31/05/2025
I took this week off of one of my "day jobs" to focus on the Coimbra build - it's been difficult having my head in three or four different places (two other employments plus music lessons!) to focus on this project in little pockets of time, because I don't know what I'm doing!
Just like with the arpeggione, there's no readily accessible roadmap for building a Portuguese guitar - I've found one series on YouTube, but a lot of my research has involved looking at pictures from a museum and zooming in on clips from one of the luthier schools in Portugal. And a lot of thinking. Yet still I overlooked a few things, but after this week and a chat with I definitely feel a bit clearer on the key points - setting the neck angle, and attaching the sides to the neck.
Again like the arpeggione, I just have no trust in wood - why not put a carbon fiber rod in there, just in case... Portuguese guitars, though strung with 12 steel strings, don't have a truss rod! That's scary. I have a router but no dust extraction or safe space to use it at home (my computer and printers live in the workshop space, that's too much dust). 3D printing to the rescue again, I printed this chisel router plane from Printables and made my own insert for my 3mm chisel. Worked amazingly.
The rest of the week spent setting the neck up for attaching to the mould, thinking about what needs to be done before I cut the neck roughly to its final shape. That is mainly adding the face plates to the teardrop and headstock. First glue up of the project!
I also made the red tines which confirm the sides to the mould, usually they are made of metal but I'm not sure what metal, and I don't want to cut and bend 24 metal rods by hand when this might work and I was able to have them printing out whilst I got on with other things.
Finally, I had to finish setting up my own acoustic guitar for my debut at - that included finally putting the bridge back on, and setting saddle height... The yellow tool in the pics is a saddle sander I reverse engineered from pictures online, not quite finished with it yet though.
