Saturday, September 10, 2005
Doing the Dishes
Here's what I've worked on over the last couple days...
When we last left the cocobolo guitar, the sides had been profiled to the spherical 15-foot radius and the linings had been glued in place. So the next step is to line the spherical dish with sandpaper, and sand that shape into the linings and sides so that everything is flush and ready for the back to be glued on.
I've attached a flange and short pipe to the base, the dish will rotate around this pipe as it sands.
Here's the dish, I've lined it was sandpaper and drilled a hole in the middle.
Here's the dish sitting on the rib assembly. I've attached a crank handle to it so it's easy to crank the dish round and round to sand the spherical shape into the sides and the lining. I don't have to provide any downward pressure as the dish is already pretty heavy.
Here it is after sanding. It only took a couple minutes to get it sanded. The idea is to sand until the dish has sanded the entire top surface into a sphere. Since I did a lot of profiling with the hand plane before I glued the linings in, there wasn't much sanding to do.
You can kind of see the spherical profile now, and that everything is flush.
Now it's time to flip the rib assembly over and do the same thing to the top. Only this time the top will be cylindrical.
Just like I did with the dish before, I place some blocks on the neck and tail blocks to hold the cylindrical form above the rib assembly.
So I use the compass to transfer the cylindrical profile to the sides so that I can trim them with a hand plane and then glue in the linings.
I didn't take pictures of every step since it's so similar to what I've already done before. So here I've already trimmed the sides with a handplane and glued in one side of the linings, and the other side has just been glued and clamped up with clothespins.
While I'm waiting for the glue on the linings to dry, I started locating where the back braces will go.
That's it for now. Hopefully, before the weekend is done, I'll get a chance to sand the cylindrical profile in the sides and linings. Once that's done, the next step is bracing the back and top and then closing up the box.
Since there are not enough pictures in this post, here's a recent non-guitar-but-music-related distraction... I just picked it up on eBay, a late 60's Wurlitzer electric piano. I'll be taking it apart soon to get it all adjusted up, it has some sticking keys. Sounds pretty dang cool, though.
When we last left the cocobolo guitar, the sides had been profiled to the spherical 15-foot radius and the linings had been glued in place. So the next step is to line the spherical dish with sandpaper, and sand that shape into the linings and sides so that everything is flush and ready for the back to be glued on.
I've attached a flange and short pipe to the base, the dish will rotate around this pipe as it sands.
Here's the dish, I've lined it was sandpaper and drilled a hole in the middle.
Here's the dish sitting on the rib assembly. I've attached a crank handle to it so it's easy to crank the dish round and round to sand the spherical shape into the sides and the lining. I don't have to provide any downward pressure as the dish is already pretty heavy.
Here it is after sanding. It only took a couple minutes to get it sanded. The idea is to sand until the dish has sanded the entire top surface into a sphere. Since I did a lot of profiling with the hand plane before I glued the linings in, there wasn't much sanding to do.
You can kind of see the spherical profile now, and that everything is flush.
Now it's time to flip the rib assembly over and do the same thing to the top. Only this time the top will be cylindrical.
Just like I did with the dish before, I place some blocks on the neck and tail blocks to hold the cylindrical form above the rib assembly.
So I use the compass to transfer the cylindrical profile to the sides so that I can trim them with a hand plane and then glue in the linings.
I didn't take pictures of every step since it's so similar to what I've already done before. So here I've already trimmed the sides with a handplane and glued in one side of the linings, and the other side has just been glued and clamped up with clothespins.
While I'm waiting for the glue on the linings to dry, I started locating where the back braces will go.
That's it for now. Hopefully, before the weekend is done, I'll get a chance to sand the cylindrical profile in the sides and linings. Once that's done, the next step is bracing the back and top and then closing up the box.
Since there are not enough pictures in this post, here's a recent non-guitar-but-music-related distraction... I just picked it up on eBay, a late 60's Wurlitzer electric piano. I'll be taking it apart soon to get it all adjusted up, it has some sticking keys. Sounds pretty dang cool, though.
