In working on the back of the guitar, I had 2 tasks to undertake today. First, I needed to install the center brace that goes down the length of the back, directly in the center. This was a fairly simple process. First, I place my radius dish (the one I’ve been using to sand the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Hand Planes’
More Body Work
A guitar front and back have slight curves to them. Remembering back on some physics classes where we studied sound waves in relationship to surfaces, I’m guessing these dome shapes predominately give the resulting sound from the guitar more volume. It is possible that they also give it some resonance and other acoustic characteristics. I’ll [...]
Headstock Laminations
Part of making a guitar neck can be creating a certain look for the headstock (where the tuner machines are for tuning the guitar). For this guitar neck, I chose to go from the maple of the neck (which is a light colored wood) to a dark wood (ebony on one and mahagony on the [...]
Sticking out 2 Necks
OK, I’ve moved from issues to being in good shape. The glue-ups of both necks turned out great. My next step was to thickness the headstock. I used hand planes to do this. Given that both necks are maple, it took awhile and I had to monitor grain direction to make sure we had smooth [...]
Scarf Joint – Attempts 2 & 3
In an update to my last post I told you all how the joint of my first attempt did not turn out. Fortunately, I ordered an additional Birdseye Maple Neck Blank so I could try it again having learned that I need to verify the joint on both sides of the neck. I also ordered [...]
Guitar 2 – Scarf Joint
OK, I’ve begun the 2nd guitar in ernest. I started with the neck. When building a guitar neck you need 3 basic elements. The neck body. This is where the fret is on up to the 14th fret. The headstock. This is angled down from the neck body by about 15 degrees and is where [...]
Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)
While I was working on the guitar (see previous post), I’ve had a nearly completed desk in my shop. It’s been quite handing with having another surface to place tools, work items and such on. However, it’s been nagging at me to get it done. Well, this week I was able to get BACK TO [...]
Standing Laptop Desk – Top is on
I worked very hard and got the top flat and smooth along with square. This process really honed my hand plane skills which I’m pleased with (of course, all the work on maple means I need to sharpen the hand planes now). I decided to make my own wooden clips. Here is a shot [...]
Frame Glue Up
I finished the frame pieces and dry fitted them. I’m pretty happy with the results though similar to most woodworkers, I can see every error and blemish in the project and that frustrates me. I believe that I can fix a few of them after the glue up so that is the plan that I’m [...]
Double Mortises
OK, as a newb to hand cut mortises and tenons I’m pushing the envelope by doing double mortises. I know, it’s crazy. All in all though, I’m pretty happy with the results.
Standing Laptop Desk – First Mortise and Tenons
OK, today I finished my first mortise and tenons on the Standing Laptop Desk. Only 20,000 more to go. OK, maybe not that many but looking at it from the beginning makes it seem that way. I’ve shown some practice mortise and tenons in previous posts but I was still kind of frustrated with them. [...]
Wood Prep Shots
Here is a shot of all the hand processed maple boards that I have for my standing laptop desk. As you can see, I have the top glued together (still need size but I want to wait till the desk frame is together). I also have the legs with taper and now they are marked [...]
Progress on my standing laptop desk
The next post should have some pictures. Having never built a project entirely by hand, I had no accurate idea of how long any particular step was going to take. Once I got started I realized that any guess I had was far off (by orders of magnitude). I think I compounded the time problem [...]
Shop minutiae
As I go through this standing maple desk project, I am sawing, planing, and sanding. Soon, I will be drilling and chiseling too. As I plane this hard maple (I really got reminded how hard it was today when I needed to cut a small piece of plywood in modifying a jig), I’m getting a [...]
Standing Laptop Desk – Tapered Legs
I’ve been making progress over the week. It’s been very slow going. After roughing the dimensions of the legs, I wanted to get them more exactly square, plummed. This takes a long time. After that, I wanted to get the tapers done. This took figuring out which legs will be the front and which part [...]
