And, so it begins... Again...

I bought this BFLG guitar last October. (2014)

At the time I didn't really have any plans for it other than to rebuild it and save another Ovation from the scrap heap. This baby has definitely seen some action.

The top was completely off the guitar and broken into several pieces. Luckily, it came with an intact bridge, still attached to the sound board. I'm not sure if I'll be using this one or not. I've got an ebony bridge that came with another BFLG gutiar I bought and I really like how the bridge matches the fret board.

The new top will be made from torrefied Sitka spruce for both the sound board and the brace stock.

The binding and purfling are intact, but these will be removed because it's easier to replace these than to try to fit the sound board into the place inside them. The only reason why I fit the sound board inside on my 1619 was because I wanted to save the original abalone purfling. BWB, etc., purfling --meh.

Even though the original had A-braces, I'm going to use the custom forward X-bracing I used on my 1619. I really like how it sounds and I want to compare it to a torrefied guitar of the same era that uses the same braces. I'm going to try to make this guitar as identically to that one as I can.

The head stock and neck are in pretty rough shape. These will probably need to be sanded down to bare wood and refinished. The front of the head stock is in good enough shape that I think I can preserve the original decal.

The back of the bowl is in pretty good shape, so there's nothing to do here.

The binding on the neck is missing, so this will need to be replaced. There's also some pretty serious finger grooves in the ebony. The frets will need to be removed to fix the fret board and put new binding in place. I will be using EVO gold frets.

I puy my 1619 brace pattern mock-up into place so I could check the neck angle --looks good. No need for a neck reset here.

First step is to remove all traces of the top from under the fret board.

Next, remove the binding and purfling and clean up the excess glue and wood.

While I'm waiting for the tools to come in that I need to remove the frets and sand the fingerboard I decided to start working on the new top wood.

This top will be made from torrefied Sitka spruce with torrefied Sitka spruce braces. The braces will be glued to the top using Old Brown Glue. (hide glue)

Here are the braces, ripped to size and scallops cut and sanded. I am going to hold off tapering them until I get the top cut out and I know how much needs to be removed from the length.

The top has been jointed and is being glued together using OBG. I'll pull it out of the go bar deck tonight.

Top wood is jointed, rough cut, thickness sanded and the sound hole is cut out and fitted to the bowl.

I've decided to revert this guitar from a 1617 to a 1117, meaning it'll be an acoustic-only instead of an acoustic-electric. I've got an ebony bridge that came with another project guitar I acquired that I'll be using on this guitar instead of the bridge that was mounted to the soundboard. I like how the bridge matches the fretboard. I'll be using a bone bridge saddle and nut on this guitar.

I'm going to use the same custom forward X-brace pattern on this guitar that I used on my 1619. Brace locations are traced onto the back of the sound board.

Braces have been fitted into place. Next step is to taper the braces. Once they're tapered, I'll be ready to glue the braces to the sound board.

Ovation has verified the material as "wood" on their FB page in the comments under this photo! No response on "what kind of wood" yet though. Just some really cool creative stuff happening at the new O! I'm pretty sure a wood backed O will sound incredibly spectacular...like a woodback O with a torrefied top? Yikes...Pretty soon, you're going to have to start your own brand, Dan!

WRT my own brand, we'll have to see how the first one turns out.

I just noticed something interesting in that photo Ovation posted. They put the strap button inside the cut-away where I suggested. Kewl!

I tapered the braces.

And, cut the notches in the X-braces for the reinforcement strip.

I'll glue the braces to the top tomorrow night.

Thanks, Tennessee.

I glued the braces down last night. I'll pull them out tonight and verify the neck angle.

Assuming the neck angle is good, the next steps are to pull the remaining frets and start sanding the neck. First to be sanded will be the fret board to remove the fingernail grooves and then, clean up the fret slots.

After that, it'll be time to sand the finish off the back of the neck and head. Once all the finish is off, I'll put new binding on the sides of the fret board.

Pulled the sound board up from the go bar deck. Checked the neck angle. Everything looks good.

Removed the remaining frets from the fingerboard. Cleaned the glue from the fret slots and rough sanded with 80-grit to 10" radius using my *new* Stewmac 8" Radius Block. All the fingernail grooves are gone.

