Day 114: Wrapping Up the Dados and Rabbets

I was able to cut the remaining dado and rabbet into the spine last night. All went without a hitch as I'm becoming more comfortable with the trim router and chisel method. Regardless, I did order a 3/8" top-bearing router bit that's on the way to Tortuga Early Instruments Worldwide Headquarters even as I write this. The cut results are below.

As you can see, there wasn't much left to do. Though I used the trim router on the dados, I did use the table saw for the rabbets. Easy peasy.

The next step, according to Mr. Miller's eBook Most Excellent is to cut out a "Register Escape Window" that will allow me to remove the register should I need to do any repairs on it in the future. I went ahead and lined out the window, but then stopped because it looked like it would butt up against the pinblock too closely when cut. I emailed Mr. Miller and he said that this was exactly as he intended it.

I received his email this morning - he lives on the East Coast - so, I'll be cutting the hole tonight.

When I hit the stopping point, I still had some shop time in me, so I charged forward with marking out the lines for the lever slots in the nameboard. These levers will control the buff stop, etc. and they run between tuning pins, so it's important they're perfectly placed - like, down to 1/64" (I chose to use an electronic caliper and fractions of a millimeter).

Once I got the slots lined out, I decided to hit a test board with some of the 3M 90 Contact Adhesive to see how the paper-backed veneer would interact with it. I sprayed both the wood and the veneer, let them dry a bit and slapped them together. One interesting note is that the adhesive gets everywhere and onto everything. Not only will I test its holding strength tonight, I'll also try cleaning it up with some rubbing alcohol to see how both it and the veneer take the cleanup.

On an unrelated note, when Owen Daly of Owen Daily Early Keyboard Instruments visited the week before last, he made a somewhat offhand remark about the bumpiness of the veneer atop the pinblock and how it will be hard for me to mount the bridge on such a rough road. Admittedly, it was a bit wavy based on the joint sanding I did to clean it up. As you may know, Owen's offhand remark is my command, so I planed it down using just a block plane set at about .001". Spruce is particularly cranky when a hand plane is used on it, so the blade must be razor-sharp and great care must be taken to plane it properly. As Owen said in a follow-up comment, I will need to pick up a wood smoothing plane for just such a purpose, especially when I start working on the soundboard.

As you can see, it smoothed up just fine. Thanks again, Owen.

Until next time...