A few more photos from past and present builds.
Joining the maple backs with heavy duty pipe clamps.
Peeling off bindings from the sides. Bandsaw, to jointer, to bandsaw, to jointer...
Thicknessing the sides
The good old Fox side bender. This thing originally ran on 150 watt lightbulbs before the heating blanket came out.
Body form
Gluing the end blocks
Gluing the kerfing
Carving the back with a Lancelot chainsaw cutter head. Trick I learned from Tom Ribbeke. Thanks Tom. Be sure to wear kevlar gloves and full face shield. Makes a huge mess, but only takes about 30 mins per side to rough carve 1 1/2" thick plates.
Smoothing out the shape with a heavy duty random orbital sander. I sometimes use a holey galahad too.
Traditional D'Angelico plane, scraper, and homemade thickness calipers for the fine graduations.
Mounted a recessed ceiling light on my workbench. Very useful as a visual reference while scraping down to final thickness, being able to see the thick areas, and avoiding thin spots.
I like the back to be very lightweight, like a flat-top acoustic guitar back, but even lighter, because the strength of the arch requires no bracing.
Gluing the back and sides after truing up with the sanding disk board.
more to follow as things progress...