Welcome back to another entry in the projects of the workshop. Today, we continue with the ongoing series. Last time, we made a handle to get a better grip at the card scraper. With that, we prepared the sides. Now we're bending the sides and gluing them in place. We are also adding the kerfing between the sound board and sides.
Let's get to it!
Fit
The first stage of this task is making sure the sides fit in the heel slots. Not only that, but we will need to make a cut to they can fit at the right angle. For that, we make a first dry fit. Then, mark the shape of the cut. Next, we remove the sides and make this cut. It is way easier to make when the sides are still flat.
When the cut is done, we make sure to fit them again to make sure the get all the way inside the slot. And when we need no more adjustments, we can move forward and put the sides in water. Now we just wait for the fibers to hydrate before we can bend them.
Bend
After letting the sides soak for some hours, we are ready to start bending them. We need to let the bender heat up until it evaporates water. Then we can start shaping the sides. We always start by the slimmest part of the curve. Then we go about the outer curves. The task is simple. We shape a bit and then compare the sides to the drawing on the sound board. We need to repeat this until we can coax the whole piece into the shape we want.
Bending does not stop there. Once we have worked this part, we need to let the wood rest with something that holds it in place. Fortunately, we have the wood angles on the solera that allow us clamp the sides to them, so they do not go out of the new shape.
We just need to leave this rest for some time as we have already applied too much stress to the wood.
Glue and Kerfing
Once the sides are bent and rested, we can glue them to the sound board. We do it one at a time. However, before we do, we need to cut the excess from them. That way, we can make them meet at the end block. It might not have the perfect result, but we can always add an ornament in that part of the instrument. We try to make both cuts are smooth as possible and then proceed with the gluing.
We use the same technique as before. The wood angles will let us keep the sides in place while the glue dries up. We can let this rest for some hours and then add the kerfing.
This last part is easy. We just need to get enough wood wedges and apply glue to them. Then we press them to the sides and sound board and let the glue dry. And soon enough we will have all of them in place.
Next time, we will go ahead and complete the rest of the steps to close this instrument. Thanks a lot for reading. See you next time!
| Entry | Title |
|---|---|
| 1 | A Project Begins |
| 2 | Shaped Bars |
| 3 | Guard and Solera |
| 4 | Handle and Sides |
Photos 📷: Redmi Note 13
Thumbnail 🖼️: Canva.
Editing 🎬:Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
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