OK. Third set of sides from LMI are in the works. They were a very apologetic about their lack of quality control. And I think this has led to some serious discussions in the shop. So fingers crossed that the 3rd time will be the charm.
I’ve kept busy preparing the back of the guitar. This would definitely be easier if I had a big drum sander, but it did give me a bit of practice with the block planes and card scrapers.
I started by taking the back panels down to about the thickness of the decorative back strip before joining them. This was mostly done with block planes and some cleanup with a card scraper. There were some band saw marks that really needed to be cleaned up for starters. The indian rosewood is actually very dense wood and requires very sharp tools to work with.
Then set up a shooting board to clean up the edges, before joining. This took some time to get the seam as close to perfect as possible.
I “clamped” the back together for gluing by tapering the outside edges to form a wedge with the back panels. Then a pair of stops on either side of the back allow the whole setup to be wedged into the taper, thus providing even pressure during glue up. A piece of the bracing stock is used to keep everything pressed flat. That old sock contains a bag of lead shotgun shot left over from weighting the rudder and dagger board on the Melonseed Skiff build. Plenty of clamping pressure!
Now it’s time to plane the whole thing down to final thickness, ~0.09″. The chalk marks the places where I still need to take it down a little bit.
I spent some quality time with my card scrapers and dial caliper. Not as good or easy as a drum sander, but quite effective and somehow meditative.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/sdXOcio3opc]
OM Guitar Build – Using a Card Scraper – YouTube
