Steve and I worked out how we would go about the process. The first job was drawing on the guitar the exact shape of the cutaway.
We then used the bandsaw to actually cut through the guitar. (No pictures were included because of how serious the operation was.) But once the scalpel was put away, the interior of the sides needed reinforcement with a corner block.
Steve then made the interior linings to exact shape on the cutaway form. This would provide for extra strong support. They were built a little oversized so they could be shaped down after installation.
Then they were clamped to the top and bottom plates making sure they fit exactly to both the corner and heel blocks.
Once all the interior support was in, Steve took the guitar to the spindle sander to perfect the shape. It worked like a dream.
Then came the challenging part of bending some more Osage Orange to exactly fit the shape and then get the right clamping pressure to glue the side on with a clean joint. This is what it looked like.
The final step was routing the cutaway to bring the whole guitar to the same stage of the build. The cutawectomy was complete. While it is not the preferred method of building, the whole process was fairly painless in practice. It did deserve a nice sigh of relief though.
Some might say that it’s a mistake to reveal missteps in your business. To that we say, sorry we’re real people. We do own up to them though, and we will correct them. And honestly, we have learned and evaluated through the process to get better. This is one error we will probably not make again. Jamie, of course, has been gracious through the whole process.
Keep following along because it just gets better.