MikeC's bench

[MikeC]

The back plate is still way too thick at 24mm so I'm thinning it down to 18mm.  I used the regular western style hand plane but just for fun took some shavings with the Japanese plane. 

 

[Sean Couch]

I had about the same thickness on my back plate. After I cut apart the plate to get rid of the fat glue seam, I also took some thickness out of the wedges. I don’t mind planing though, like most monotonous hand work, it is meditative to me.

[MikeC]

13 hours ago, Sean Couch said:

I had about the same thickness on my back plate. After I cut apart the plate to get rid of the fat glue seam, I also took some thickness out of the wedges. I don’t mind planing though, like most monotonous hand work, it is meditative to me.

Same for me, I like planing.  I tell everyone my real hobby is making plane shavings and sawdust.  Sometimes the bits that are left over look like a violin,  or a bowsaw or a mallet or etc.   

[MikeC]

Here's my latest.   Starting to do some rough arching.   I still need to work on the C bouts but I keep putting that off..   I'll wait until the arch is established and then work on the C bouts.  

An experienced luthier could do this a lot faster and more efficiently but I'll get'er done.  

 

 

 

[ernym]

Nice cradle and your roughing gouge looks like a good ol' vintage one. The maple is nice and hard should make an excellent back. I have nothing to add, your doing great work and I'm enjoying your journey. 

[MikeC]

Thanks E

The gouge I got from Ebay.  Really I would prefer less curve.  I'm not sure what number curve this is but something slightly flatter would be nice, it works though and that's what counts.  

The cradle, well it started out as a copy of the one in the Stradivari museum in Cremona.  The problem is that meant that it had straight sides and that makes it hard to work on the C bouts so I cut away the straight sides.  It works well as long as I can find a hole in the right place to put a pin to keep the plate from moving.  When I can't find a hole in the right place, I drill another one.  

I was thinking of building a new one like the one that Davide Sora uses in his videos,  but this one will do for now.  It is two pieces of poplar from Lowes laminated, and has a board attached underneath to clamp it in the vise. 

speaking of the cradle in the Strad museum, the strait sides are a puzzle to me.  It wouldn't be a problem working on the inside of a plate but when working on the outside, how do you work on the C bouts.  It makes me wonder if Strad or whoever was using it, shaped the C bouts along the grain rather than cross grain.   Maybe it says something about his working method.   

[MikeC]

I was going to work on the plate some more tonight but got busy with other things, so I'll try to make time tomorrow for some more flying chips!  

The last one was years in the making but I only worked on it occasionally,  this time I'm trying to finish it in a reasonable amount of time but it will still take a few months probably.  

[Sean Couch]

I haven’t used a cradle yet, but I also haven’t used any large gouges yet either. About a week ago I got an order in and it included a Pfiel #3 and #5, both 35mm wide so I think I am going to need a cradle. So far I have gotten by with clamping the plate flat to my workbench, but I don’t think that will work very well when I get to hollowing the plates.

[ernym]

14 hours ago, MikeC said:

Thanks E

The gouge I got from Ebay.  Really I would prefer less curve.  I'm not sure what number curve this is but something slightly flatter would be nice, it works though and that's what counts.  

Not doing much carving these past years so I'll look and see if I have a flatter one. I have several gouges but would need to know what sweep you have and what you would prefer.

Here's a link...

https://diefenbacher.com/sweep-charts/

[MikeC]

It's kind of hard to tell but comparing to that chart it looks like it may be a number 7.   I was thinking a 5 might be better.  This one works well enough I guess.    I like the long blade, it lets me grip with my left hand for control and the long handle lets me put some body weight into the push.

I reached a milestone today, I had to block a post from my youtube channel for the first time!     All posts are now moderated and won't show until I release them.  

 

 

 

[ernym]

I'll see what I have. 

I've been selling off a few of my banjos and have gotton scammed a couple of times on banjohangout.com  Selling there is great because there are no fees like Ebay,. But you have to be careful with the amount of scammers. They are good.

[ernym]

Don't have anything flatter than a #7. I must have sold them.

 

[MikeC]

That's ok E,  this one works ok.  I used it on the last build too.   Just sometimes I feel like a wider shallower cut would be better.  I have some Pfeil gouges, one is a number 5 but it's not as wide,  that's probably the one I'll use in the C bouts and it's good for the scoop or recurve around the edges.  

[MikeC]

Beginning to establish the long arch.   I like the look of this one piece back but it sure has a lot of thickness to be removed!  I think I like wedge plates. 

First I gouge down close to the right thickness and then plane away the excess in between.  This is a cheap Chinese thumb plane from Amazon but it works well for hogging out excess wood. 

 

 

[MikeC]

Fliegend wood chips,  more carving, working on C bouts.

 

[MikeC]

I'm in the middle of remodeling the kitchen, I'd rather be making sawdust so I made some progress on the back plate.  Still a lot to do on it.  

 

[Andreas Preuss]

The plane looks a bit lonely.

Or maybe it is afraid of too much work ahead? 

(I personally would go a little further with the roughing out, especially at the c bouts.)

[MikeC]

1 hour ago, Andreas Preuss said:

The plane looks a bit lonely.

Or maybe it is afraid of too much work ahead? 

(I personally would go a little further with the roughing out, especially at the c bouts.)

it's just plane lonely lol.  I just wanted to see what it looked like smoothed out a bit.  

This is just my second build so I'm not experienced. I think in hindsight I probably should have done more cross arching before doing so much work on the long arch.  With the lower bout this wide and thin it's seems hard to get a smooth arch across the width of it.   So yeah, I'll do more arching in the upper bout and C bouts.  I kind of got ahead of the process trying to use cross arch templates too soon I think.  

It's still a little flattish in the center area,  I was thinking that planing from the center out rather than from the edges upwards would round it over more.   I used a larger thumb plane first and then smoothed it some with this small toothed plane. 

[MikeC]

Almost forgot to mention, I made some cleats screwed down rather than using the dowel pins, the plate is steadier but tends to lift up and out.  

[Sean Couch]

Your process looks similar to mine. I tend not to take off enough at a time and end up doing many small iterations. Not a very efficient way to work, but the multiple smoothing steps helps me see the arching.

I don’t think I was aggressive enough with my long arch at first, so it is funny to see that you think you spent too much time on it too early. I reckon we really won’t know until we have some more experience.

[Davide Sora]

2 hours ago, MikeC said:

Almost forgot to mention, I made some cleats screwed down rather than using the dowel pins, the plate is steadier but tends to lift up and out.  

You can solve this by adding two simple rotating stops that hold it down. I remove them for arching work because I don't feel the need, unless you use too much vehemence in roughing. Instead I find them quite useful for hollowing the inside for thickness.

 

[MikeC]

Hi Davide

I'll make the hold down tab.   Last night I used a clamp but the tab would be better.  

I need to watch all of your arching videos again!  

[MikeC]

 

[MikeC]

 

 

Here's an hour of shaping the back plate arch.  One vid for the treble side and one for the bass side.  

 

 

[MikeC]

After getting close to final arch, I used templates made from the Titian.  It's interesting that overall I got close to the right shape by eye without using the templates.  But templates will get it to a more correct arch.  

I'm working slow and conservative in the C bout area.  It's easy to cut in too far and make it into a peanut shape.   I guess that is one of the typical beginner mistakes that go along with making corners too long.