Sometimes You Just Gotta Plane a Piece of Wood

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Leveling was called "trying" and "trueing"...


Eric Sloane, A Museum of Early American Tools, 1964



I really want to get started building a guitar based on Antonio Torres's FE19 guitar, the wood is already thicknessed and the neck is carved, all I need is the time to put it together. All I need is the time. Life and the day job keep me busy, and then this holiday week is our fifteenth wedding anniversary, that will keep me busy. Plus, there have been a lot of thunderstorms here lately and since my shop isn't climate controlled the humidity (according to my really cheap hygrometer) is at 54 percent! A little too humid to be assembling guitars.




This afternoon I pulled out a Spanish cedar neck blank and sized the main shaft down to 20mm in thickness. The remainder of the piece I thinned down to 22mm, it will get cut into smaller blocks to be glued up for the heel block.


It feels good just to plane a piece of wood.

Comments

  1. Tico VogtJuly 2, 2013 at 5:04 AM

    Hi Wilson,

    I bought some 5/4" x 6" x 8' planks of Spanish Cedar with which to build two screen doors. They have been machined generally flat and straight but need considerably more truing by hand because they are bowed and out of wind. I was not looking forward to that much planing but your post reminds me that it is pleasant work, after all!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wilson BurnhamJuly 2, 2013 at 5:28 AM

    Hi, Tico!

    I love planing Spanish cedar almost as much as I love planing incense cedar, which is my favorite wood, for the pleasant aroma and the which the plane travels through the wood!

    ReplyDelete

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