One step closer

Hooray for me, I finished the soundboard!  Just sanded the last brace tonight.  I know I'm jumping ahead and haven't finished with the rosette yet, but I thought you might like to revel with me in this little triumph.  I stopped over at a luthier friend's house last night and got a lot of good pointers and picked up my next back and side set - figured cocobolo!  No sap wood, but it looks great.  Thanks Trevor!!  You can check out his site at http://www.peakeguitars.com/ - he has a Facebook page too but I'm not sure what it is.  Alright, it's late and we're heading out to the cabin in West Virginia tomorrow so I'm going to bed.  Goodnight.

I'm running out of cool titles! Oh wait, rosette me - rosette me not.

So you decided to stick around and see if I actually stood up to my promise of writing again soon?  Well I'm actually surprised I got around to it one day later...  Shhhh, my wife doesn't know I'm goofing off on the computer while she's watching the baby downstairs - I have to type quick!

So the rosette from the underworld - well friends, it was not easy but I don't think rosettes are intended to be easy, they're intended to challange and inspire.  Uh oh, busted - well looks like I won't be able to finish it tonight.  My wife says "Hi!" to everyone.  I guess I'll try to pick up where I left off tomorrow.  Bis bald Freunde.

Soundboard II, the Saga continues...

I must begin with a sincere apology, it has been far too long since I have last written.  Work and baby duties have played a large part in my lack of time.  Fortunately, however, I have been able to find a few brief moments of blessed release to work on the guitar recently.  I am almost finished with the soundboard, but I must first bring you up to speed (I hope to get caught up sometime during the holiday since I will be off work for a week - but if you have babies or wives you know that the best laid plans of mice and men never survive first contact with the enemy...).

So without further ado, on to the guitar.  I last left you with a joined soundboard cut in the general shape of the triple-O body.  I forget now if I told you I followed the same procedure to joint and join the back on my last post.  It was much more difficult shooting the crotch-figured black walnut, it being a much harder wood and being prone to chip out.  I eventually tuned the plane to the right depth for the new medium, got the plates jointed as evenly as possible, then joined them on my homemade platform with knock-off go bars.

If you can zoom in closely, you will see grain separation in parts of the back.  These I will have to fill with a epoxy and saw dust mixture at a later time before I can attach it to the body.  I haven't done it yet so I'll have to fill you in later.

So getting back to the soundboard - the next step I took was to thin the back to the proper thickness.  It ended up being a bad idea when I got around to putting in the rosette, but I'll get in to that in a little bit.  So I started thinning the soundboard the old fashioned way with a toothed plane.  It looked cool and felt cool, but I soon discovered that it's difficult to get a uniform thickness and even more difficult to tell how much you've taken off.  It's kind of hard to see, but the next two pictures show my misguided approach to toothed planing.  I tried it for a little bit and that was enough - knowing I'd have even more trouble for the back I decided I needed to find a better way - enter the power wide belt thickness sander compliments of the Cayce Company, located close to Timonium.

After searching hours on the internet, writing random emails to random shops and luthiers in the greater Baltimore area, I finally somehow ended up calling the good people at Cayce to inquire about purchasing something that might help me.  They informed me that for a very low rate, they would let me use their showroom wide belt thickness sander any time.  So on one of my off Fridays, I gathered up all of my side pieces, the back, the soundboard, and some spalted maple boards I had acquired from a supply mill in Maine and headed to Timonium.  Inside of 20 minutes I was completely done and out of there!  It's amazing what wonders the right types of modern technology can offer.  Building a smaller guitar, I stayed on the thin side of the recommended thickness ranges for each set.  Once I got everything home, I started right in on the rosette from hell.  But, that will have to wait for the next post, and I promise it won't take me 2 months to get around to it.  Until tomorrow friends!