Casimi Acoustic Guitar Building course

Shibbibilybob

I figure now that I am nearing completion of the course, and the gorgeous acoustic guitar, it is time for a thread, sharing the photos of what has been the most fulfilling thing I have ever done.

Let's start off by saying that Matthew and Matthias at Casimi are superb craftsmen. Matthias worked as a master luthier at Maingard guitars for over 10 years, and Matthew worked as a designer and luthier at maingard as well, before they decided to move on and start their own thing.

The guys have a strong preference for african blackwood, and after playing the african blackwood guitars they had built, I was persuaded.
I decided to go with the following specs:
African Blackwood back and sides
German Spruce top
Sapele neck
Ebony fretboard and bridge (this later changed to african blackwood when I found a source. The ebony bridge and board are set aside for my next build)

So lets start with the rad materials as they arrived.

First up is the African Blackwood back

ABW sides:

German Spruce top:

Sapele neck blank

Shibbibilybob

So when the course started, the first thing we did, was sit with a pencil, a very large piece of paper, and a bunch of french curves, templates and stencils. Once you have designed the guitar you want to build, the have you make a mould.
here I am sanding the inner curve of my mould.

Which looked like this when it was complete

Sanding my back pieces down

And then they're joined

And cut to shape, but oversized

Squonk

I can't find any words...this is the good stuff

Shibbibilybob

Then we have to sand, plane and bend the sides

And somehow turn that one long blank of sapele into a workable neck...how about a scarf joint and a stacked heal?

And we need to thickness, joint and join the top:

and cut it oversized

The inside of the back really comes to life after some proper sanding

And it gets a strip, which is shaped with this tiny plane ?

Then cut notches out for braces

Ta dah...back braced:

Chocklit_Thunda

Amazing! Looking forward to more updates!

I've been looking to trying my hand at building my own acoustic. Of the few tools I'm lacking, dedication seems to be the one I'm missing most...

Could you tell me what was used to bend the sides?

Shibbibilybob

A Fox-type side bender was used to bend the sides. The sides are soaked, then put between two metal sheets with a heating blanket and slowly some clamps adjusted to create curves in all the right places. There's a picture of the side being bent in one of the posts above.
https://www.lmii.com/products/tools-services/bending/heating/lmi-bending-machine
That should give you a better idea of what I mean.

Shibbibilybob

I cant seem to find any photos of the actual scalloping of the back braces, just this one that was take just after. you can see all the shavings and the japanese chisel still lying on the bench.

This shows the braces before many grits of sanding. They got very smooth by the end.

I then switched to do a bit of work on my top. I had gotten hold of some stunning kiaat that I wanted to use for my rosette, and it's easier to inlay a rosette before bracing the top, so that you can easily sand it all flush.
Here are the tiles of kiaat end grain that I decided to use:

Trying to fit the pieces to the rosette design

First we counter sunk hole into the top and dropped a ring of African Blackwood into it. This will make the inner ring of the rosette, ultimately

Starting to fit the kiaat pieces into the rosette channel

And finally all fitted, now the centre circle of blackwood needs removing

Shibbibilybob

Gluing in my tail and neck blocks:

Then gluing in the kerfling and blocks for the arm and rib bevels.

The brace positions marked onto the top with a pencil.

Gluing the braces in

And with my braces glued in, and some scalloping already having taken place.

carbon fibre laminate on the top brace

Some neck, headstock and fretboard pictures will follow at some point ?

Gearhead

This is so cool. I do have a question: what drives one to make jigging out of something as nonpermanent as chipboard? Why not take out a hundred Rand more out for some supawood or plywood to be able to make a couple more?

Shibbibilybob

Do you mean for the mould?
I guess you could make a mould out of plywood in a very similar way.
I suppose, since each student on the Casimi course makes their own mould, that it need not be too hardy, because it's intended to make a once-off, unique instrument.
That said, my mould is a year old now and still in perfect shape. Given how well it has held up I would certainly not hesitate to use the same material to make a mould in the future, even if the intention is to make several guitars of that shape.

But ya, a plywood one would probably last longer.

lapdawg

Great build. Its fantastic to be able to learn from the pro's like this & have an established workshop of jigs & tools available. Its really looking good. I can see myself going to Casimi at some stage...

I experimented with a few material for templates. I tried BB ply - Its just too hard & blunts router bits etc. The local ply often chips & delaminates etc.
I think fiberboard is best:
- it cuts, sands & routes very easy.
- it's cheap
- You can harden / preserve edges with sealer, varnish or eve CA glue.
- You can even repair the edges with some of the powdered sandings & CA glue. It soaks up & gives a very hard edge.

Chipboard templates would copy easily to fiberboard with a flushcut bit - just have good dust extraction going. It makes my nose itch.

Shibbibilybob

So this build is coming along very nicely.
I'm still unsure how much longer, but it feels close...such terrible GAS right about now, but also, equally excited to go in tomorrow and fit my binding to my top and purfling to the sides. So it's GAS of sorts, but equally excited to build this guitar and to play it.

So anyway, here are a few updates from the last few months:
Back and top, chilling together, because they're homies.

Front headstock veneer work in progress

Headstock, with both front and back veneers laminated on ?

Decided to destroy my headstock a little before making that classic Casimi hollow:

To look something like this:

And finally, my bridge , just for fun:

Shibbibilybob

Oooh, and one of my neck and fretboard (african blackwood bound in ebony) prior to the headstock being attacked.

Headstock after taking a file to it, to make a nice chamfer

Boxing up. Gluing the back to the sides. Matthias and I making a giant guitar burger.

Boxed up and just had the front arm bevel cut out:

That rosette ?

I decided to go with radial Macassar Ebony on my bevels, joining up with african blackwood bindings (I could not find macassar pieces long enough for binding, but the colours match nicely )

Which looked more like this, before I filed it flush

and one of the rib bevel:

guitarboy2828

That's looking awesome. Are you doing the 12 week course? Did you have any building experience prior to this build?

Shibbibilybob

Na man, I am doing the part-time course. Started off doing just saturday afternoons and then a few months later a gap opened up and I started doing morning sessions and afternoon sessions.
So mine is a cross between the 18month and 9month course...Tho those are really kinda loose guidelines, I have been building this thing since April 2013.
Nope, I had almost no workshop experience at all, I have learnt an amazing amount though...in addition to having an excellent excellent day every saturday, and of course, the ultimate prize of my guitar.

Squonk

The Bevels look like good stuff. Brilliant!

Shibbibilybob

And a few more tasters coming in now.
We are getting rather close to completion ?

The sound hole rosette comes a bit too close to the cutaway for my liking, so we played around with ways to make it flow nicely. Ended up deciding on two beesting mitres that followed the curve of the rosette, keeping equidistant.

A full shot showing the beesting details, very messy at this stage. These things tidied up nicely after I took a file to them.

and a close up of the beestings after the kiaat purfling

I used some more of the pieces of endgrain Kiaat from my rosette to make an awesome little tail graft too:

At this point the oval had not yet been glued in, just wrapped in white-black-white purfling and fitted to the channel. After glueing it in,still needs to be glued and tidied up.

Squonk

Brilliant - can't think of many more words!

Chocklit_Thunda

Nice! It's amazing how messy everything is during the working stages and then after some sanding and polishing it becomes so clean and crisp and detailed ?

lapdawg

I really like the design. I don't think think the closeness of the rosette to the cutaway is bad at all. Its not that conventional, but IMO, that's the visual appeal of this design. The 2 bee stings also look great though.