Day 2

Upon arriving at the workshop, I was greeted by my soundboard, which had been successfully joined.  I was astonished at the strength of a simple glue joint.  I held the wood in the proper place, tapping it, and listening to its tone- it sounded good.  This is a test done throughout the process, to check the tonal quality and integrity of the wood- it produces different harmonic notes, depending where you hold and tap it. 

That day, I dressed one side of the now-joined soundboard, and did the same to the second side of the back of the guitar.  

                                              A wood scraper, atop the Red Cedar soundboard

                                                Red Cedar soundboard, joined and dressed

 Before doing too much scraping and planing, I joined the two panels of Indian Rosewood that were the back of the guitar, in the same manner as I did with the Red Cedar soundboard.  I then traced two outlines of the shape of the guitar’s soundboard, one being the actual shape, and the other, a parallel outline about a centimeter outside of the first one, which acts as a safety margin.  The cutting was done on a band saw.   

                                          Red Cedar soundboard, roughly cut-to-shape

Once this was done, we took a lunch break.  Upon returning to the workshop, the back of the guitar had been successfully joined- the glue was now dry.  It was time to continue planning and scraping.  I used calipers throughout the planning and scraping of the back of the guitar, until the desired thickness was achieved- for this stage, the goal was 2.3mm.  

                                            The guitar's Indian Rosewood back, joined

                                              Alternate view

Scraping is a touchy process- you use a small piece of rectangular metal, about 3 inches by four.  Each edge has a “bur,” which is produced by burnishing the edge of the metal.  A burnisher is a small tool with a wooden handle, and a small cylindrical piece of metal, at the tip.  You press hard, at a 90 degree angle, against the edge of the scraper, and slide it across the length of the edge.  This gives it a sharp edge, on each side.  You must do it carefully, making sure you don’t have too much or too little of an edge.  Once your tool is properly sharpened, you apply pressure in the middle of the metal, giving it a slight bow, and you experiment with different angles and directions of scraping the wood, to find out which is most effective.  You must scrape in the proper direction, so as to prevent grain runout.  Grain runout is a phenomenon that occurs when you plane or scrape against the grain, causing it to splinter, which is undesirable for obvious reasons.  Scraping takes a lot of effort, as you must use press hard, and scrape repetitively.  It takes off fractions of a millimeter, each time.  You must also scrape the wood evenly, so you don’t have some parts that are thicker than others- it must remain a uniform thickness.  The metal also gets quite hot from the friction, and it is recommended that you wear gloves.  It does a number on the joints of your thumbs!  Before completing the scraping, I traced the outline of the back of the guitar, in the same manner as I did for the soundboard, and cut it to shape, on the band saw.  This was done at that point, to avoid excessive scraping on portions of the wood that were to be trimmed off.  I spent a good portion of time getting it to 2.3mm, and then was done.  

                                  The guitar's Indian Rosewood back, roughly cut-to-shape

                                    Depicted here, is me, doing some additional planing

                         Further scraping revealed beautiful hues of orange and pinkish-purple, 
                           on the sides of the back.  I was initially going to use the opposite side 
                           for the exterior, but upon seeing these beautiful colors, I changed my 
                                                 mind, and decided to let this side shine.

At this point, I applied the centre strip to the back of the guitar, right down the seam of the glue joint.  This is a structural reinforcement, made of Mahogany.  It is a small rectangular piece of wood, roughly a centimeter wide, and 4mm thick, that runs up and down the length of the back.    After measuring and placing it, it was glued and evenly clamped, with three clamps.   

                                 The clamping setup for the application of the centre strip


While it dried, I picked out the four back braces, and traced a slight arc on them, in preparation for their shaping.  I used a plane to trim off each side of the top, giving it an arc, and gently sanding it, to finish it off.  A template was used to gauge the braces, fitting each one to an existing arc.  If there were any gaps, more sanding or planing had to be done, to ensure that each brace had the proper arc.  By the time this step was completed, the centre strip had dried.  I then unclamped it, and brought it to the workbench, where I began to use a very small wooden plane, to shave off each of the top edges, which would eventually give it an arc.  It was planed and sanded down until the edges were practically flush with the back of the guitar, and the top was properly curved.  I used different grades of sandpaper, going from coarse to fine, to finish it off.  By the time it was done, the grain of the Mahogany was visible, and the surface was quite smooth.  This was the last step of the day.  

                                                            The completed centre strip

                                 A colour and grain contrast of the guitar's front and back

                        Back and front, respectively.  At the bottom right, you'll see the bracing
                       template used to gauge the arcs and place the braces for the guitar's back.