenco - the bridge

For this guitar, I specially chose the lightest rosewood blank from my stock, as the Flamenco bridge will be significantly longer than usual (18mm longer than the '33 Santos Hernandez!), to achieve the greatest efficiency of the whole box, from the bridge point of view.

Firstly, the nut slot is routed.
The front of the tie block is established with another slot.

Two more vertical routs will determine the wings.

The wings are shaped by chisels, instead, to avoid more saw dust, which power tools, do create lots more. I felt my process with the chisels, scraper, and sandpaper is just as fast, if not more satisfying.

The wings on the bass side is more or less done.

Both wings are completed. But, the Sal Flamenco's bridge is only halfway there.

Sal's Flamenco - neck carving

Establishing the depth of my neck at the 1st and 9th frets with a half round rasp.

With a spokeshave the neck is levelled at those two points. It's great pleasure working with Spanish Cedars. They are not only very workable, but always fills the whole studio with her sweet aroma.

The contour of the neck, the heel and the headstock areas are refined to join seamlessly to each other with various chisels and rasps.

Sal's Flamenco - fretting

After final sanding of fretboard, fret slots are deepened to accept the frets


All frets installed.


Fret ends are cut with end nipper.


An 8" file (in background) ground the ends perfectly flushed to the fretboard, then slightly bevelled inwards.


All frets are markered black prior to levelling.


The 14" file levelled the frets flat.


The flattened frets are crowned and ends are filed super smooth to touch.

This concludes the fretting of Sal's flamenco guitar.

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Guitar Repair #118 - #126 - Setup/Bridge Re-glue - 9 x Classical

Setup on 9 guitars including 3 bridge reglues

9/11/21
I was going through my repair blog entries.
Many early guitars like this wasn't documented properly, if at all.
I wish I did.

Sample sounds of Paulownia guitar

This clip was recorded, on request, to sample the sound of an all-Paulownia guitar as-is.