A few new projects

Many pics of my roaring start. The fall season will be busy. First pic is me resawing a piece of an old door. Spruce or pine, don’t really know, it is old, dry as bone and very tightly grained. It’ll be a top for a soprano with mahogany back and sides. 

Then I spent a gruesome couple of hours kneeling by the drum sander. It’s really hard work but in the end I had processed wood for three sopranos and a reso. 

Wait, this second pic was taken before that. I cut the parts for the reso very carefully from that wide mahogany sheet I made last weekend, laying them out to ensure maximum yield. 



Here’s the one piece rim for one of the sopranos. I bent it on the bending iron and will do that for another one as well. The third sop will have sides in two halves so I’ll bend those on the bender. It’s some dark hard wood so the bending blanket will probably be a bit easier. 



This is my last reso skeleton, maybe I’ll order some more. First I plane the dowels down so the skeleton is smooth and even. The sides will be a one piece rim because it is way easier to glue them on - I have a shopmade waist clamp that puts tension all around the lower bout. 



And that clamp is two dowels and two pieces of all thread. Other clamps may come in handy too. 



Then I laid out the centre points for the sound well and the sound ports. I did make a small mistake here though, glueing the guide blocks before cutting the holes with my rosette and hole cutter. The blocks were in the way but I persevered and conquered. 



I have used aluminium mesh for the grilles but this time I use steel. I think it’s better because it will be stronger, even though the holes are a bit larger. In the pic you can also see the rare appearance of epoxy glue in my workshop. 



And the last pic then, the top glued on.