What little time I had this week was completely focused on carving the outside of the back. As with the soundboard, I did all of this by hand using my carving tools and scraper. Unlike the soundboard though, for the back I went ahead and clamped the part to the bench while I carved. Clamping certainly makes it a lot easier to remove material than working free-hand does especially when carving on hard wood.
Like the soundboard, I used templates from the book as a guide. This shows my templates laid out in the positions where they were used.
As you can see in the three shots above, I decided to start by clamping one edge to the bench and then remove much of the excess wood from the unclamped side. I figured this would save me time later in the process. As it turns out this really did not help me much and, on my next project, I will not do it again. Rather, I will carve out the shape of each of the patterns, as I did with the soundboard, and then carve the rest to match. This is the technique I ended up using for the most part anyway. Here are more photos after I got most of the body work done.
And then I worked on the top and some on the scroll. Photos below.
As should be clear from this last picture, I have only started roughing the scroll. I imagine I will probably make it somewhat shorter (lower profile) than it is now and, depending on how I end up liking the scroll extension to the back, I may do away with it, too.
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