Latest build....the drop top.

[John Coloccia]

My first drop top. I had a week or so to kill waiting for some finishes to cure, so I thought I'd try a drop top. I happened to have an appropriate top laying around I had resawn some time ago (because why, I had no idea)....a mahogany body I had started and never done anything with....a neck blank who's headstock was a bit too thin (I fixed it with a thicker backstrap)...

So anyhow, I thought I'd "toss" this together because I never did one, as an experiment. I think I'm adding it to the line up. It may actually be my favorite model, actually, and quite unexpectedly as I figured this would just be a "throwaway" experiment. LOL...you just never know.

Sorry the pictures are sideways....taken on my wife's iPhone.


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[John Coloccia]

I should mention what a "drop top" is, for those that don't know. Instead of carving away the forearm area of the top, the back (in this case, Khaya) is angled, and then the top is bent to match that contour. In my case, I either need to carve a top or do a drop top as my body is chambered, so the entire main body has chambers in it and SOMETHING needs to go on top to seal it all up...in this case some mildly figured maple I had laying around. On a solid body, you can simply carve whatever contours you wish to carve.

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[Ron Petley]

Wonderful job, so now you gotta tell us how the top got dropped, bent that is \. Cheers Ron

[John Coloccia]

Good question. I picked this technique up from a luthier message board...someone just happened to post about it right around the time I was getting ready to build this one. The simplest way, as far as I can tell, is to route a series of grooves in the board in the neighborhood of the bend. Then you just glue it in place with lots of clamps. Piece of cake. I'm looking at picking up a vacuum system just for doing this, in fact. The "trick", if there is one, is to leave the board oversized, and then be sure to cut the grooves inside AND outside the glue line. It seems to help keep the board from cracking right at the glue line where there are obviously no grooves. I experimented just cutting the top to shape and grooving right inside the line....and it cracked right at the edge...several times.

I made my bend very sharp. On future ones, it will be a lot more gradual. I haven't quite figured out how to easily do that yet, but I will. I'm thinking I will just use a long sanding bar to soften the bend while keeping everything nice and straight. I make the initial cut with a bandsaw, and then just clean up with a hand plane.