Day 2

So day two of the accoustic guitar build you have seen what I have been doing on day 1, it took a little longer than I expected, still time to go for day two.

Well thats the guitar template made just need to transfer this to the wood for the mould.  Laid the accoustic guitar temp. on top of the timber and traced around it.



Plastic accoustic guitar template on timber


 Here we have two pieces of timber with the accoustic guitar shape transfered to it.

Accoustic guitar shape transfered to timber

 The next thing was to cut the inside shape of the guitar from the timber (roughly - it can be sanded back later) in readiness to make the negative for the accoustic guitar.


Accoustic guitar template cut roughly with jigsaw

 The four pieces which will eventually form the negative for the guitar body need to be sanded back to form the guitar mould and they all need to be the same shape.  The easiest way to do this was to bolt them together.


Accoustic guitar mould sections bolted together



In the past and before I had read Jonathan Kinkead's book I would have sanded something down with a block of wood wrapped in sandpaper.  Jonathan's book introduced me to sanding sticks - something I had never considered before.  A sanding stick is a shape of wood with sandpaper glued to it to make it a sanding tool.  There is not a lot of need for text here so I will let the pictures do the talking.

 



Guess what I'm using for a round sanding stick dont tell the wife





A Flat sanding stick





Glue on flat sanding stick





Sandpaper glued to sanding stick

 Sanding sticks ready it is time to start sanding the guitar mould back to the profile we require as the current profile is very irregular.

Accoustic guitar template ready for sanding

 After a lot of hard work with both the flat and round sanding sticks we are half way to producing the guitar blank.(three hours worth).

Half way through sanding process

 Heres a couple of shots of the sanding tools in action on the guitar blank - again not a lot of need for words apart from the titles of the pictures.

Flat sanding tool in action



Round sanding tool in action

 And after another three hours we are nearly there.

Nearly finished

 And now its finished and yes I have gat carpet in my workshop.

Finished sanding the template - lines marked to trim the mould



Another picture of the finished mould template pieces

 One last thing if you are cutting things out on your workbench with a jigsaw, remember the bench is underneath.  Here's a picture of a semi circular chunk I took out of the bench (in the centre) thankfully it looks like it may have been intended to be there.

Dont forget when your using your jigsaw dont cut through your bench



The end of day 2 another 8 hours work so thats 16 hours on the project so far.