Carving . . . Day 3 & 4 Friday & Saturday, June 29th-30th, 2001 Well, I learned something useful today. I would have saved myself a lot of trouble had I used this purfling jig two days ago! The Strobel book said to start out with a 6mm edge depth, so that's what I did. I finished the carving (previous page). Then it said to reduce the edge depth to its final 4mm (4.5mm at button tab, middle and corners). So I did that....and found that I just about had to recarve the whole thing to make it match the arching templates!!!! I would have done better to have just started the whole carving process with the finished 4mm edge depth cut. Ah, well...live and learn. At least the spruce carving will go more easily, now that I know this.

Above is the Stew-Mac purfling jig I used to cut the edge depth. Last night I visited the Musical Instrument Makers Forum (mimf.com) and someone left a message suggesting using this jig for this purpose. I've had this jig for a while now, but it had never occurred to me to put it to this use!!! (Normally it is used to rout out a violin purfling slot.) Duh!!! To the left is the result. It worked great. Next, I recarved the plate, working from the edge up to the center, using my two gouges to do the rough carving and then the two Ibex fingerplanes to the right (one about as big as my thumb and the other as big as my index finger) to smooth out the gouge marks.

Then I used the violin scrapers shown below to achieve the final result, seen to the right. I will carve the spruce top arch in the same manner as the maple back, only this time I will use what I learned above to save myself some time and effort. I am sure the spruce will be much easier to carve than the maple, as well. Go on to installing the purfling

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