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The mould is ready. I don't know about the other builders, but most of the time my 'bits of wood left over that might come in useful some time' just get in the way and clog up my pretty tight storage space. Like this piece of mahogany offcut from a previous neck build:
But I have a use for it at last! One florentine-ready mould
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So the idea is that each wing will have a mahogany middle piece that will act as the gluing surface to the through-neck and also to widen, albeit internally, the through neck for the bridge fixings and humbucker chambers. So imagine there is a through neck in the middle of these two sides:
So imagine that the walnut backs are glued to these bearers, that there is a slim pair of walnut sides bent round the periphery and that the ebony top will be glued to the top of these two bearers and the tops of the bent sides.
But to get the back to dish, the bottoms of those two bearers will need shaping. Below is a variation of a very simple technique that I picked up on this very forum to shape bearers. The pro's use a washer and a pencil, but I didn't have a washer the right size so have used a small piece of wood, drilled to let my felt tip poke out the other side:
The drilled hole gets the felt-tip just reaching the bottom of the wood at the lowest point of the radius dish. So if I move the spacer and pen either way, it will scribe the shape of the dish on the wood:
I then bandsaw and plane up to this line and I have a pair of shaped formers that will form and hold the curve of the back walnut sheet. The through neck will be carved the same shape at the back:
So, using the mould as the datum, I can measure how far off the bottom of what will be the walnut back the ebony top needs to be:
And, because the ebony sheet is flat bottomed, I can measure how far down from the bottom of my beam here the mating surfaces of the mahogany side pieces and walnut sides need to be.
I first marked where the tops of the mahogany side pieces need to be and cut them:
And then also marked some blue dots on the inside face of the mould to mark where the top of the sides will come...I will use this to make a paper template to be able to pre-cut the shape in the walnut sheet for the side pieces before I bend them (ask me how I've found out that's an important step!):
So now you should be able to see the idea. The back walnut will be pressed into the mould and held in that shape by the mahogany side pieces and some additional spruce braces, the guitar sides will be bent and go from the back walnut up to the blue dotted line, and the flat-bottomed walnut will lay on top of the side pieces and walnut sides.
I'm sure I'm being over-optimistic, but I still think this might work!
Using a jig called a go-bar deck, I will use these, glued on their bottom faces, to force the walnut into the curve of the radius dish
So it's time to start thickening the walnut.
Ideally this would be done on a sander thicknesser, but I don't have one, and so it's a bit more manual. The walnut sheet is supplied at around 3.6mm thick, and needs to be reduced to just a touch under 2mm.
On my acoustics, I've tried all sorts of ways, but this is the quickest-and-just-about-OK method I've settled on.
I start with a plane. Curiously (because I would have thought a Stanley finishing plane would be better) I find the little block plane the most successful:
Then once I'm there or thereabouts I even it up with the second most expensive tool I've ever bought (but not regretted it) the Mirka Orbital Sander:
Still got a bit of evening out to do, but it's getting there:
Already, it's flexible enough to be moulded into the radius dish.
This is it flat and straight:
And this is what the side and cross braces will do (hopefully!) pushing it into shape:
By the way, this also illustrates how different the timber colour is once it has the finish applied. Above is the walnut freshly sanded. And this is what it will look like once it has its final finish applied (these are the actual pieces I'm using above):
Next is to cut and bend some sides...
Then I understand better why some of the techniques and jigs (etc) were necessary for the build and why some things are done in the order that they're done in.
Andy has to work it all out beforehand though, which makes him a lot cleverer-er than me!
I think the back might look as good as the front, especially with the ideas around the neck woods
Well...maybe a teeny, weeny bit.
Ebony? Ebony??? Ebony??????
Next step is to prepare the back and sides of one of the wings.
One of the things I've been meaning to do for ages is to modify the measuring pads of my long-reach micrometer. Because the present pads are quite large flat disks, and it is almost impossible to keep everything exactly parallel, the slightest angle and the micrometer over-measures:
Rummaging around in one of my bits boxes, I found these chromed covers from some old wall-mirror fixing screws. Ideal!
I ground down the brass screw thread and epoxied them on. Perfect
So time to thin down the sides walnut:
I'm aiming for around 1.9mm. This will do nicely
Next was to work out the shape. I have found from my acoustic builds that pre-cutting the shape and then fine tuning with sanding once they are bent is by far the easiest way of going about it. So I got some fairly stiff cartridge paper and fiddled about for a while until I had a template that was flat at the top and the correct curves to seat at the bottom of the radiused back, clamped into the radius dish here:
Then cut the thinned walnut to the resulting shape:
So next job is to bend it and see if it fits!
And, all being well, that will be this afternoon.
As always, thanks for looking and for the kind comments along the way
Walnut is one of the more forgiving timbers to bend as long as it's thin enough so it wasn't too long before it was done:
I'll leave it clamped overnight to fully dry in shape - usually helps to avoid the bend relaxing.
In the meantime, I'll order the neck wood and the kerfed strip. For the neck, we're going for this kind of look - with walnut in the middle, a couple of thin maple strips and then mahogany for the outers:
Still looks like this might work
I have to bend the end curved piece , carve a reinforcement block for the horn, get hold of or make some kerfed strip for the edges and I will be ready to start gluing stuff.