Back beginnings

Usually I carve on the back first, but this time I started with the top. Now onto the back, and man, is that maple tough compared to the spruce. I cut the outline today, and started removing wood, getting towards the arching.

The silver piece in the upper left is a long arch template. I have my long arch fairly nice now, but it's still 19mm high in the center, so will need to come down a bit, more towards 16 or so.

Buried in the shavings on the upper center-right is a large gouge that I use (after the scrub plane) to remove wood fast.

In the c-bout is my large thumb plane, which actually removes a lot of wood in a hurry, too -- so much so that it actually gets quite warm to the touch.

Refining the edge and arching

I spent time today cleaning up the edge and the arching. For the cross-arching, I am using curtate-cycloids, which seem to follow Cremonese arching fairly well and are at the very least a practical concept for the arching. I have the edges down to about 4.5 mm, so once the edges are adequate, I can put the purfling in. First, though, I will get the back to near the same state to get the corresponding edges and overhangs somewhat coherent.

Top work

Spent some time this afternoon marking out the top, cutting it, cleaning up the outline, roughly, not to the final, and a little preliminary arching. This is the fun part where lots of wood is quickly removed. This top was last discussed in this blog here.