Before:

After:

Sanded the fingerboard with progressively finer grades of sandpaper. I stopped at 800-grit. There's a few chip-outs, but I can live with these. They look a lot worse in the photo than they do in person and will be even less visible once I oil the fingerboard after the guitar is finished.

Looking down along the length of the fingerboard reveals a glossy surface.

Next job is to sand the finish off the back of the neck and head stock and sand the front of the head stock to flatten it. Once that's done, I'll add the binding back to the sides of the fingerboard and shape them down to match the neck profile.

The center is .25" and the edges are just under .2" (.1999")

So, I sanded the finish off the neck and headstock.

The original plan was to sand level the finish on the front of the headstock to preserve the original decal. But, the pre-existing gouge in the crook of the headstock up near the bottom of the guitar in the logo, along with a couple of new gouges I made with the Dremel when I was taking the finish off the sides of the headstock, had my pondering making a new decal.

This logo artwork is slightly different from what I did for Jay's guitar. This artwork has a black outline around the gold. The original logos were just the gold.

I have an Alps MD-5000 dry transfer printer that has the ability to print gold and silver foil, as well as metallics. Here's sample of the final artwork, printed on water-transfer decal paper, ready for the transfer process.

There were some bumps along the road. At first, I used the decal paper that came with the PulsarPro dry transfer system. The Alps foils didn't really stick too well to that paper. The artwork above was printed on Alps-specific decal paper. The gold border is necessary for the PulsarPro transfer system.

When I got this artwork below, I decided it was time to move onto the next step.

The decal paper with the artwork is covered with thin mylar and is run through a laminating machine to form a light bond between the artwork and mylar so the mylar acts like a carrier sheet. Afterward, the decal paper/mylar carrier is soaked in warm water until the decal releases. So far, so good. Onto the next step.

Whoops! Unfortunately, the heat and pressure from the laminator causes the artwork and mylar to form too strong of a bond for a reliable release. So, it's back to the drawing board.

Not really. Just onto another system of decal preparation. About this time, I ran out of gold foil. So, I decided to use silver foil as a substitute. This time, I'm going old-school water transfer decals. First, the artwork is printed onto the decal paper, then sprayed with a thin coat of Krylon Krystal Klear acryllic paint. The clear paint seals the artwork in and acts as a carrier sheet when the decal paper coating is dissolved in water.

I'm also testing a solid-color mono-chromatic logo. This was a failure. This was the artwork I was printing when I ran out of gold foil.

An outline logo.

All three are cut out with a pair of scissors, very close to the artwork to minimize the amount of carrier sheet showing through.

And, here's the silver logo stuck to a scrap of spruce that came from the 1617 top. I used this wood because it provides a smooth surface as a base and so I'd be able to see the wood grain showing through the artwork.

Here's the solid color logo. Unfortunately, the coat of Krylon was too thin on the outline logo and it fell apart when it released from the backing paper.

And, here's the silver logo next to the headstock logo. One change that will have to be made is to close in the "O" in the guitar. I thought is was hollow, but it's actually solid black. The rest looks pretty good.

Next, I'll spray some Minwax clear polyurethane over the decals to make sure the carrier sheet disappears.

Happy New Year!

I sprayed the decals with the clear polyurethane and they will work fine. Based upon this, I moved ahead with removing the finish from the front of the head stock, including the decal. So, I'm pretty much committed.

Here's a time-lapse video of me taking the polyester finish off with a Dremel finishing/sanding buff. Actual time in the video sequence shown was about 20 minutes.

Here's the head stock after scraping and sanding.

And, I wet the head stock with naptha so I could see what it will it look like under the new clear finish. The walnut is a nice contrast.

Next job is to glue the binding to the sides of the fret board.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

I'm using .040" cream binding from AllParts.com for the the neck binding. I used my binding shaving holder to reduce the width of the neck binding strips from 1/2" to just over 1/4".

First, the center part of the binding is cut to size, then beveled to match the sides of the fingerboard. Glue is applied to the wood, then the part is squeezed and taped into place.

Strips of binding tape are pre-applied to the bottom of the fretboard to help keep the side bindings in alignment while they'r being glued.

Working in about 9" segments the binding is glued and taped into place with binding tape.

