#1-#badlanguage — tyson hand-did

#badlanguage | This past weekend I got a lot accomplished on the build and I will post up the work by topics. With the back plates joined, I glued in the center reinforcement strip. This is just a very thin piece of spruce in that is lined up with its grain running perpendicular to the grain of the back. It provides a little more strength to that back glue joint. I was very excited to use my GoBar deck for the first time to hold everything in place. After letting the glue set for about 45 minutes I took the whole thing out of the deck and realized I had glued the strip 1/4" off the centerline mark on the back! #badlanguage.

When I set the strip in place, instead of lining it up with my pencil mark, I accidentally lined it up with one of the dark streaks of the grain in the mahogany back. Fortunately, I was able to fix the problem fairly easily. For this build, I ordered two of everything that is fragile or that I knew I had a chance of messing up just in case. OK, the "just in case" just happened. I carefully chiseled out the strip and glued the new one on the right center line. I checked and double-checked this time.

As you can see in the picture below, the GoBar deck is a great tool for holding things in place while the glue sets. Here the GoBars (fiberglass rods) are flexed and wedged between the upper and lower shelves of the deck to apply about 8lbs of pressure to hold things together. These GoBars are made from fiberglass driveway markers that I got at HomeDepot. They are probably too thick for some of the gluing and bracing and so I will probably also order some thinner ones (3/16") from a kite supply company that I found online. (Making the GoBars yourself is much, much cheaper than buying them from luthier tool suppliers. I can buy 12 premade for $50 or make 70 for about the same price from kite rods!)

I also attached the kerfing to the sides and began working on a custom rosette pattern but I will save those for another post.