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Well I left it a day for the glue to dry and now its time to start the final shaping of the body.
Attachment 38163
It starts off pretty rough
Attachment 38164
But several hours with the Japanese saw file.....
Attachment 38165
And its getting close enough to start shaping things like belly cuts etc.
It will take another few days of filing, sanding, and shaping until I get it to where I’m happy, and then I will get in to the serious stuff like drilling post holes for the bridge.
rob
Well, imagine my surprise when I went to start work on the guitar this morning and I found this!!
Attachment 38173
Attachment 38174
I must admit I was surprised that the marine ply was de-laminating and not the glued joint between the ply and the pine. I've made several bodies using the pine/ply/pine method dating back to 2015 and this is the first time this has happened.
Not sure why it happened, but so much for my brilliant theory that the ply provides the structural stability. lol. One thing for sure, I won't be using the rest of that sheet of ply.
No point crying over spilt milk. Luckily I have another sheet at hand so Lyn #19 2.0 has already commenced.
Wish me luck.
Cheers,
rob
Oh, bugger! I wonder what caused that?
I wonder if the bond from the ply to the pine was stronger than the ply bond to itself? Over night the pine has moved and took some of the ply with it.
Ouch, ouch, ouch.
I'm not sure I've ever seen something quite as spectacular as that. I'm not surprised the ply let go rather than a glue joint, but I am surprised there was quite so much movement stored in the pine to do that. Presumably that piece of pine was not adequately seasoned and has had a major warp spasm.
I didn't suggest this before because you were beyond that stage, but have you considered a body cap for your original body? Something like a nice mahogany table top or something in the local furniture stores? Shave down the original and all the excess routing and give yourself a brand new secondhand top to finish how you like?
Alternatively your skills with assembling a body blank might be well directed with reusing shelves, table tops and the like, and the age of the timber ought to give you a stable blank without having to put the plywood layer in. Such timber won't be quarter sawn, but you could end for end pieces to even it out.
I really am not convinced that your plywood layer is gaining you very much in the context of a solid body guitar. Yes, you have transverse fibres, but they are in the middle of the body block so the effect is going to be minimal. And it's not as if there are really much in the way of transverse loads in a finished solid body guitar for them to contribute too.
OTOH I don't suppose it does any harm either, and judging by the look of things if you hadn't had the layer of ply in there the pine would simply have split instead.
@John,
I think Sonic and Jim are probably on the right track.
Ouch. I’d avoid pine myself for a body, but I’d go solid pine if you do use it.
@Sonic and Jim
Yep, pretty sure the only answer is the pine has moved more than the ply. I'm a bit worried now that the new pine I have bought is greener than the last lot, so I could be facing the same problem in a about week's time. Oh well, good job its just a hobby that I enjoy.
I think I will take Jim's advice in the future and get some reclaimed wood and try and work with that.
I only have hand tools to build my guitars and leveling off the old body precise enough to take a cap is probably beyond my skills at present so if I do use the old body it will be as it is, which doesn't bother me. Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. LOL!!
Thanks for the input guys, much appreciated.
Cheers
rob
It's not super surprising that the glue joint held and the ply failed. I've seen wood let go of the grain and split where the glue held in place. Titebond has a reputation for holding firmer than the fibres in timber!
^^^ Indeed. It's probably a layer of thin wood in the ply that's torn rather than the glue holding the layers together.