ASSEMBLING THE KITS, Part Three
Wednesday, January 8th, 2014: Well, it's about 6:30 p.m. right now, and I'm done for today. I started around 11:00 a.m. on the necks. I started with a few African mahogany blanks like this, around 2-1/2" wide by 3"-4" deep. With a neck template, I traced the neck side profile onto the blank, as many as I could fit. Then I cut the slab into blocks of 2 necks, and bandsawed the peghead faces, following that up with smoothing that cut on my jointer. Once that was done, I traced the entire neck profiles onto the blanks (I had to retrace the profiles, as sometimes, when jointing the peghead face, the nut line shifts) and cut them out with the bandsaw. I then thinned the pegheads to 1/2" thick, using this thicknessing jig for my belt sander.
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And here's what I ended up with, after around 7 hours of work today:
Nine down, 3 to go . . . . After all 12 are finished, I will drill for and install the threaded inserts (it's easier to do this accurately when the neck heel is a square block, because I use a doweling jig to drill the insert holes). Then it will be time to trace the fingerboard, peghead, and heel profiles onto the blanks, and cut those out. The students then will be left with a roughly-shaped neck blank to work with
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Friday, January 10th, 2014: Last night, I bandsawed out the remaining 3 necks; this time it took me only an hour, since, by now, I had the system figured out. I didn't work on it until the evening, because I spent all afternoon fixing my somewhat noisy, clattery bandsaw. (What I ended up doing was removing the upper wheel, cleaning up the various bolts and blade guides and the tensioning & tracking mechanisms, and reassembling it all again. It runs more smoothly now.) WHAT YOU SEE TO THE RIGHT ARE ALL THE PARTS FOR THE KITS --- all 12 necks are bandsawn (though they still need the peghead, fingerboard, and heel profiles bandsawn), all 12 tops are cut to size and marked for the brace & bridge patch positions, and all the various little parts are here --- strings, tuners, kerfing, top brace, neck block, bolt, bridge patch, bridge (slotted & holes drilled ), unfretted fingerboard, fretwire (oops, forgot to put that in the photo!), nut & saddle, and, of course, the cigar box. I have a little time today to work on this. The next thing I will do is to mark for and drill the holes for the threaded inserts, and install the inserts. After that is done, I will mark for the peghead, fingerboard, and heel profiles, and later bandsaw those out. Once all that is done, all that will be left to do is to assemble the cardboard boxes I have purchased, for each kit's contents, and write up an instruction sheet for the project.
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SO . . . Here's what I've got at this point:
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Saturday, January 11th, 2014: Last night and this afternoon, I installed the threaded inserts and marked the neck and heel surfaces for the fingerboard, peghead, and heel shapes. To the right are the results.
NEXT UP . . . . a bit more of a difficult task . . . . bandsawing out the shapes outlined on the necks, about 1/8" outside the lines, and sawing out the heel tapers with a handsaw (it's a bit too tricky to do that part on the bandsaw). Maybe I'll tackle that tomorrow, after church --- but, more realistically, probably I'll start working on it Monday. |
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