Rhiannon and Galadriel

[Hamish MacCleod]

Michael,
I am really liking that quilted maple.
Rondo

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Michael,
I am really liking that quilted maple.
Rondo

My cell phone camera does not do it justice at all. Once it's sanded and finished it's going to be spectacular. Nice choice on the woods dude! Since we are talking wood porn, I can't resist showing off a pair of straight razor scales I made for my bother-in-law out of some scrap ovangkol...

 

[Hamish MacCleod]

I can't resist showing off a pair of straight razor scales I made for my bother-in-law out of some scrap ovangkol...

Nice...but I haven't much use for razors...
Rondo

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I have some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is that I am going to need to rebuild Galadriel from scratch, but the good news is that she will look even nicer than before. Tonight I made a cap for Galadriel out of peruvian walnut, and I am awaiting customer approval. Worst case scenario this cap gets used somewhere else and I cut out another one.

 

[Hamish MacCleod]

Michael,
That walnut looks fantastic.
Rondo

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

We glued up a maple and walnut sandwich for the center of the core today.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Galadriel's new core:

 

[ctmullins]

Man, maple and walnut just look so good together. I'm loving the look of this, as well as the various Ric-alike threads here currently - so much tasty wood pr0n!

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

It's really hard to go wrong with walnut and maple in general.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

A mishap with the body blank is going to require me to build a new one. *sigh* The next one will be more better I am sure.

 

[Jon Clegg]

So this is scrap now? You have my address

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

So this is scrap now? You have my address

Parts of it made it to my scrap bin. I should probably have been a bit more descriptive in what happened, but I was tired and discouraged last night when I posted. I started to cut the body out using my bandsaw and in the midst of the process a piece of wood fell away while cutting through the middle of a board section... This concerned me so I pulled out the body and did a light thump with my hand in that area, and to my great dismay the body wing snapped right off. The problem was a weak area in the board that looks like a rotten spot that went through the middle of the board. Ambrosia maple can be a bit punky and I am glad I caught it this early in the process rather than having @rondodunbar calling me a month down the road telling me that the body had split.

 

[Rôckhewer]

Ambrosia maple can be a bit punky

So are you saying you got "punked" by an Ambrosia Beetle ?

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

 

[Jon Clegg]

I wonder if you should use some sort of a wood hardener on the ambrosia, as I remember some folks doing with[Invalid or Expired Link Removed].

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I wonder if you should use some sort of a wood hardener on the ambrosia, as I remember some folks doing with[Invalid or Expired Link Removed].

In general the rot in ambrosia maple is not as extreme as fully splated maple. I have read several woodworking articles that ambrosia is, in general, very stable. I have worked with it a lot over the last year and a half, and this is the very first time I have seen any sort of issue. I have seen similar structural issues in other woods, though... I had a piece of walnut that appeared very stable (e.g. no checks, splits, etc.) and split right in half along a grain line while clamping. Wood is unpredictable.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

A trip to the lumber yard today yielded a beautiful 7 foot long 8/4 board of ambrosia maple, and a shorter 4/4 spalted maple plank that will end up being re-sawn for tops.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Tonight a 5/8" deep neck pocket was routed out. I find that it takes more time to measure, measure again, and measure a third time for good measure, than to actually route out the pocket. The pocket is a nice tight fit, and I am very pleased. A couple of notes for the curious:

1. The neck has not been fully cut down to size length wise, so it's longer than it the finished product will be.
2. The tuners in the first photo are a set of prototypes. I don't have the finished product in hand quite yet, but these can be used to get things moving.
3. The bridge is a bit bigger than it will in the finished product. The amount of room left for intonation is a bit extreme, and I will trim it down unless @rondundunbar decides the fatter look is to his liking.

 

[Hamish MacCleod]

Michael,
She's looking very good!
Rondo

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Michael,
She's looking very good!
Rondo

I am really pleased that the color of the fingerboard is matching up so well to the body wood, and the quilt on the end of the fingerboard even matches up nicely with the grain on the body. It's a lot of sexy maple!