Paul Rhoney

Making a body blank is a simple process that doesn’t require a lot of tools.  I buy wood from a local hardwood store that typically stocks their boards in what is known as “S3S.”  This is an abbreviation for “surfaced on three sides.”  What that means is the boards come already planed on their broad faces and then straight line ripped on one edge.  Wood can be bought rough cut or in other configurations (S2S, S4S), which can be either more or less expensive.  The more surfacing they do to the board for you, the more expensive it is.  Therefore rough cut wood is the cheapest. So if you have a planer or a drum sander, you can save yourself a lot of money by getting rough cut wood. I don’t, so I currently buy my wood S3S.

I will usually have the nice folks at the store cut it to a length that fits in the car. So it’s always important that I know what I’m going to build with each piece first, so that I don’t accidentally get it cut too short. Then I will look over the board and decide how I want to orient the pieces to fit the body. I buy boards that are wide enough for two-piece bodies (or one-piece bodies if I am lucky enough to find it), and I always keep the grain running in the same direction, and each face on the same side. What that means is that the joint line is sometimes visible, because the grain does not match up very well, but if that body gets a transparent finish, the light will not refract off of the two pieces differently. Though in most cases I can make a pretty invisible glue line anyway. The board gets cut in two, after I check it with the template.

Next, I grab a large flat panel and put the two edges I plan on gluing together down on it.  The two pieces are folded in on each other like a book.  Though I use that term, do not confuse this with the popular process of bookmatching wood, as that involves first re-sawing a single slab and opening that like a book.  Since these two pieces are cut adjacent from each other on the same board, it is not considered a bookmatch.

I’ll clamp the two pieces together tightly using a pair of handscrews.  This is where buying pre-surfaced wood can either be a blessing or a curse.  If there is any amount of warp across the length of these two pieces, then clamping them together will flex them back to being straight.  But that means that when I hit them with the Jack Plane in the next step, I will be planing boards under tension.  As soon as those clamps are released the pieces go back to their natural relaxed (and warped!) state.  Then they don’t mate up properly.  This is where having your own planer so you can be sure that they are dead flat on the faces that meet when you clamp them together would be a really good thing.

The Jack Plane (I use an old Wards Master brand No. 5) is pushed in long strokes along the whole length of the sides, until all of the rough are is gone.  The wood ribbons should get thinner and more consistent from left to right.  I probably goes without saying that this takes some practice.  But with a well-honed plane, this can be done in a matter of minutes.  It’s also great because it’s quiet and produces very little dust.  Great when you have neighbors or kids around.

After I’m confident that I’ve surfaced the edges with the plane enough, I like to sand the edges with 80 grit paper, backed by a thick piece of glass.  Some people will argue that this makes the glue line more visible, but in my eyes, it sort of “blurs” the glue line.  So instead of being a very fine line, it’s a very faint line.  A subtle difference, but sanding it also tells me if I have any leftover high or low spots, so I can really be sure that my edges are straight.

Now comes the test.  I will un-clamp the pieces and butt the edges to be glued up against each other, then hold it up with a real strong light behind it.  I get my eyes right up on that joint line and peer through to see if there is any light coming through.

Now comes the fun part.  I spread glue on each edge-to-be-joined with an old plastic card.  I just use regular Titebond wood glue.

Back on that large flat panel, I lightly push the edges together.  Then I take two clamps, and with some thick scrap pieces of laminated particle board, I clamp vertically directly over the joint.  I don’t crank on those clamps very hard, they are just being used for alignment, so they shouldn’t  inhibit the bar clamps that will be used to push the pieces together.

Then the bar clamps go on.  I use four of them, two go on the front, and two go on the back.  I try to place them evenly distributed and alternating.  After the first two go on, and get tightened down pretty hard, I can take the alignment clamps off and wipe everything down with a damp rag.  I’ll wipe off all of the glue squeeze-out so that I can re-use everything.

And that pretty much does it.  Wipe off any additional glue squeeze-out and then let it sit overnight.  You don’t have to wait a full 24 hours to remove the clamps (18 hours is sufficient), and there can still be some mis-alignment between the pieces.  I will usually just hit it with my Jack Plane a little bit, and then attack it with the random orbital sander.  Typically, after I’ve cut a body out of it, and routed all of the cavities, I will use that glass-backed 80-grit sanding block to make sure that my front and back are dead flat before I move on to the edge radiusing and comfort contours.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 2:33 am and is filed under How-To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.