Sunday, February 27, 2011

Late Night Luthier

Mar. 18, 2009

Current mood:artistic

So here it is late at night, and I'm all hyper.  Actually, it feels pretty good since I've been sick for the last two weeks.  In the last two months I had been making pretty good progress on the electric cello project until I got sick.  I had gotten lots of work done on the neck, and gotten the fingerboard glued to the neck. 

It had been bugging me that I hadn't put any work into the cello in a while.  But now, since I am feeling better, and am up anyway, I decided to put some work in.  I had been planning on glueing the neck into the body when I realized that I was going to do it wrong.  So I had been thinking for quite a while how to correctly make a dovetail joint.  First, it didn't have to be a dovetail.  It could be rectangle.  So to make a very long story short here's what I did.

1.  Lots of measurements.  Lots!  2.  Made a small block with 90 degree angles out of maple.  3  Measure the correct place to put it on the neck.  4.  Use both glue and screws to put it on the neck.  5.  More measurements!  6.  Draw out on the body where the route should be.  7.  Break out the mini-router, forester bits, and chistels.  8.  Carefully route out the hole.  9.  Repeated dry fittings, and cutting the edges of the hole.  10.  Cut places so the neck is perfectly up and down.  11.  Lots of measuring.  12.  Last dry fit with even more measuring.  13.  Deep breathing for the fact that it looks like I actually got it right.  14.  Glue.  Lots of glue.  15.  Insert neck into body.  16.  Clamp like a mother.  17.  Lots of measurements to make sure that the neck is straight, alligned, and at a correct angle.  18.  Deep sigh of relief in that, I think I got it right. 

Now, I have to wait 48 hours for the glue to dry.  My next move is to glue the wings on.  Also, I will get the microphone holder ready.  Actually, I might be able to work on that while the glue is drying.  So feel free to take a look at the pictures.  It might explain what I'm doing better than me writing about it.

No comments:

Post a Comment