I picked up a table belt sander the other day. This thing rocks!

I glued a ton of wood onto the soundboard. The more i glue on, the more I have to remove.

My hands are really sore.

Here are a few photo’s of the process of bracing the back.

I probably used too thick of braces, either that or they aren’t tall enough. They are more triangle shaped than pillar shaped. During the shaping process, I slipped a lot with the chisel and took chunks out of the back. So I have a significant amount of sanding to do. At least I didn’t slip and take chunks out of my hand… I can’t sand that out.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with witty titles for my posts.

Anyhoo, here is the rosette on guitar #1. I kind of like it.  I was a little over-ambitious with the design in the early stages, but i think it worked out well. It’s simple, but it has a little flare to it.

On with the pictures.

So I knew that i was going to have to build one of these eventually. I was just putting it off because I wasnt sure on how I was going to do it. I didnt want to spend $200 on a premade setup that was going to take up more space, so i decided to implement it into my current setup.

I knew where i wanted it and i knew how to build it, i just didnt know what kind of mechanism i wanted it to be on. I didnt want the top shelf to be up there at all times, so i was thinking some sort of hinging system.

While building the top shelf, i got an idea of a slot system. As you can see in the pictures, you can just slide the shelf in and out of the slot, no problem.

It was easy after that. I picked up some fiberglass reflector rods for $2 a piece and cut them to length. These suckers put down a lot of pressure!

The last picture is of me gluing in the back bracing on the back of the guitar using a 20′ radius dish.

Done and Done!

First off, WOW, soundboards are waaaay easier to work with than a guitar back. The wood is like butter and conforms to your every will. You actually have to be careful with it or it will snap in two.

Anyway, I got the soundboard all glued up and some of the rosette installed. Sorry that I didn’t get more pictures of it. I could probably offer up a better explanation, buuuuuttt…. I don’t really want to.

So I took a bit of a sabbatical because this walnut has been frustrating me. With my kit guitar finally finished, I have no excuse to not move forward with this now.

As you can see in the pictures, I took some pretty big hunks out of the wood. It’s surprisingly hard wood, so it’s quite difficult to repair with sanding. But I sucked it up and got ‘er done. You can see in one of the pictures that I wiped the board with Naptha, that’s what I can expect the wood to look like when its all finished.

At first, I thought I might want to put a backstrip in that’s the same color of binding that I am going to use. But I decided against it.

woohoo! I picked up a Delta 12″ bandsaw last weekend.