CARVING THE HEEL

PART 1.

Over the last week I started carving the heel. So far it has been a pretty straight forward process. Cumpiano's method is to break this down into simple steps, so this is what I did.

First I pared the sides down to a straight line between top and bottom. Then, I flipped the chisel over and pared my way further down to produce the curvy slope of the sides, using my template as a guide.

Cumpiano's suggestion here is to leave top of the neck about 1/8" wider than the final width on each side as well as leave the last 1/16" of the top uncarved until the fingerboard is installed, and the whole neck is carved to finished dimension.

I can certainly see some merits in this, though it also made me shiver to think of having to do this final step once the sides are seated in their slots. So, I ended up paring the neck down to almost final width and leaving an 1/8" of the top uncarved. However, I don't know if I will regret this later when it comes to do the final carving. I have had my second thoughts!

On a side note: I don't know what it is about chisels but the more I use them the more I love them. I have never really done any fine chiseling work like this before but it is absolutely fantastic now that I'm getting a little hang of it. First it was planes, then my saws and now chisels with the cabinet scraper thrown in there too. Before I would normally have done these jobs with rasps, files and sandpaper, but so far I have barely used sandpaper at all and the times I have started a process with a file I have more often than not ended up finishing the job with a chisel and a scraper instead. The smoothness of the cuts and the absence of dust makes it an exhilarating experience. Maybe sharpening has something to do with it!

PARING THE HEEL SIDES

FINISHED HEEL SIDES

PARING THE SIDE SLOPES

CHECKING THE SIDE SLOPE

THE FINISHED SLOPE

THE FINISHED HEAD

THE FINAL PROCEDURE - CUTTING SLOT RAMPS

Last night was a long one. I set out to cut the slot ramps and I didn't anticipate that it was going to take me that long - Little did I know.

First I cut the sides of the ramps with a dovetail rip saw. Then I set out to pare the waste away from the ramps. There is not really that much wood to get rid of but, what I hadn't taken into consideration was that I was going to be cutting through end grain of some very dense wood. The chisels I have are new; All but one, the 3/4" I used for paring the slots, have never been used before. This was their maiden voyage. So I set out to flatten the backs and put a keen edge on all of them. Then I went to work with the 3/8". All went well but after a couple of dozen shavings the chisel had dulled a little and was so tough to drive it through the wood.

I thought maybe a smaller size would be easier so I tried the 1/4", only to realize that size didn't really made that much difference, only sharpening did. So, I went back to the 3/8", sharpened it and continued, resharpening every time the edge went a little.

Once I got down, close to the final shape I switched to a 1/2" in order to get the shavings as even a possible, and finished off both the sides and the bottoms of the ramps with that.

When I was done, the knuckles on my index finger were all chewed up from rubbing them against the sharp edge of the face veneer and it was past midnight.

CUTTING SLOT RAMPS

PARING SLOT RAMPS

THE FINISHED HEAD

THE FINISHED HEAD

HEAD SLOTS

The last couple of days was spent cutting the slots in the head. I carefully marked the head veneer using the head stock template and drilled the holes with a 5/8" forstner bit on my drill press making sure that the head was supported underneath with some MDF so the bit wouldn't tear as it exited the head.

After that, I outlined the slots with a sharp knife. This procedure would ensure a clean straight mark to aim for when it came to the final shaping. I also drew the outline in white pencil as a visual guide for cutting the bulk of the waste with a coping saw.

Finally, I pared my way down to the knife mark on both sides with a chisel creating a peak in the middle. Then, slowly removing the peak until the slot sides were flat. This worked very well, though it took forever to do, partly because I was careful not to saw close to the line when I cut the centers of the slots out, but also because I think the Guitar Gods wanted to test my patience. The temptation to take big chuck out were enormous and I constantly had to remind myself to proceed with care and only shave small slivers away at the time.

There are still a bit unevenness left on the slot walls from the paring but I think, and hope, they will disappear once the thing gets sanded.

DRILLING HEAD SLOT HOLES

HEAD SLOT HOLES

CUTTING HEAD SLOT WASTE

PARING HEAD SLOT SIDES 01

PARING HEAD SLOT SIDES 02

FINISHED HEAD SLOTS

DRILLING THE TUNER PEG HOLES

Sunday was a day for more drilling. I did originally intend to do this procedure by hand with a doweling jig, but as I didn't already have a jig and didn't wanted to go to the trouble and expense to buy or make one, I opted to use my drill press - a little 12" Delta. With a bit of MDF and some clamps I got a simple setup that worked adequately. I used a 13/32" brad point for the first half of the holes to avoid chipping at entry and then switched to a normal twist bit, similar sized, to finish it of. As the peg head is slightly smaller than a normal sized guitar, I was afraid that otherwise the long 'lips' of the brad points would have drilled unnecessarily deep holes. Probably a rather unorthodox approach but it worked.

