Belly

 

So, I used my new DIY dremel jig and it all went very smoothly. I took a couple of passes with a 1mm spiral upcut bit and then widened the channel by adjusting the jig. I glued in the rosette with zap-a-gap super glue and scraped it flat. I have found that sandpaper can drive dust (in this case walnut and dyed maple) into the pale belly wood and make it look a bit messy.

Finally, I used the jig again to cut out the soundhole. Next for the belly will be fitting some braces - I am winging it on the placement for these, so we will have to see how it goes...

Saving eighty seven quid

 I have a little Dremel jig I bought from Stewmac ages ago and its great for routing the cavities for inlays. I decided to use it for the rosette inlay and needed an adaptor for cutting circles. The commercial product was a bit too expensive for my tastes, so I made one out of some bits of aluminium I had 'lying around'. 

Not as neat, but hopefully it will work the same...

Making a template for the rosette

 I was thinking about the binding and the rosette that will go around the sound hole, and I decided to use walnut with an extra black stripe. I needed to make a circular channel in some scrap wood to allow the bent rosette wood to 'set', and I wondered about making a router jig (base turning about a fixed point). Then  I remember I had made a CNC router specifically for this sort of thing (doh).

All it took was to draw a circle of the correct size in Inkscape, generate the g-code in ESTLcam and press 'print' in Repetier. I was very happy with the outcome, and I think I will try and do the neck and fretboard shaping this way (a bit more of a challenge than just a circle in a piece of oak!). 

Re-sawing

 It took about 40 minutes to change the blade on the bandsaw, most of it setting up the tension and alignment. Still, I think it was time well spent as I was able to re-saw a nice piece of walnut which will make the back and sides on the 'pineapple'.

I'll thickness these next.