Top Graduation

Now things calm back down to hand tools (surprisingly small ones) for the graduation of the top (the process of making it all the correct thickness -- anywhere from 5 to 10mm). At this point, I'm aiming to get the area of the bassbar done. The chips pile up like mad -- every chip is a plane stroke, and there must be billions of them.

Top hogout...

This step is pretty intense -- Hogging out most of the wood on the underside of the top.

First I drill a series of holes to specific depths as guides for the nasty, noisy and totally unpleasant "Lancelot" tool to hog away on an angle grinder. Yee haw! It sucks. The mess is awesome.

Top is Shaped..

Ok, a lot of work (and life) has happened since my last post.......

So, this is the final shape of the top -- with the area of the lower f-hole wings carved down for better f-hole/arching goodness.

Notice the edges -- I like to do much of the edge fluting at this stage -- so the arching out to the fluting is pretty much exactly what it's going to be when finished.

Top shaping

Carve, carve, carve.

Top work

Ok, the top is joined and I'm starting to carve the outside arching -- which I do by eye without templates; now that I understand and know the shape of the arching, it's easy to carve it to the correct shape quickly with a plane.

I used to be interested in automated methods for duplicating a pattern precisely -- so that each top is exactly the same as the next, but I really can't see it saving much time, and I would miss a very important step in getting to know the wood -- and changing the arching to suit it......

The wood I use is Sitka spruce and the stock I am using now is all from the same log -- cut into bookmatched sets perfectly by a friend. It's very nice to get to know the qualities of the wood over the years -- so at least there is one variable eliminated from the vast array.

Back on!

Whoa. It's always nice to get to this super-clampy stage. All those clamps look so cool. So cool.

Back graduation

I've been graduating the back -- carving it from the inside to the correct thickness.