Tuesday, September 17, 2024

a step forward, and a step back

 Today I first finished sanding the neck to width  as shown in my last picture yesterday.  I then laid out the interior shape into my pattern board leaving 1/2'-5/8" for the rim or sidewalls to which the top and back will be glued.  I cut his out with a jigsaw and sanded to even things out and to give the router pattern bit a smooth surface to run on.



Next I attached the pattern to the first of my plywood body pieces.  To do this I needed to drill a new positioning hole near the tail (which I left a little thicker to hold the banjo/mando tailpiece) and then used brads/nails to hold them together for routing.  I needed to tweak my hold up board fitted to the bottom to allow my routing but didn't get it quite right and I had the router jump and the pattern board broke (it was particle board).  Unfortunately this caused a gouge.  I plan to fix this with some Rock Hard Water Putty and it will become my pattern for routing new boards.  I think I'll do the shaping in the router table going forward which should avoid these kind of problems.  I didn't use it initially because the fence is set up for making my bridge and I didn't want to move it until I was ready for that.  Plans change, time to use the right tool for the job and deal with some minor setup time later.



More later!
Brian




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