- First ever use of hide glue.
First rubbed joint.
First use of pinch dogs.
First attempt at making an arched plate.
This is a first step in developing my violin-making skills. I'm using a walnut tree that came down in a coworker's yard 9 years ago. I traded him some of the oak I had collected from people's yards for a prime 5' long section of trunk about 20" in diameter. I didn't treat it properly, just left it sitting whole in the open on some firewood stickers for about 5 years, then finally quartered it and brought it into my workshop, where it's checked horribly in the ends. I cut one quarter into shorter lengths.
Today I split one of the short section into sixteenths, planed flat faces into two of them, then shot the edge on my long shooting board and glued them up. This isn't for any instrument yet, just to get the skills down. I'll arch the plate like a violin back and make a nice arched and curved box lid out of it. My goal is to make some side strips out of the some of the walnut and get some hot bending practice in. Then I'll make up corner blocks and build the box around an inside mold, and put a flat bottom on it. I have a 1.5" curling iron for bending, and I'm going to try the propane torch and 1" aluminum tube method. I may try some purfling on it as well; I got some holly a few years ago that I can make strips from.
I have carving chisels that should do the job on the arching. I've been playing with them on pine and maple. I'm going to have to break down and spend some money on finger planes pretty soon.
So I'll have gone through a number of the steps to build a soundbox and work out a bunch of kinks in the process. In the end I'll have something to show for my practice, a nice box I can give as a gift.