A lot of work over the last week but not much to show from the pictures. I started shaping the top with a combination of rasps, files, planes, scrapers and spoke shaves. The hard maple was fantastic to shape and conversely the punky spalting was woeful. I tried very hard to keep things level and found myself at times chasing my tail. I refrained from adding super glue to the spalting as I'm worried about the glue showing up with a start finishing. It showed up quite clearly when I tested this out on a sample cut off. I could just cover the whole guitar again with superglue... I don't know. Something to think about I guess.
Top basic shape:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~denimbo...uff/wip/34.JPG
http://members.iinet.net.au/~denimbo...uff/wip/35.JPG
For the underside I used a jack plane with a curved blade, slowly extending the blade until I it reached the join in the centre. This worked extremely well.
Underside basic shape:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~denimbo...uff/wip/36.JPG
http://members.iinet.net.au/~denimbo...uff/wip/37.JPG
I then moved onto sanding. Man do I hate sanding. I am so used to getting a beautiful glossy surface from hand planes that I rarely have to do any sanding at all. For this project it was a requirement as I needed to tame the spalting and boy has it taken some effort.
Here it is so far:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~denimbo...uff/wip/38.JPG
The back after using the edge of a ROS.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~denimbo...uff/wip/39.JPG
The punky spalting is so delicate that I think I'm going to have to use superglue to stabilise one more time so I sand the body to a perfectly level state. At the moment the slightest touch with the sandpaper and I end up taking more of the spalting away. :cry It's that or I stabilise the punky parts with hard shellac, tidy those bits up and then keep layering the shellac until have a level surface.
Thanks for looking.
Regards,
Denim.