Falcate braced Parlour

[Francis]

Parlour guitar, twelve frets to the body built in Bocote (B&Sides), Sitka spruce soundboard, Bog Oak fret board and bridge, mahogany neck.

A few images of the finished guitar:








Hope you like
Francis

[Dave M]

Some very nice work there Francis, the rosette is very well crafted and looks great.

I see you are using unconventional back joint reinforcing. Is that just for fun?

[Francis]

Hi Dave,
No I quite often change the back reinforcement. I try to make it smpathetic to the guitars design/theme.

[Francis]

Thanks for the comments Dave

[lamanoditrento]

What a great aesthetic. Loving the marriage strip detail too. All very simpatico

[kiwigeo]

Nice work Francis.....that's one "cute" guitar.

[Francis]

Thanks Guys.

First time working with Bocote. Bends easily but this sample suffered from a few worm holes. Given the nature of the grain patterns they were easily disguised with coarse sanding dust and CA glue.

[WJ Guitars]

I like the contrasting colours and design. The guitar has real individual character.

Wayne
WJ Guitars

[Francis]

Thanks Wayne - the customer wanted something 'different' with an art-deco flavour. Other than that the parlour size body and thirteen frets (doesn't do the dusty end) the rest was up to me. We exchanged emails where I proposed different ideas on design and materials. I normally do predesigns in photoshop. The final predesign for this one:

[Mark McLean]

Nice job Francis. It is a great idea to do the pre-build design work on photoshop. I have never tried anything like that before. I make it up as I go along, without knowing exactly what it is going to look like. That is fine when I am building for myself, but when it is for a customer it must be great to be able to show them what it is going to look like, and get their input into design decisions.

[Francis]

Thanks Mark.

I use an A4 flatbed scanner to copy typical spruce / cedar soundboards which I can drop into the mock-up as a base layer. Then overlay things like bridge, rosette, fretboard etc. I tend also to work images at full scale 300 dpi. It means file sizes get quite large but I can go into the image to make small alterations without the image pixelating.
Once particular sections are agreed on I make a second copy and flatten the copy to make files easier to handle, but retail the layered file just in case something changes down the line.
If I'm working from a published plan (like the ones from 'the Books') I use the scanner making a number of smaller sections then knit these together to form the guitar overal outlines. It's easy enough then to make modifications to the original scans to add cutaways etc.
It takes a little while to bring it all together but give me the confidence that the design has been agreed before hand so there should be no nasty suprises later.

[Mark McLean]

And then I just plug in the 3D printer, frestly loaded with spruce, bocote, mahogany and oak sawdust, and let the luthery happen.