Tag: Instrument Making

Side Bending

• Thickness sides to 2.5mm
• Cut to 115mm wide
• Turn on the heating pad to warm up
• Mark top and bottom and front with white engineers pen
• Wet side and wrap in alfoil
• Mark the waist position on the alfoil and insert into bender with bottom to bottom of jig
• Put springs on clamps and side blocks after inserting wood
• Heat for 15 minutes – screw down waist till tight then back off 2 turns
• Pull over spring blocks to bend sides – may need to pull back and repeat
• Turn off heater after 15 minutes and leave for a week to set bends

Top braces

• Plane top braces to 15mm high
• Cut leftover spruce from top to cover top of join in X-braces –  50mm long and as wide as brace
• Glue and hold down with masking tape

Main brace hole for truss rod adjustment

• Find centre of top main brace on front, mark 7.75mm up from botom and drill 9.5mm hole(for access to truss rod nut)
• Chamfer other braces for top so centre is 3mm wide, remember not to go beyond the bottom width
• Cut small 45 degree angles on ends of small braces to provide slotting into the cross braces

Notch front X-brace

• Use sliding bevel to set angles of cuts
• Use scribe to measure 7.5mm from top and bottom of ‘A’ and ‘B’ braces
• Notch for smaller braces into bottom of X-braces
  • Mark either side & cut with dovetail saw at 45 degrees then chisel out with 6mm chisel
• Glue join of x-brace
• Glue x-brace to front hold down with go-bars
• Use wood slivers to get excess glue out of smaller brace cut-outs

 Back

• With block plane chamfer off braces to a slope
• Sand with 150 till tops are round
• Clean off excess glue on back by sanding