Purple Heart Box Glued Up

A few more Pictures of the Purple Heart Build I have been working on . I have the box glued up now and am starting working on the routing for the binding and gluing the binding in place .

Top Glued On

Picture from the back

Front and sound hole with rosette


Gluing the Black Binding in place

Thanks for stopping by !

More on the " Purple Heart Build "

I have spent a bit more time working on the Purple Heart Guitar and wanted to update my progress here a little bit. I had never done a inlay Rosette on a top yet so I decided to try that. I routed the top approx .065 deep and set the rosette inlay in with titebond original mixed with black die to help it blend in . I got a little carried away with the glue and you can see it oooozed out a bit.


Ready to scrape , I used a razor Knife Blade to scrape with and it seemed to work well.


Finished scraping and a quick 220G sand and you have it.


Set my router back up and routed out the sound hole and have edged it with the same black binding material I am using on the guitar. Scraped And Sanded ready to go.


Did a basic layout for the top bracing and pre-cut the x-brace and finger braces and tone braces to set the lengths and scallop the ends and fit.

Picture below is the inside of the sides and back after gluing together . Bracing in place and Neck Block set . You notice the Neck Block is a C shape . I have never tried this yet so I am hoping that it will brace it well for the neck.

Second shot of internal back bracing

The following is a series of Pics showing the Top Bracing after the scallops have been ground for tone and support. Everything is Glued in place now.

And Finally the Top being glued into place with my Jig and spring loaded Clamp bars .

Thanks For Stoping By , Hope You Enjoyed Your Time !

St Louis Show Pictures

Hello All . I recently went to a guitar / luthier gathering in St.Louis Mo. There were a approx 20 people who showed up and brought allot of beautiful work to be looked at and played. One piece I found rather interesting was built by a young man who is a native of St.Louis named Bryan Bear.



Brian wanted to learn how to play the banjo and at the same time wanted to keep his wife and baby happy. So his solution was to build a solid wood topped banjo . Keeping the Banjo sound , but a tad quieter . He is able to practice his pickin and grinning now without the wife being upset .



I was very impressed at his skills as a woodworker and wanted to share them with you in this post.



Please enjoy the pics of the skilled Luthier Bryan Bear .