Thursday, January 20, 2011

1/20/2011 S-L-O-W Going

Days and days of mostly just staring at the dumb thing wondering why- oh why- things did not meet the way they should. Take a little off here- then a little off there- shoot!- think I took some off the wrong side. This was not the way to go.

My micro-plane was going to be my salvation, but it may have created more problems than it fixed.

Talk about creative clamping! Trying to get all the angles right and everything where it is supposed to be so that the screws in the base will end up in the right places. Not so effective.

The base is screwed- (no comments from the peanut gallery)- but the sides are not in the correct alignment. Fiddled with it every day (day after day) for 2-4 hours and still didn't have it just right. Finally gave up and decided to work from the neck down. Maybe the top of the harp (knee block) will be able to keep everything aligned and I can drill yet another set of holes in the base- running out of room there now.

We won't even go into how many hours were spent taking the measurements for this paper pattern. It seemed to fit fairly well, so I made a cereal carton cardboard model to see if it was going to fit.


I glued up some scraps of cherry to make a big enough block for the knee-block, and then I cut it using the band saw. Not a good fit at all. Took it to the big belt sander to refine some of the angles. Finally used hand sanding on a flat surface to get it pretty close.

Went shopping for some new toys. Gotta be a better way to measure small angles on small areas. Finally got a digital angle gauge and angle-measure-thingy at Home Depot. They both work fairly well, and I like the digital readout, but there is no way to accurately measure an angle when the side is just 1/4" wide. Lesson learned- cut it right the first time- dummy!

Dry run to fine tune the details. Lining things up on the plans is a big help. It ain't perfect, but I think it just may be close enough.


Ready or not- it is glued. Tough job because of all the weird angles. It wanted to squish out when the glue was applied. Lots of clamps and lots of glue and I'll know tomorrow morning whether or not it will do.
After the screws are in the base correctly I can measure for and cut the soundboard and back board. Once they are cut I can work on them for adding the string reinforcement and decoration to the soundboard, and put the sound-holes in the back board. That should be easy. Nothing could be as hard as making and fitting and gluing that knee block and making the base.
Time- 8 days, 23 hours
Total= 60

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