backward_z_lj
PNH Guitar ARP Pres 02
This is the first picture, but this is already months into the project.
That is, of course, if you count (which I do) the month and a half we spent just reading and researching what to do with this pile of firewood that came with the kit.
But anyway, what you see here is the plywood frame we built along with the sides of the guitar, shaped, sized, and fit together with the heel and tail blocks.
To make the frame, we glued three sheets of plywood together (with an outline of the guitar drawn on the top piece) and screwed it down. Then, we cut the outline of the guitar out with a jigsaw (not to fine precision). When we wanted to take the sides in or out, we could unlatch the latch to the upper right and shove a big fat screwdriver in the jigsawed seam just underneath.
The sides came pre-bent but had lost most of their shape in shipping and sitting in our garage for 6 weeks. Dad devised a bending iron made from a 6" tube of stainless steel he'd cut from the leg of his fermenting tank so it'd fit into his commercial refrigerator... Anyway, we stuck this tube in a vice and propped a blowtorch in the end of it so it'd heat the top surface and went to work with the sides and a spray bottle of water.
We then shaped and sized the tail/heel blocks to radius using the sanding block in the right side of the picture. We had the block radiused to 16' at a machine shop, along with another at 28'. These were used extensively in the bracing, but I'll get to that later. I just bring it up because I don't think it's in any later pictures.
The centerpiece was just there to keep tension on the sides so they wouldn't warp, it was all about holding their shape until we got the soundboard and back all glued together.
PNH Guitar ARP Pres 02
This is the first picture, but this is already months into the project.
That is, of course, if you count (which I do) the month and a half we spent just reading and researching what to do with this pile of firewood that came with the kit.
But anyway, what you see here is the plywood frame we built along with the sides of the guitar, shaped, sized, and fit together with the heel and tail blocks.
To make the frame, we glued three sheets of plywood together (with an outline of the guitar drawn on the top piece) and screwed it down. Then, we cut the outline of the guitar out with a jigsaw (not to fine precision). When we wanted to take the sides in or out, we could unlatch the latch to the upper right and shove a big fat screwdriver in the jigsawed seam just underneath.
The sides came pre-bent but had lost most of their shape in shipping and sitting in our garage for 6 weeks. Dad devised a bending iron made from a 6" tube of stainless steel he'd cut from the leg of his fermenting tank so it'd fit into his commercial refrigerator... Anyway, we stuck this tube in a vice and propped a blowtorch in the end of it so it'd heat the top surface and went to work with the sides and a spray bottle of water.
We then shaped and sized the tail/heel blocks to radius using the sanding block in the right side of the picture. We had the block radiused to 16' at a machine shop, along with another at 28'. These were used extensively in the bracing, but I'll get to that later. I just bring it up because I don't think it's in any later pictures.
The centerpiece was just there to keep tension on the sides so they wouldn't warp, it was all about holding their shape until we got the soundboard and back all glued together.