Bridges, Nuts and the Wrestplank

I managed to drop my phone in a mud puddle around Thanksgiving last year, and since doing that I haven't been able to get the USB connection to work to upload photos. I just got a Bluetooth dongle today that works for file transfer, so here's the update from the past three months:

I've finished shaping both bridges and one of the nuts. The bridges are satisfactory, but the one nut that is completed is too wavy for my liking, so I will be remaking it soon. (That nut is shown at right.)

I made the wrestplank. It is made of three pieces of poplar joined together, laminated to two pieces of poplar with the grain going the other direction, veneered with soundboard spruce. The tuning pins go in the wrestplank, thus the many holes. (The hole positions were very accurately transferred from the drawings.) See pictures.



I finished making the soundboard bars (these reinforce the soundboard from the underside).

I cleaned up the case, cutting of the overhanging dovetails at the joints and grinding them smooth with a Festool sander-grinder (very cool tool).

I cut the molding into the case. I started out trying to make an authentic molding as follows: I cut a molding scraper in steel using a water jet (pictured) and attempted to scrape away the design into the whole case rim. This was taking forever, so I tried removing as much material as I could with a finish router. Still, took a long time. Then I figured that I'll be the only one who will care if the molding isn't authentic, so I just used an S-curve router bit. (It would have cost $50 to have a router bit custom made, which wasn't prohibitively expensive, but the difference was small.) I have to carve several inches of the molding near the joints, because the router can't get in to those areas.

I need to get the soundboard in this winter, otherwise I will have to wait until the next one. If the soundboard is installed during the winter, it will crown during the summers. If, on the other hand, the soundboard is installed during the summer, it will crack during the winters when it shrinks. The crowning is much preferred. I should be able to get the thing installed next week.

Peace-