Now, the binding for the other side is glued and taped into place.

I'll let the glue dry 24 hours, then peel off the tape tomorrow afternoon to see how it looks and, hopefully, start scraping the binding down to the shape of the neck.

TPA..I often wondered that, especially when everything was hand made. How many man hours went into making a shiny bowl Balladeer...I am assuming that the bowl was actually a cost saving measure over wood boxes, both in time and money, then as well as today.

So, the work continues.

The binding glue has dried. I used diagonal cutters (wire cutters) to snip off the excess side neck binding and started removing the tape.

I used a razor saw to cut the binding flush with the end of the fingerboard.

And, removed the rest of the binding tape. There were a few areas where the tape had too good of a grip on the ebony fingerboard and pulled some chips out. These were glued with thin CA.

Lots O' glue-globs along the glue joint.

Binding has been scraped down so it's flush with the top of the fingerboard.

A little boo-boo happened when I got a little too exuberant with the scraping and pulled some of the binding away from the lower corner. This was re-glued and taped.

Next job is to drill the holes for the fret side marker dots. All hole locations were measured, then I used the point of a brad point bit to pre-drill the locations so the high-speed bit doesn't wander. The hole at the 3rd fret has been drilled and the 5th fret is next.

All the holes have been drilled. Ovation usually carries the fret side marker dots all the way to the sound hole, but I decided to stop at the 12th fret, mainly because the body gets in the way of playing the higher frets, and more importantly to me, anything above the 12th fret is no man's land.

I tried to buy some fret marker material from the local Guitar Center, but the luthier behind the repair bench told me it was a special-order item. So, I went down to my local Hobby Sheeple, er, People and bought some 1/16" carbon fiber rod. It's harder to work with than the regular side fret marker material, (styrene or ABS) but it's still workable.

Here I've cut some lengths of CF rod.

I sanded one end of each to give the glue some bite to hold the rods in place.

I applied a little daub of glue to the end of the rod, then stuffed it into the hole.

After the glue is dry, I'll cut the rods close with the binding with a razor saw, then sand them flush.

I used the razor saw to cut off the excess side markers, then shaped down the bindings.

Here's the bridge end of the fingerboard.

Looking down the side of the neck.

For the most part, the neck is done. It still needs frets, but I'll add those after I finish the work on the top.

Next job is to start prepping the top for gluing to the body. Since I've covered this in detail on other threads I'll only post when I reach the major steps

I was away on business so I haven't done anything for the last couple of weeks.

I masked off the fretboard extension and bridge location. I sprayed a couple of coats of Minwax polyurethane clear gloss to act as a sanding sealer/primer in preparation for gluing the top to the body.

The wood is highly figured. It can't really be called bear-claw. More like bear-gnawed spruce.

The top has been wet-sanded with 400-grit to level the surface in preparation for the final coat.

Next job is to make a bridge cawl.

Moving right along. The top is glued to the bowl. Binding/purfling channels have been routed.

Need to do a little whittling to finish the channels.

Binding/purfling glued into place.

Binding/purfling scraped level.

Fret board extension glued to the top.

Big ol' hole cut into the side for the OP-Pro. (I've decided to keep it a 1617 instead of downgrading to an 1117)

Fret wires cut, tangs nipped and ground. Ready for installation.

Fret wires hammered into the fret board.

The Stewmac fret tang nipper was worth the $65. Next job is to trim the frets even with the sides of the fret board, then bevel, level, crown and polish them.

Frets are trimmed, leveled, beveled & crowned. Masking tape on the body is to protect the wood from the files.

At this point the guitar is ready for finishing. I'll do the neck and head stock first so that I can put the decal down.

And... The finish is done.

Head stock with decal. The neck and headstock wood is real purty.

Close-up of decal. It turned out great. You can't see the carrier sheet at all.

And, the body is done and polished. Ready for gluing the bridge down.

I put the bridge into place, then lightly scored the finish and removed the masking tape to get down to bare wood. Then, I masked around the bridge so I don't get any glue on the top finish.

I didn't like the white line of glue that's visible under the bridge, so I mixed some raw umber dry pigment with the Hysol to more or less match the color of the ebony bridge.

