Carving The Future – Building A Guitar (Part 2)
Last time, we looked at the initial steps involved in building a koa wood guitar – finding the wood and a luthier of the requisite mastery to do the job to a high degree. This time, we’re looking at the first steps – and the point of no return! Prepare yourself: we’re carving the wood.
The slab finally landed with Erik in early March 2021. I got an email from him soon after:
"So, now that we have a beautiful piece of Koa as a backdrop/centerpiece, what are you envisioning? Inlays, bevels, other unique details? I’ll take a moisture reading then to determine how long it’ll need to acclimate before we start hacking away at it. That’s a lovely idea, isn’t it...”
So, I had some options to settle on:
Neck carve?
Thickness and profile?
Forearm or belly bevels?
Nickel or wood pickup covers?
…so much to consider! So exciting!
My initial vision was to use a dark binding – rosewood or ebony. I could also see curly maple being used, but would hate for anything to draw the focus away from this stunning piece of wood. I was also wondering if it wants/needs additional colour in the purfling – red with black, or maybe even blue? I couldn’t choose without further context, so we agreed to do a mock-up once we had our Koa in Erik’s shop.
Koa guitar build: back of body paper cutout
Building A Guitar: so many choices…
At this stage, I put a heap of time into deciding on the configuration of the slices taken out of the slab. In the process of deciding which piece for the front, which piece for the back and what else to in terms of different combinations, there were many choices to be made.
Erik’s advice was that 25.5” sounds and works the best on these since the warm body benefits from the tighter, crisper strings. He recommended a 12” radius as his default radius of choice.
So with this in mind, we settled on the following specs:
6 inline headstock
25.5” scale ebony fingerboard
12” radius neck
Erik sent me a mock-up using a paper cutout to show what the pieces might look like.
I then took it a little further to help envision what the finished guitar may eventually look like:
After a great deal of back and forth I went for the last of the three above which both Erik and myself agreed on. It was an almost impossible decision, but I eventually got there! Hopefully it’s one I’ll feel good about when it’s done...
The Waiting Game
After this I didn’t hear from Erik for a while and I started to get a little antsy. He had been busy finishing off a couple of guitars and his dog had a massive litter of puppies. Then suddenly, one day, the following photos appeared in my inbox!
Top and back joined:
Sides cutout of billet:
With everything looking good, it was time to start the carve!
Sudden Bad News
At this stage, things took a turn for the worse.
When Erik told me he had some bad news, I had a lot of questions – and I assumed it was really bad news.
Had my beautiful koa wood split?
Had we made a poor decision earlier on and now all our hard work was turning to dust?
"Both plates have revealed hidden incursions. The incursion in the top plate should be mostly removed during final carving. I’m not sure how much the line in the back plate will persist.”
This means that there were inconsistencies beneath the surface of the wood.
Only further work would reveal the extent of the issue:
What to do when your guitar wood is compromised?
We had no choice but to forge ahead. With Erik being the master craftsman that he is, he got on with the job without seeming too perturbed:
“Still , it’s pretty damn stunning wood! Most of the carving is done with these little finger planes" he enthused. "The incursion in the top will likely be gone once we get the final carve done. The incursion in the back will still be there.”
All we could do is hope for the best.