OM 01 Project - Every Cloud has a Silver Lining - the new Back and Sides

If you have been following this sorry tale, you'll recall that I spectacularly trashed the original American Black Walnut back wood in the planer/thicknesser. When I came to order some more wood to start again, a) the walnut was out of stock and b) it was somewhat expensive!

So I started looking at alternative woods. Mahogany is the "go to" wood for beginners as it is relatively cheap and easy to work. It just looked a bit ordinary for my liking.

I came across a wood called Zebrano, which is really distinctive (it's not also known as Zebra Wood for nothing!); apparenty fairly good to work and also was about half the price of the walnut. When I looked around, high end makes like Lowden use it so I figured it must be OK.

I decided to take up the service that was offered to machine sand the back and sides down to the required thicknesses. It was £20, which didn't seem unreasonable to avoid any chance of repeating my previous thicknessing disaster!

Anyway, I ordered some of that and it arrived yesterday. As you can see from the photo, it is definitely more distinctive than mahogany! I'm really pleased with it. As described in a previous blog entry, I planed matching straight edges using the shooting board and then glued up using the set up below. 

The moment of truth and the joint is good!

I sanded the joint flush and then cut the body blank out using the bandsaw again.

I now have 2 guitar shaped objects!

To make the centre reinforcing strip, I cut a 16mm wide cedar strip from the top board offcuts. It's oriented so that the grain will run across the back joint and strengthen it. Then glued on and, after it dried, sanded it to a pleasing shape 😀.

Back to work tomorrow, so some thinking time now before starting on the bracing.