Build Update #4.5

Small update yo.



Here, i've cut a small 3" mahogany block and glued it to the tail of the guitar. After doing this, the entire section in the picture was planed down to 1.25" exactly.



The >1/16" maple veneer i will use for laminating the guitar tops is too thick for the contours its supposed to form to, and too thick for the final thickness of the top. I needed roughly 1/20" for each maple sheet. I stressed over finding a thickness sander to do the job for me. The problem with using a thickness sander (also known as a drum sander) is that the already thin veneer could easily get caught by the 1,000 RPM sanding drum and torn apart, never to be seen again. My solution was to creat a jig to sand the veneer to thickness. This is just a piece of MDF, on hinges, held very close to the round end of my belt sander via a sliding adjustable square. I went two passes on each side. The jig worked perfectly and the resulting veneer was much more pliable.



The thicknessed veneer. They are presented in the order they are pressed, with the grain going vertical, horizontal, horizontal, vertical.



I was skeptical on whether or not the Roarockit Thin Air Press (TAP) would apply enough pressure to get the maple to conform. When pressed, however, i was surprised at how much it really conformed. There was no spot that needed extra pressure. According to my research, the TAP can pull a vacuum at 18-21 lbs per in^2. With the veneer sheets measuring 18" x 20", there is a total of about 3.5 tons of force pushing down against the laminate. The above picture is the final walnut veneer being pressed. The red mesh is there to help prevent air bubbles from ruining the vacuum.



The TAP kit uses a wine bottle vacuum pump (white thing in pic) to pull the vacuum. The spruce board is shown as well. This will be used to fill the gap between the pressed tops and the maple center block (http://www.es-335.net/laminations.html). Shown to the left is the mahogany neck blank i will use to, well, build the neck.



A quick wipe with a damp cloth shows the crazy insane figure on the blank.


I will press the other side of the guitar later. Until the next update, i will have the tops cut to size and the spruce kerfing in place.