In retrospect, I didn't take into account where the pegs themselves were sitting on the plates. I assumed they would have been evenly seated at top and bottom but, as I found out they are slightly off set. Luckily they were just able to fit within the top of the head but if they had been the lyre variety, I don't think things would have worked out.

DRILLING TUNER PEG HOLES

TUNER PEG HOLES 01

TUNER PEG HOLES 02

HEAD WITH DRY FITTED TUNERS

THE HEADSTOCK

THE HEADPIECE OUTLINE.

On Saturday I started working on the headpiece. After I had transfered the template to the face veneer, I trimmed the waste of with a coping saw and planed the way to the final dimension with a low angle block plane.

After that it was time to cut the crest of the head in the Torres style. Again here, I started out cutting the waste with the coping saw and after that I went about getting it down with various files in a random manner. I took forever to do and I got a bit lost. I also got some chipping here and there that luckily was repairable. What seemed to be an easy task didn't turn out to be so after all. In the end I gave up on the files and switched to a chisel and was able slowly to pare my way back to final dimension and finish it off with a scraper to a satisfactory result. I must admit I found the chisel much easier to control that the files.

ROUGH CUTTING THE HEAD PIECE

TRUING THE EDGE

THE FINISHED CREST

THE FINISHED CREST

An observation,

The Torres head crest design is a rather simple one and one should think that carving it out also should be rather simple. However, I found the big graceful curves quite difficult to achieve. They continued to look a bit skewed, flatter on one side that the other, etc. I made me wonder if a more complicated design in fact would be easier to carve because it would have many more reference points to aim for.

I hindsight I think I should have gone about the business by cutting it out in facetted steps to control symmetry and form better.

The lesson I took from this is that one should never underestimate something that appears to be a simple task. Not that cutting the crest out is necessary is a difficult one, but if you don't pay attention to what you are doing you can very easily loose track. It is a little bit like the first time got your driving license. You drove around very carefully the first couple of days slowly gaining your confidence and then thinking: This is not really that hard, letting your guard down only to have your first accident or near miss.

This time was luckily just a near miss for me.

THE SPANISH HEEL

Yesterday, I also set out to cut out the inside heel. I drilled a hole to get a 'soft' edge between the end and top faces, but it didn't really work as intended. Drilling such a deep hole, I had trouble clearing the wast from the bit and I ended up marking the cut a bit. Not a big deal, but a shame nevertheless.

Then the cheeks of the inside heel was cut off and cleaned up by chiseling away to final dimension; A good practice for the outside heel job. The outside heel contour was cut on my bandsaw using a 1/4" 6tpi positive claw Timberwolf blade.

DRILLING

SHAVING THE CHEEKS TO FINAL DIMENSION

THE FINISHED HEEL

THE FINISHED HEEL

CUTTING SLOTS FOR THE SIDES

Over the last couple of days I've been preparing to cut the sideslots in the heel. I found this task rather intimidating, particular in light of my adventure with the neck/head joint. But, as I then blamed my tool, I found it necessary to revisit my saw sharpening skills. This was the saw I practiced my sharpening on in the first place and in doing so, it took me a few goes to screw it up completely and many more to fix my mischiefs; Obviously they did not all get fixed then.

To make a long story short, I jointed the teeth which revealed a that one side of the set had longer teeth than the other. As I went about the sharpening I tried very carefully to get them all the same size and eventually they were - sort of. I dressed the side of the teeth to correct potential flaws and minimize the set. In the end I ended up with a kerf that was about 0.050" - probably a little thicker than ideal but narrow enough to to do the job. The saw is very large. It comes from a miterbox I bought years ago and has a 24" long blade. This makes it rather difficult to handle precisely freehand. On the other hand, once it gets going it is very stable and there is nothing stopping it.

I did a few test cuts in maple using Cumpiano's 'insert a slice of veneer and make a second cut' method and it seemed to work very well. I used a slice of Formica about 0.040" thick as veneer. I tried with maple but the saw cut through it - maybe because it was a little buckled.

Cutting the actual slots went remarkably well. Though I have nothing really to compare with, I think I've would have had a hard time getting them much better with my skill level.

CUTTING THE SLOTS

THE FINISHED HEELSLOTS

THE HEELSLOTS CLOSE UP