The bridge is glued and clamped into place. Once the glue has tacked up, I'll remove the masking tape and let it finish curing. The Hysol should be mostly cured by tomorrow afternoon, so I'll pull the clamps off and let it finish curing until Tuesday.

After I pull the clamps off, I'll trim and glue the rosette, new nut, etc. It's getting really close now. (woo hoo!)

So, back to the build.

The glue was cured enough to pull the clamps off and drill the hole for the pickup wire.

Rosette was glued into place with 5-minute hardware store epoxy.

Tuners are mounted, truss rod nut was put back into place. If you look closely you can see a bronze washer under the truss rod nut. The nut was pretty much bottomed out on the threads, so I was left with two choices --cut more threads or find a washer that would push the nut back up the threads.

I looked through my model airplane parts and found a bronze wheel bushing that was thick enough to give the nut some more bite in the threads, but had a large enough ID to fit over the truss rod, but with a small enough OD to fit inside the truss rod pocket. (Thank to Associated R/C!)

While I'm waiting for the Hysold to fully cure the next job is to start making the bone nut. Since this nut is bleached it's pretty bright white. After I finish it and polish it, I'll probably dip it into some Rit dye to give it a vintage look to match the color of the binding.

Well, I couldn't help myself.

I cut the slots in the nut, strung it up (D'Addario PB, 10-47) to set the action.

All I can say is, Wow! I love this torrefied wood. I played a couple of songs for SWMBO and her comments was that it was really LOUD, clear but not twangy. (a good thing)

Here's what it looks like.

I need to fix the high-e nut slot --I cut the slot a little too deep and it's buzzing slightly on the first fret. I also need to round the nut, polish it and glue it down permanently, but the sound of the guitar is everything I wanted it to be.

Tons of sustain, just like Jay's 485 and fantastic tone. In fact, I had to put the OP-Pro in because there was so much sound coming out of the hole. I may just keep the PBs on there for the time being.

I'll take some proper beauty shots tomorrow and post them. I just wanted to share the latest.

Thanks everyone for you kind words. It's been a real pleasure sharing this project with you. Not as pleasurable as playing this guitar now that it's done, but close.

As promised, it's done. Not 100% done, but done enough until I change out the strings.

And, the project has not been without its flaws, such as the binding separation at the waist on the bass bout side.

But, all in all, I'm very happy with it. I did have a chance to play its cousin, the 1619 to compare the sound of the two. They both are of the same generation bowls, necks, etc., and have the same brace pattern on the top. In short, there's no comparison. This guitar sounds better, hands-down.

With no further a-do.

Dan...another sweet looking O. Congrats.

Soooo...are you deducting bracing and top or just the torrified top as being the main culprit in the improvement of acoustic response?

Additionally, I would be interested, since there is acoustical separation...if there is any noticeable difference between the two, plugged in, with the same settings.

I had a chance to compare the 1619 to the 1617 when plugged in.

Before I did the comparison I strung the 1619 with the same strings as the 1617 and to be honest, I can't tell any difference between the two.

This isn't surprising because the pickups only read the vibration of the strings, not the tops.

I did an acoustic-only blind-sound test between the two with my wife and she picked the 1617.

"This isn't surprising because the pickups only read the vibration of the strings, not the tops."

Thanks for doing that. I didnt expect any difference, so thanks for confirming that.

Well...when does the wood bowl project begin?

A good pickup and preamp makes all the difference in the electronic sound of the guitar.

Ovation's acoustic preamp and pick-up has long been recognized as some of the best in the business, which is why they're used so much in the studio.

A friend of mine is a professional musician in L.A. and does a lot of studio recording. Whenever he's got acoustic guitar work to do the engineers always ask him to bring his Legend. I talked to him about why this is and he explained that with most guitars the engineers have to mix out the strong bass response. But, the Ovation electronics are very balanced so it's easier to get good sound out of them than other guitars. Yes, if you want to capture the actual sound of the guitar, you have to mic it.

I'm goofing around in 3D CAD to get an idea of how to build the mold for bending of the wood staves. Here's the first crack at it. This bowl was made with a sphere. But, it's too thick at the upper and lower bouts.

This exercise tells me that the bowls on Ovations and the Alvarez DY92 are not truly spherical. The next exercise will involve making a bowl with a custom contour.