Hello there, my fellow artisans and handcrafts enthusiasts!
Welcome back to another entry on this Venezuelan Cuatro build. Last time, we added the heel block to the neck and the bars to the sound board. Today, we are carving the resto of the heel and also adding the veneer to the head stock to get the neck almost ready for assembly.
Let's get to it!
Heel
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Before starting to make the cuts and carving, we need to draw the lines that will guide the hole step. These lines go through all the faces of the heel and front of the neck. These are marks for the side slots and we have the depth of the cuts. Then we proceed to make the cuts with a saw. The cuts are a little bit inclined in order to get the sides come into the neck with an angle. We just need to make sure the saw blade keeps on line and finishes on the stops we have marked before.
Once we have the slots ready, we can start cutting and carving the shape of the heel. This means taking some material from the sides of the heel. The most important part we are carving is the top portion of the heel. This is the visible part. We use the jigsaw to make the curve at the top and also remove the rest of the material from the base. Then we start making all the other lines to make sure we remove the rest of the of the material.
Carving
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We use chisels and the knife to remove as much material as needed until we reach the shape of a heel. Then we use sandpaper to make the surface smooth. While we go over this process, we need to make sure we do not remove material in a way that will break something. That means going against the grain. And if we need to go on that direction, we need to make a mall cut to give any tear out.
While we do the rest of the work, we can also use the hand plane to remove material from the sides of the neck. This is to give the rest of the structure the final shape it will have before we add the rest of the pieces for the head stock and the fretboard.
Head Stock
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Now that we have done some extra work during the previous step, we can add the pieces missing to the head. We just need to work every face of the pieces that will come in contact. Once we have just worked the surfaces, we can make a dry fit to make sure everything is flush. Then we can apply the glue and put the clamps.
After the glue dries, we are going to use the hand plane to remove all the excess material from the top portion of the head stock. Once the surface is flat, we can start working on the veneer.
We need to remove some material from this part to give it some grip for the glue up. We are also going to add some anchors at opposite corners. This is also to prevent it from moving. So we first clamp the piece to the base. Then we use the drill to make small holes. Now we put the anchors. We also do a dry fit test before applying the glue. Once we are sure everything works properly, we go with the glue. The last step is adding the clamps. Now we let all this rest until the glue dries up.
This is almost the rest of the work on the neck. We are almost ready to start assembly. But that will come on a later entry. Make sure to check that out. Thanks a lot for reading! See you next time.
| Entry | Name | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The 19th Venezuelan Cuatro | |
| 2 | Heel and Bars |
Photos 📷: Redmi Note 13
Thumbnail 🖼️: Canva.
Editing 🎬:Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
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