Author: jafederer

After making a few minor adjustments, I cut the belly plate today. There were no stumbles or issues. The next step is to shape the outer surfaces. That’ll be done with hand tools and templates, as is traditional.

Yesterday I roughed out the back plate on the CNC. Things went better than feared, but still requiring adjustments before I do the top plate. I also realized after it was done that I had the groove for the ribs “on” the line, not outside. The result is that the template is slightly too large. I had decided to live with the over-size, but even now that I’m committed to this approach I’ll have to make another one. I tried trimming the template on the router table, but just messed up an edge. This well delay the project again by a few more days.

There’s a lot of fiddle wood that I inherited from my father. These 2 plates were both rejected, for different reasons. The Maple back was narrow with a couple of saw cuts intruding into the required area. The Spruce top is thin, and wasn’t glued very well – there were gaps in awkward places.

I succeeded in separating the Spruce by applying quite a bit of hot water to the seam and wedging it apart. There was only a bit of wood damage. A bit of hand planing made the surfaces clean and consistent. They glued back together with no obvious gaps. There’s still a hand-written note “crack”, which is a dark line within one of the half-plates, near the peak. I suspect that once the plate is formed for the arches the level will below that mark. I’m not convinced it’s a crack.

The Maple plate was more problematic. It wouldn’t come apart, even with lots of hot water and wedges at both ends. I ended up band-sawing it apart. I inserted a Walnut centre. It’s plenty wide enough now, even with the saw cuts. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”

The epoxy is still curing. The underside has a few resin blobs that will have to be sanded down.