Sunday, October 9, 2011

Finished joining all my plates a few weeks ago. Ran into one slight problem with the maple for the Amati. After running the boards over my jointer plane, making sure the edge was nice and square, and having the slightest gap in the center, I began preparing to glue them. Brian ran through the steps with me, and I practiced before gluing, because you have to be aware of the glue and how quickly it will begin to dry. So the first time I was brushing glue onto the plates Brian was standing over me saying, "move faster, work a little faster," you know just the norm for me, ha ha. So I brushed glue on to the plates and began rubbing them together, back and forth. This creates friction and the glue sets up. Eventually you can no longer move the plates. This process of rubbing the plates together takes less than a minute before the glue holds. Then we press the plates together for about a minute and check the joint to see if there are any gaps. Three out of four of my plates looked great. The one, there was a slight gap at the end which was partly due to the squirrely grain direction there. For this we wet the wood on both sides of the joint and ran a flame over it causing the wood to expand and maybe close the gap. After letting those dry the next big step was drawing and cutting out the outline of my violin top and back. Then I used the bow saw to saw them out. And then it was gouging time! This is just where I take a lot of wood off to create the rough shape of the arches on the outside of the plates.