Friday - I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand

Well, nothing is ever totally easy in this guitar making business. The back was an interesting problem to work out. If you look at the back of an acoustic guitar, you will note that it is curved both to top to bottom (heel to butt), and side to side. You may remember that I mentioned the gluing process was different on the back piece. We needed to plane down high spots that we could see by looking at the edges of the guitar and sighting in differences in levels. Then we contoured the edges with a special sanding block. To be honest, this was hard to understand until we actually got involved in the process and called George over to check no less than 3 times.

Contouring the sides in preparation for the back

Finished contoured back

We then prepared the back to fit, by scalloping the braces, checking the fit (this happened several times) the drawing the final cutting pattern out (we had left the back about 1/4 inch wider all the way around to prepare it for a perfect fit). We then made a final cut on the bandsaw.

We then "test" clamped the back to prepare for gluing. In this guitar making business, it is smart to prefit everything. We then glued and clamped the back.

Back clamped together

A few hours later we took the clamps off. Looks like a finished body, but nothing is ever easy in this guitar making business. Tomorrow - the edge bindings!