Guitar Making

Long term followers of my blog may remember the Granadillo guitar I was working on, this one actually made it the closest to being finished. I had it nearly to completion but a mistake on the neck stopped me in my tracks.

I set it aside and the following winter it got pretty dry in my house, which makes wood shrink. The center seam started to split and then a part in the upper bout started to crack. I learned an expensive lesson that I can't put the box together when the humidity is really high (say, in the hottest week of August, which is when I did this one). Anyway, I could try to humidify the guitar and glue the cracks, but the truth is it would always have humidity problems. So I routed off the bindings and removed the top and back from the sides. The top is toast, but I can salvage the back. But I have to take the old braces off and redo it at a lower humidity so it can handle the drier times of a year a bit better.