Making the sides

Making the sides

20191128
While waiting for some of the glues to dry, I began to thickness the sides.
At first I scraped one side smooth first.
This will be the outside sides with no knots visible
The other side with some some knots will be in the interior of the guitar.

Damn this wood is damn hard to plane, causing some tear out but luckily the stock is pretty thick so by the time I scrape them out the tear-out becomes level.
I switched to my high angle plane to prevent the tear-out and the HSS iron works wonder; remaining sharp after numerous planing.

Scraping the sides

Outer side of the sides scraped

Thicknessing the sides with HA plane

20200207
More thicknessing done on the 2 sides pieces.
Other than measuring the thickness by the thickness gauge, I also flex the piece.
When flexed the side piece has to be pretty flexible.

Both sides thicknessed

All the shavings...

20200219

Bending the Sides
After thicknessing, the next step will be to bend the sides.
Before bending I need to mark out roughly where the curvature points are.
i.e. which part is the waist which part is the upper bout etc...
Once marked I can start bending.

Recently I bought a properly bending iron.
The main difference is that it has a flatter curve portion on the iron as well as a tight curve portion.
This allows me to heat up more sides before attempting to bend.
This makes the bending job a lot easier and the bent sides are smoother in curvature.

Bending the sides

One side done

Both sides done

The bending set up - new side bending iron.