Building a Traditional Flamenco Guitar

Here’s a photo diary of the latest guitar I’m working on.

Materials:

Neck – Honduras Cedar

Soundboard – European Spruce

Body – Spanish Cypress

Head Veneer – European Maple, Indian Rosewood

Rosette – Galilee Olive root, European Maple

Bindings – Galilee Rosewood (Sesam)

Fingerboard – Ebony

Tuning Pegs – Ebony

Bridge – Indian Rosewood

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The Neck

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The Rosette

This is my neighbour’s woodpile. They are lucky enough to have a big pile of olive roots to burn for the winter.

This is a piece of one of the olive roots.

On the top left of the picture you can see a small part of that olive root. That was sliced very thin and inlaid into a groove cut in the soundboard.

Bands of maple are bent and inlaid around the central olive part with thin sycamore veneers to add contrast.

When the glue is all dry, I plane it down level with the surface of the soundboard.

It looks like this:

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Assembly

Thickness planing the soundboard to about 2.2mm.

Measuring the thickness.

All the parts ready to be assembled. At the bottom you can see the kerfed linings that will hold the guitar together. Above those are the sides. At this stage they’re still flat and have to be bent to shape.

Photo taken just before the back was glued on

Cutting the channel for the bindings.

Detail for heel inlay.

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Carving the Neck

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Making the Bridge

Drilling the holes for the 13 hole tie block

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The Finished Guitar