Day 8

The following entry documents Tuesday, March 16, 2013.  Today started out differently than the rest of my days in the shop.  Ned and I began not by working on guitars, but by visiting a few stores, around town.  He told me he had been thinking about buying a bench planer, and had priced a few out.  He also had a file to return, as it had a slight curve in it, and a couple other tools to pick up.  On the way to our first stop, we came across East Coast Hardwood Supply, and decided to stop in for a bit.  I had never been here before, and was excited to see what they had in store- literally.

Upon entering their warehouse area, I was greeted by tons of shelves full of many different types of woods- they were all cut to various sized planks.  They also had chunks of burl, and many other wood rarities.  We went up some stairs to get to the upper levels of the shelving, and started looking at what they had.  I saw various types of ebony, cedar, birch, maple, and more.  I had no clue there were so many varieties of ebony.  I saw a section for bubinga wood- I recognized its name, because a series of Ibanez electric bass guitars I am fond of uses a bit of it.  A new wood I saw was called tulipwood,which had a nice, colorful grain.  Ned found a piece of Spanish cedar that he liked, and ended up toting it along with him for the duration of our browsing.

African wenge wood- some of this beautiful grain will
be featured on the headstock of my guitar.

After looking around for 10 or 15 minutes, we went back to the front of the building, to the checkout area.  The woman behind the counter measured the wood, and priced it out for Ned.  While she was doing this, I was browsing their lobby area- there was a friendly little pug, and a vast array of unique woodworks.  There was a large cross section of a tree, a succession of boars carved into a single log, another succession of animals- elephants- carved into a single log, a few taxidermy pieces, and some African-themed wood carvings.  Tons to look at!  I admired the quality of the boars and elephants- they were my favourite of the gallery.  We left after Ned was done his transaction, and headed to our next destination.
We went to Busy Bee Tools in the Burnside industrial district of Dartmouth- Ned and I split up, and looked at different things.  I picked up two different sized metal rules, and a tweezers/magnifying glass combo- I purchased these three tools for just under $7.  Ned ended up getting a bench planer, as he had planned.  We left, the store, and headed to Kent (an Atlantic Canadian building supply store) to exchange the file that Ned had.  He found a replacement, and an additional file, as well.  We headed to the checkout- Ned is very particular, and concerned with quality- he went as far as asking the clerk to let him cut open the packages to inspect the files for integrity, making sure they were straight, so that he wouldn't run into the same issue, again. He opened 3 different packages, and ended up purchasing two of them.  We were done our tool run!

Once we arrived back at the shop, Ned unpacked his new bench planer, and I pulled out the sides of my guitar.  I had already dressed one side of them, so it was now time to thin them to a near-final thickness.  For this, I used a belt-sander.  It took multiple runs through the belt sander to get them to the right thickness, which I believe was roughly 2.5mm.  The remainder of the finishing would again be done with the wood scraper, for a higher quality finish, with hand-precision. 

 

The sides- completed

After I finished scraping/dressing the sides, they were at about 2.2-2.4mm thick.  There would still be some final scraping, to reduce them to between 2.0 - 2.2mm- this was to be done after the top and back were joined.  I put my sides away for the day, and consulted Ned, to see what the next course of action would be.  Ned had been running a piece of maple through his new bench planer, as a test piece.  It seemed to work fine, but he said he'd have to do some adjusting, as the planer didn't get the wood quite as thin as he wanted it to be.  The next step I would undertake was doing some work on the neck of my guitar.  The neck was to be mahogany- he pulled out a massive chunk of it, and started doing some measurements, to optimize the yield of usable sections for guitar-building.  Once all was said and done, I had a plank that would serve as my neck and headstock- they were to be cut from the same piece of wood.  Before this was done, the mahogany was split down the middle, into two equal sections.  I now had to

The chunk of mahogany from which my neck was cut

decide if I wanted an ebony accent strip, or a wenge one.  After a few minutes of comparing, I chose the ebony.  I found the contrast of the dark ebony against the lighter mahogany much to my liking- I also knew that my headstock would have a piece of wenge on it, which reinforced my choosing ebony.  Ned cut a piece of ebony for me, and then cut it in two pieces- one for the headstock, and one for the neck.  The cut was at an angle, which was done for one specific reason:  the headstock was to be cut from the same piece of the neck, at an angle- after this is done, the piece is flipped over, and glued back onto the piece from which it came, but the angle at which it's cut makes the headstock have the desired angle, relative to the neck.  This is called a scarf joint.  Future pictures will better illustrate this concept. 

The two halves of the neck/headstock, and an
ebony accent/centre strip

I did a bit of planing and sanding the mahogany to get the interior edges flush for the glue joint- I also did a bit of sanding on the ebony.  Ned helped a bit with getting the fit to be as flush as it could possibly be.  Once this preparatory work was done, the glue was applied to the mahogany, and the ebony was set in place.  The ebony was sandwiched between the two pieces of mahogany, and then clamped into place with 4 or 5 clamps.  This was the last step of the day!  I will return next week, to do some further work on the neck.  The sides are now ready to be bent, as well, but this will be done closer to the time of joining the top and back, so the shape which they are bent into will keep its form as much as possible (e.g. If you need to iron your clothes for work, you do it right before work- not a week before).

The glued and clamped neck/headstock, with highly visible glue squeeze-out.  A good thing to see!

Thanks for reading- stay tuned for the next step of the process!