Tailpiece

The archtop guitar has a tailpiece like those you would see on a violin, or cello. Many archtop tailpieces are made of metal, but some are made of wood, particularly ebony. Mine will be made of maple. I'm a re-use, recycle kinda guy. We had an old coffee table that was pretty beat up, but it was made of maple, and the legs were flat rather than round, being cut in an elongated triangle shape. I traced around a metal tailpiece that I have laying around and used it as a template for the one I was going to make (with a few modifications to the design of course). The dark line along the front edge will be a raised ebony purfling on which the strings will rest.

Then came the carving. Maple is pretty hard. This took a few hours of work to get to this shape. Still needs some refining, but getting there. Next, I have to cut the channel for the ebony purfling. This required a bit of a (thingama) jig contraption I slapped together from scrap wood.

Here's the (thingama) jig. Yeah, the base kind looks vaguely guitar-like. That's because it was some leftover stuff from when I cut the mold for the sides of the guitar. Anyway, I have this cool rig for my Dremel. It works like a drill press, but it also allows the tool to be rotated at different angles. So I put it horizontally and built up a wooden guide to accurately slide the end the tailpiece along under the side-cutting bit. The result was a nice straight cut.

The sliver of ebony, which is not completely cut to size in this pic, was from an old piano I took the keyboard out of (replaced it with an electronic one). The piano is roughly 100 yrs old. I'll probably also use some of the same ebony for the nut on this instrument.

Just a bit of sanding and fine-tuning and the sliver of ebony fits like a glove into the slot.

I'll be posting with more on the tailpiece as I get into working the underside to accept the gut chord (for mounting onto the guitar), and drilling for string holes, putting fermata inlay on the "bulb", and final finish work.