Carving the Replacement Soundboard

Monday, May 4, 2009.

Not a lot got done in the last week, but enough I guess to still say I am moving ahead even if much of it was put in to remaking the soundboard.

I started the week by removing the clamps from the peghead where I had glued the front veneer and then gluing on the back veneer. The front veneer is ebony wood and the back is simply a thin maple.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that virtually no glue got into the truss rod pocket so that little mistake didn't end up hurting.


Then I moved on to the soundboard. Unlike the original soundboard, the raw wood for this one came in a bit warped which made it a bit more difficult to glue up and then made it a lot more important to plane flat before starting to carve. This is not really a straight forward thing to do when your would is not flat on both sides but rather wedge shaped. Obviously, a method must be found to allow the wedged side to face down while feeding it through the power-planer. For this, I remembered reading that Lynn Dudenbostel uses a couple of strips of wood as supports - so I thought I would try it.

I dug out a long, thin piece of scrap wood that shipped as a stiffener with something else (I can’t remember what), cut it in half, and glued it onto the spruce blank.


Knowing that the areas where the glue is applied (pretty much only under the clamps) is going to be carved away anyway and that the strips themselves are nothing more than scrap, I figured the gluing was a pretty good method for making sure the strips stayed in the same location from one pass to the next. Seems I was right.


Once I had the one side nice and flat and my outline drawn on, it was time to carve. Here is where I am as of now.


As you might notice, unlike the first soundboard, I have begun carving the scroll as well as the body on this one. I decided to abandon the idea of carving the ivy leaves on the scroll as I had originally planned and go forward with a traditional scroll. I made this choice because I am finding that this project is challenging enough without this additional feature. I will, however, go ahead with the inlay as I had previously planned.

Some Progress

Wednesday, March 4, 2009.

Been spending more time working on the mandolin, or at least the fixtures and tools for it, and less time writing about it lately (especially since nobody is reading, so far). Here are some pictures of what I got done.

I received my second round of practice wood for bending last week and discovered something interesting - not all practice wood is necessarily the same. This time around, the wood thickness and width are practically identical to that of the real stuff. This means I was able to work with pieces that don’t have to be modified (other than trimming to width) prior to bending. I think my results are pretty good.

I also finally got to finish making all my cello clamps. All I really had left was to glue leather on to one side and then trim them up.







One of the things I finally got done was to get the wood for the back split. As I wrote before, I was not able to do this myself because I don’t have a saw large enough to do it. Initially I started trying by using a handsaw.

This is where I was after about a half-hour of sawing (with a new saw, I might add).

I worked on it for another half-hour the next night and finally gave up. Fortunately I was able to find a friend who has a large bandsaw and got it done. Once cut, I noticed that the wood has a nice cup to it.

Here you can see, that when laid out in book-matching fashion, the two pieces cup in opposite directions. Not having a planer I will try to level this by hand once glued together (wish me luck).

Looking at the top, you can also see that the book-matched edges will need some truing before I can glue them to together. For this, I created myself a “truing board”.



As you can see, I made this out of two pieces of 3/8" plywood with a 2 x 2 on each edge. This assembly is then glued to a piece of 1" thick poplar. Once I had this built, I took a look at my hand plane and realized that the blade on it was in sad need of sharpening. For that, I purchased this honing guide.





Using it along with several grades of wet-dry sandpaper glued to a pane of glass, I should be able to get my plane sharp enough to work with.

And, finally, I have started making the cut-out in the neck for the truss rod. Mr. Siminoff describes using a table saw with a fixture to cut this, but he also mentions that it can be cut using a Dremel or carving chisels. I am a little nervous about using a table saw for this, and lacking the proper bits for my Dremel, I decided to use the carving chisel technique. Here is where I got to last night.


I still have a ways to go before I get the depth right and I still have yet to get the pocket cut in the peg head for the truss rod nut, but I think it is a good start.