PhilHill
Hero Member
- Messages
- 1,653
Having recently acquired some nice chunks of Entandrophragma cylindricum, commonly known as Sapele, I thought I should make sure my tooling was in order. Cleaned and lubed the spindle sander, dusted out the planer and flipped the blades over to a fresh edge. And decided to recut the inner edges of my Tele hollow body template,
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. As I was setting this rigamarole up a thought struck me that I'm going to need to joint the pieces of new wood if I want to make a body out of it. Being that it's 8/4 size, (2 in thick) and I don't have a jointer yet some creativity was in order. So I took one of the planks and cut it into three sections and chose the two that matched up best. Then I set up the fence on the face of one near the edge and used the template bit to trim off a quarter inch deep cut on the side. Checked this and it was reasonably square to the face so I just kept going deeper down the side till I hit the limit of the bit. Flipped the piece over and used a trim bit with a bottom mounted bearing to do the second half. Boom,one jointed edge. Did the other board and they fit together well. So I glued them up and bandsawed a shape out of it.
.
. The line down the middle is pencil denoting the center line. Took the rough shape and weighed it, came out to close to 7lbs. Ouch! Since I didn't want to make a Les Paul out of it, I decided some weight reduction was in order. So taking my newly refurbished template, I proceeded to hollow away some of that poundage.
.
. Got it down to 4lbs 7oz. As I was thinking about what to do for a top, a thought struck me again. (Gotta figure out a better way, all this thought striking is giving me a concussion)
Why not put that template to another use. I have a couple of 4/4 pieces of flamed maple that were meant to be used to carve a small jazz guitar back out of. So I took one and re-sawed it down to get two 3/16 thick pieces. Then used the template to trace the inner perimeter onto the maple, a little sawing and spindle sanding later..
.
. Then put some support blocks underneath, then did the same to the other side. And glued them in place.
.
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. Sanded them down to flush and went ahead and cut a neck pocket in it. Then flipped it over, made a control cavity and took some more of the maple and cut a cover for said cavity.
.
. Decided to chamfer the back edges and round over the front. Also I kinda contoured the neck heel a little. Then I stopped and put some naptha on it to see how things stand.
.
. Further developments to follow................. :headbang:
.
. As I was setting this rigamarole up a thought struck me that I'm going to need to joint the pieces of new wood if I want to make a body out of it. Being that it's 8/4 size, (2 in thick) and I don't have a jointer yet some creativity was in order. So I took one of the planks and cut it into three sections and chose the two that matched up best. Then I set up the fence on the face of one near the edge and used the template bit to trim off a quarter inch deep cut on the side. Checked this and it was reasonably square to the face so I just kept going deeper down the side till I hit the limit of the bit. Flipped the piece over and used a trim bit with a bottom mounted bearing to do the second half. Boom,one jointed edge. Did the other board and they fit together well. So I glued them up and bandsawed a shape out of it.
.
. The line down the middle is pencil denoting the center line. Took the rough shape and weighed it, came out to close to 7lbs. Ouch! Since I didn't want to make a Les Paul out of it, I decided some weight reduction was in order. So taking my newly refurbished template, I proceeded to hollow away some of that poundage.
.
. Got it down to 4lbs 7oz. As I was thinking about what to do for a top, a thought struck me again. (Gotta figure out a better way, all this thought striking is giving me a concussion)
Why not put that template to another use. I have a couple of 4/4 pieces of flamed maple that were meant to be used to carve a small jazz guitar back out of. So I took one and re-sawed it down to get two 3/16 thick pieces. Then used the template to trace the inner perimeter onto the maple, a little sawing and spindle sanding later..
.
. Then put some support blocks underneath, then did the same to the other side. And glued them in place.
.
.
. Sanded them down to flush and went ahead and cut a neck pocket in it. Then flipped it over, made a control cavity and took some more of the maple and cut a cover for said cavity.
.
. Decided to chamfer the back edges and round over the front. Also I kinda contoured the neck heel a little. Then I stopped and put some naptha on it to see how things stand.
.
. Further developments to follow................. :headbang: