9/17/2004

Once I had the body halves cut, I lined them up so that my body outline would fit. When I found that position, I made witness marks across the joint so I could always find that alignment. You can see them in the picture here.

9/18/2004

Before I glued and clamped the body together, I surface planed them to about 1 1/2" thick. Then I jointed the mating surfaces. This is what the mahogany looked like after that step.

9/18/2004

While I had the jointer warmed up, I took the opportunity to joint my flamed maple stock. This won't go on until the body is glued together and shaped.

9/18/2004

A little Titebod II and some clamps and the body halves are mated together. I put some wax paper underneath so it wouldn't stick to my spindle sander table top surface. I scraped up the squeeze out after it started to tack up.

9/19/2004

Twenty four hours later, I popped off the clamps and used a random orbital sander to clean both the face and back of the body. The mahogany really looks great here.

9/19/2004

Once the body was cleaned up and smooth, I took the body-master and used it to draw the outline seen below. Now it's off to the bandsaw for some trimming.

9/19/2004

From the bandsaw to the oscillating spindle sander. I used a course grit sanding drum to remove the rest of the stock to the line. Here is the result of that. Tomorrow, I'll finish the sanding with 3 more successively smoother grit sanding drums.

9/21/2004

Here's a close-up of the body edges after fine sanding on the spindle sander. Even at this stage, it's apparent that I'll have to finish the shaping by hand. This is because with an oscillating spindle sander, you can't use bearing-equipped drums for pattern sanding. You need to use a steady hand but the occasional "trough" or "dip" is inevitable. Sanding by hand with the sand paper attached to a wooden block will make for slower, more deliberate stock removal and will allow you to remove all the waves and imperfections in the edges.

9/21/2004

The next step was to send the flamed maple halves through the planer. They were rather rough when I got them so I wanted to clean them up. It was necessary, at this stage, to at least plane the side that would be glued down. A smoother mating surface would improve adhesion. I did both sides. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of tear-out on both sides. This is not uncommon with maple. Rather than moisten the maple and send it through the planer again, I decided to just clamp up and glue since I'll be sanding the glue joint later anyway. Hopefully, I can clean up the tear-out with the random orbital sander. I may even have more luck by using a block planer by hand. This means I'll have to buy a block planer! NOTE: I'm really hoping that will work because if the tear-out can't be removed, I'll have to consider filling the surface and that means I probably won't be able to get a clear stain to look good. That would mean having to paint the body. At least I'll still have the sonic qualities of a maple top.