Preparing the timbers for the back of the guitar, using the clear template, I can check the best orientation on the back timbers. I'm using American Walnut and there is just enough space for the width of the guitar with about 5mm left each side to trim the edges, once I glue the front and back to the sides.
The joining edges aren't straight so I need to factor that in and I also don't really want that stripe of pale sap wood running along the joint, as it's not quite big enough to make a nice feature. There will be a sliver of it left along the joint but ultimately there will be a strip of binding let into the joint, which will deal with that.
I could move the template down to have more width, but there is a knot in the bottom right and left hand corners that I need to avoid.
Lesson 1 - order "Western" size not "Classical". That would have given me more "wriggle room" to get the ideal position for the grain.
As it is, this setting out gives a really nice sweep of grain following the curve of the lower bout, which I think will look great on the finished back.
So the next stage is to reduce the thickness of the timbers from about 5mm as supplied to nearer 2.5mm. As I sent the backs through the planer/thinknesser, the grain started to look beautiful. I reached the lower limit of the thicknesser at about 3.5mm, so taped some MDF to the base plate so that I could just take a little more off.
Lesson 2 - the thicknesser has a lower limit for a reason.
As I sent the back through for "just one last little shave" there was a crashing as it ripped the wood apart and spat it out the other side 🤯.....
Lesson 3 - do the final thicknessing by hand using plane and sander.
The back and side wood is probably the most expensive individual part so this has been a humbling and expensive lesson. There is a silver lining - the part of the wood that survived looks (just) big enough for a bouzouki body, which is the next planned project, so this will hopefully be offset against the cost of wood for that one.
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