The work in-between the work

Workin' it!

I occasionally re-read my old posts to check for clarity, correct spelling errors, and to make sure I don't repeat things too much.  I also try to make sure there is a through-line between the disparate posts.  It gives me a chance to critique my writing style and try to tighten things up when it makes sense to do so.  Lastly, it gives me a chance to 'listen' to my 'voice.'

...something something loves the sound of his own voice something something...

One thing has become clear to me through this process: at times I sound like I don't really enjoy this dusty little hobby that I'm spending so much time writing about.  It sounds onerous, tedious, and somewhat of a burden.  And that's not really how I feel about it.  

Like any hobby or art it provides the do-er with a creative outlet, a distraction from other aspects of life, pride in craftsmanship (sometimes just pride in completion), and that inexplicable feeling of Stillness.  It sounds a bit 'new-agey' but the process of working on a craft (whatever it may be) can make the rest of the world melt away.  Your entire mind and body becomes just about the next stroke of the chisel - the next pass of sandpaper.  It's another way to calm your mind while still doing something.

You can see how 'still' my mind gets...

So, in that light, this post is about the most boring but most rewarding part of building guitars - shaping and sanding the body.  I spent two hours last night doing nothing but scraping and sanding (and some minor routing).  It was necessary due to what the next steps require - but it was also the most enjoyable two hours I've spent on this build to date. 

...how interesting a post about sanding will be to the reader, I cannot say...

So, let's start with that mighty big goof in the above picture.  That was caused by putting the wrong bit in the router at the wrong time.  The blade was wider than the ball bearing and as such took out more than I had bargained for.  The chunk missing looked like it was about 1/8th to 1/16th deep.  I can't tell you there's some magic way to undo this - you just sand and sand and sand until the goof goes away.  I used 80 and 120 grit paper and wrapped it around a small flat block.

Much like this one here.

In the curves I used a dowel instead of the block.  You put the body in a vise, take sandpaper to the body like it talked about your momma, and after about 20 minutes it looks like this:

Yes, I skipped a step.  I'm getting to it...

It's like it never existed.  The funny thing is it went away so completely that I couldn't remember which side it was on - so here's the other side - just in case.

Pardon the Emo lighting - my camera autoscrewed me right there

As you can probably see - I also rounded over the edges on the back of the body like this:

Baby, you're so smooth

There are many ways to do this by hand (files, rasps, sandpaper, etc.) I chose to use a round-over bit on my router - like this:

Get bent!

In addition to rounding over the back edge I also scraped and sanded the back of the guitar - which was in rougher shape than the top.  Even after five minutes of scraping and 15 minutes of sanding - there are still a lot of imperfections.  Some are pretty deep (see this post for why they are there).  I need to figure out how I'm going to solve these - as sanding them out might not be practical.

Pictured: Impractical 

It was also long past time to clean up the top carve.  In addition to the arch being too arched there were too many scratch marks on the top.  So first I needed to tame the shape - then I needed to smooth it out a bit.  This called for something new:

Attack of the paisley shaped tools!

That funky chicken up there is a 'goose-neck' scraper.  It's basically a card scraper that is curved.  I bought it at the same time I bought the regular card scraper but this is the first time I've tried using it on anything substantial.  It's hard to sharpen due to all the twisty bits - so I was glad I didn't need to use it a lot (it's quite dull) but it does the job.  The area in the above picture is called the recurve - basically a small valley between the edge of the guitar body and the start of the arch proper.  The goose-neck scraper is perfect for cleaning this area up prior to sanding.  Speaking of sanding...

In case you forgot what this post was about...

There were scrapes like this one all over the arch - and they are tough to get rid of!  I found that if I wrapped a sanding sponge around the sanding block in the above picture and then wrapped sandpaper around that - I got pretty good results.  Still - you end up wrapping a small piece of sandpaper around your index finger to get in the tiny crevices.

Sand, sand, sandy, sandy, sand.

It's probably difficult to see the difference between what the body looked like before vs. what it looks like now from the pictures.  But trust me when I tell you this little piggy is now ready for market.

So, now we can start to dig into things.

What's next...

To be clear - I wasn't trying to get to 'finish' sanding at this point.  I am about to start cutting into the body for binding, pickups, bridge posts, etc. - so I needed the body to be close to final shape.  I won't finish sand the body for a while yet.  But I also won't have to worry about altering the shape too much moving forward.

(yeah, now watch me have to do something like change the neck pocket)

...FYI - I did just that.

...son of a...