After I had traced the bending form shapes onto the 1/2" plywood, I cut each a little outside the line on my bandsaw. Then, I nailed them together and used a sanding drum on my drill press to sand them both to the line. I next (with the two halves still nailed together) drilled seven 1/2" holes (with a Forstner bit) along the rim. The hole beneath the waist is for a bolt which lines up the form in the universal side bender. |
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I then cut seven 1/2" dowels and glued them into the holes. The sidebending form is done! |
The final thing I did today was to trace the mold template shape six times onto the plywood and bandsaw all six of my mold pieces just outside the lines. That's enough for today! Tomorrow I will attach the template to each piece and use the router to do the final shaping. |
Saturday, July 21st, 2007: Well, today I (GULP!) used the router to finish up the six mold pieces. I drilled 3 holes (5/16") through the hardboard template and each of the six mold pieces, for indexing pins as I used the template and a router bit with a bearing on top (and, later, to help line up the pieces when I do the glue-up). Then, one by one, I routed the mold pieces flush with the template, using my router set up in the router table. ROUTERS STILL SCARE ME!!!! What I discovered was, it works so much more smoothly (and less scarily) when my pieces are bandsawn as close to the template as possible. My pieces were not always sawn that close to the line. What I ended up doing was, before I took the pieces to the router table, using a sanding drum (a Robo-Sander) in my drill press to sand the pieces closer to the template. Then, the router easily cut a nice, crisp edge flush to the template. (And it didn't scare me as much, as I felt I had so much more control of it.) Believe it or not, this took me all afternoon!!!! (Things always seem to take me so much longer than they should.) I am quitting for the day, as I am now really sweaty and tired and yucky-dusty. Time to take a shower, make some dinner, and watch my weekly 99-cent Amazon Unbox Tivo rentals --- this week they're offering "The Farmer Astronaut," "Dreamgirls," and "Man of the Year" --- all which I never got around to seeing, and how can you go wrong for just 99 cents!!!!! Tomorrow, I'll glue it up and smooth out any uneven edges. |
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Monday, July 23rd, 2007: Well, I didn't work on the guitar yesterday. . . . I got a bit sidetracked watching the "The Next Food Network Star" marathon and final episode Sunday afternoon and evening! (It was a great series, with an unexpected twist at the end!) But, today, I got back to work. I just finished gluing up the six mold pieces. It was simple; I just glued them up with Titebond, aligning them with the three 5/16" dowels I had used to attach the template to the pieces when I was routing them to size. Here it is, all clamped up.
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Here is the finished mold, after I have smoothed all the edges with a scraper and sandpaper. |
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