There's another storm brewing!

The back plate is planned as .250 finished. The makore is not too much thicker than that. I haven't taken measurements on the stuff yet.

IIRC it was Geoff St. Germaine who made a bass with a calico top. Or maybe JP - was it that long ago? Actually I should hunt up the thread and resurrect it to ask how the color has held up after a few years.

 

Much appreciated.

Me too!

 

Thanks, all.

Larry, you're saying to rip the curved wood first, then wet it, then clamp it flat?

 

???

 

I've got it in the work area now, and I'll watch it to see what happens.

It probably didn't help that the wood was in shipping trucks for several days in ridiculously low temps.




Today I was at a museum, and got an interesting design idea that I haven't seen used before. Some testing will be in order.

 

Long time off doing other things, but I'm back.


I've still got wood and design issues to be sorted out. But I'm dying to do something, and it is a certainty that the two long boards need to be resawn. They're not thick enough to get three boards out of each, so I'm splitting them down the center.


(All pics are victims of fluorescent light. I reset the white points, but you can only do so much.)

Here's the wonderful resaw setup


The first board, marked


I went very slowly with the padauk, as I've never resawn anything this wide before. It came out nicely.


The goncalo alves got a little out of control at one point, but not too badly. Despite it being so dense, it cut more easily than the padauk.


Here are the boards, showing the difference between the fresh cut surfaces (2 & 4) and the aged outer surfaces (1 & 3). Padauk on top.


Finally, cut surfaces wetted with some alcohol to get a hint of the finished colors.

The GA definitely has some flame.

 

That's great to hear, since it will form the back of the neck.

 

You may recall that the makore board that was destined for the back of the bass was cupped, and had split into two pieces, with a second split that had opened up to 2/3 of its length.

Given a few months to rest and acclimate, it has not flattened itself out. Even if it were flat it would require ripping new square, straight edges and regluing. I'm not willing to monkey around with doing that process on a board that has been forced into temporary flatness by odd application of uneven moisture and clamping. I think I'd end up with some combination of either bad joints, and/or good joints but a double cupped / scalloped form. Not good.

So, I figured I'll plane it down as flat as possible, and then see about the ripping and gluing.



It had been questioned before whether my new planer (actually my bro's) was the 12-1/2" DeWalt or the 13". It turns out to be the 13". Here is its badass self.

The bad thing about it is that it sucks enough power that with just it, a shopvac, and two lights running, I kept blowing my circuit. Like about 15 times. Oh, well.



The board started at .360-.440" thick. There was about .030 of bow in each half board. It also has some kind of handling prick holes in an array on one side. So as I ran the halves repeatedly through the planer, I made sure to always do a first cut on the holes side, which is the convex side, followed by running it through again at the same height adjustment, with the concave/cup side (which will be the show side) up.

I called it quits when I got full cutter contact on each face of both half boards. Final thickness: about .305. Final cupping: less than .004". Not flat, but hopefully not too bad.



Here are the two halves after processing. Bad side up.


You can see that the break is not straight. It also received some damage to the broken edge during shipping, so I won't be able to just glue it back together. Since I'll have to rip new straight gluing edges, I'm going to loose some width. This is problematic, since the board (in current form, with the halves tightly together) is only 1/2" wider than my body outline:


Which means, as far as I can figure, that if everything goes completely perfectly I'll get a board that is the exact width of the body, and will only be saved -- assuming a dead straight glue-up -- by the roundovers.



If anyone has advice on how best to deal with this, please chime in!



Work done for the night. This calls for a Chimay Blue:

Such a nice dubbel! Tastes fairly close to a tripel, actually - pretty light and fragrant, but still with a bit of richness.