I had a crown done on Monday and surprisingly it made working on my guitar challenging. Today (Thursday) is the first day I've gotten back into my shop.
Today I had several small things to do and thought they would fill up my time.
First, I had to trim the ebony accents on the wedge and then fine sand the edges of the side where the top and back will be glued on. The ebony was really thin so trimming with a chisel was a piece of cake. Sanding was also short because the rough sanding had already been done.
Next I needed to finish the shaping of the braces on the back. I had already shaped the peaks or tops of the braces before glue up but now I needed to taper the braces down to where they meet the side. In my build of a guitar, I am thinning the ends down to about 2.5 mm thick with it going back into the brace over 40 mm. The shape of these braces can affect the tonal quality of the back. I am far from an expert on this but so that I can continue to learn about the shapes necessary to make a guitar, I continually tested the tone on the back as I shaped these braces. In the end, I felt I got a full bodied sound with some sustain (though it was not really an extensive sustain). The same testing will need to be done on the top and will even more critical to the resulting sound of the guitar.
I was done with my small projects and it seemed that I had plenty of time to attach the back. In doing this, I had to do a few things. First, I had to lay out the sides on the back so I could trim away the center brace where the neck block and heel block are in the sides. I then had to mark where the cross braces meet the sides and trim away a shallow dato so that the back joins the sides in a tight fashion.
In this shot where you see the back being glued down, you also get a real solid sense in my design idea where the end wedge meets the center strip on the back. I'm really pleased with how this looks.
I have a few small things to do and then I need to move on to the top. I need to scrape away any glue squeeze out and I need to sand the inside of the guitar. Then I need to create a creation certificate and glue it on the inside of the back (right under the sound hole). The top will be the next really interesting element and be a huge milestone.
