Starting My First Build, Flat or Radius top???

[printer2]

Photobucket strikes again. Nothing to see.

[CabinetMan]

Any easier way???????????

[Neil K Walk]

Try Flickr or Imgur.

[CabinetMan]

Ok will give that a try tomorrow.
Thanks

[Neil K Walk]

You're welcome. I'm curious to see how the hemlock top works out. How was it bending the cherry?

[CabinetMan]

The cherry wasn't bad at all. I had bent 1 practice side prior to bending this set. The set took me about 2 hours but overall I'm pretty happy with them.
It is weird to me working with wood this thin. I'm used to working with 3/4" thick stuff.

[CabinetMan]

Cant get any pics to post. What the heck am I doing wrong?

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by CabinetMan

Cant get any pics to post. What the heck am I doing wrong?

Which site? Flickr or Imgur?

[CabinetMan]

I Tried Flickr

[CabinetMan]

HA, Think I figured it out.

[IMG]20170802_131845 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr[/IMG]

20170802_131620 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

20170802_153802 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

20170802_155735 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr
20170802_160702 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

[CabinetMan]

After getting the sides bent, do most of you use a template and rough shape the sides prior to gluing in the head and tail block?

[CabinetMan]

Got a little more done today. Cut out my side template and glued it to poster board. Got that cut out then traced the sides and used a plane to get them to shape followed by a sanding block. Cut the tail block to the right thickness and height, shaped and glued it in.


20170805_150348 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

20170805_152405 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

20170805_153841 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

20170805_155530 by Cabinet Man, on Flickr


20170805_201820 (2) by Cabinet Man, on Flickr

[Neil K Walk]

Awesome! That's ingenuity, IMO. As I said before, I cut the outline on the bandsaw before bending, but this is a great way to go if you forgot to do that. As long as you don't have to chisel off kerfing to do this step you're doing better than me!

[CabinetMan]

Thanks Neil, I was gonna try and shape them on the band saw before I bent them but I was afraid I would get off on my bends and then be up the creek so to speak. But, Shaping the sides this way wasn't bad at all. Kind of enjoyable as I had never used a hand plane to shape anything before.

Thanks for the pics in your previous post. I believe I will make one of the radius jigs to shape my braces by. Then go ahead and make one of the kerfing sanding jigs like you did also. Great Idea.

I had seen a post where someone had used poplar to make their kerfing. Do you have any experience using poplar as kerfing?

I may try and get to the neck block today. I'm gonna go with a bolt on neck for this one.

[Neil K Walk]

I have to confess that I'm a newbie on these things and have made many mistakes - including bending two left sides on my first build! I think you dodged a bullet by "skipping a step" and going back with a block plane and roughing the shape out. It also makes the concept of the taper in the body less abstract so that you can workout the geometry.

As for wood selections, I'm hoping more experienced people chime in. I've only ever used the "traditional" kerfing as sold by LMI so I don't know the considerations that go into what type of wood to use. My first had traditional Spanish cedar triangular kerfing (which smelled wonderful BTW). On my second I chose reverse-kerfed basswood because it looked cleaner - but I'd never heard of basswood before.