Part 10b - Face-lift pictures

Took some pictures yesterday morning. First, the full-on frontal view. The oil brought out the quilting in the maple face rather nicely.



Next, an angle view.



Next, a detail view of the stain/oil job on the body. I used a small foam paintbrush when staining close to the maple face.



Last, a detail shot of the headstock. Used the same small foam paintbrush here as on the body. I'm still not entirely thrilled with the thickness of the headstock overall (note the practically straight angle of the thickest string between the nut and the tuner), so there will probably be some reshaping going on (I'll apologize to Mrs. Jimbug and the little 'bugs in advance for their patience).

Part 10a - Pictures

OK, here are some pictures of the (mostly) finished cello.

First, the cello, full-on frontal. The oil really brought out the quilting, as you can see.



The body finishing detail.
I used a paintbrush to get the border between the back and face of the body right.


The headstock "sandwich" detail. I used a paintbrush here too.


I took the cello over to my friend's house (we also managed to finish mixing and mastering our second CD yesterday, by the way). We plugged it in, and it sounds pretty good. Still some rough spots on the fingerboard, and I need to get the electronics done, but overall, this is now a

Part 10 - A face-lift

Did the finish-sanding on the body today, and stained it, then oiled the whole thing. What a difference. The back of the body and the neck are now a shade that MinWax calls Gunstock. Sort of a sienna red.

The headplate and the front of the body are still mostly natural, although a happy accident that occurred was that I oiled all the parts with the same rag, which has resulted in the quilt and birdseye maple having a slight reddish hue to it.

I'm definitely taking pictures tomorrow morning, after I put it back together.

Still to come, more finishing on the fingerboard, staining and oiling the tailpiece, and a newer, much better, set of strings.

This project could very well be done this week!

Part 9 - Sun and Sand(ing)

Have some holiday/vacation time coming up starting tomorrow.

I think it should be good, warm weather, so it should be a perfect time to finish-sand The Patient.

Part 8 - New headplate

I think 7 episodes of Part 7 is enough, don't you?

The only update for this week is the headplate. I finished carving it yesterday, and glued it last night. Some finish-sanding is in order, there are some tear-outs to get rid of. A tear-out happens during surfacing, where the planer gouges out a piece of the wood. This seems to happen more with knotty woods, birds-eye maple being one of those. You can see the gouges in the top of the headplate in this photo:



A side benefit to the extra finish-sanding is that the tuners will sit lower in relation to the nut. You need a bit of angle between the nut and the tuners, or else your strings can slip out of the nut grooves. Still, the carving and gluing went well. In retrospect, I should have thought of the headplate during my design phase, if only to make boring the tuner holes a one-step process, instead of the additional steps I had to do.

Then again, the design phase has more or less happened all through this project, partly because I think of new things that I want to incorporate, and partly because I come up against the limitations of either my tools, my materials, or my knowledge, and so I'm forced to adapt.

I like my attempt at the detail around the nut. It didn't come off perfectly, but with a little fill, it should be barely noticeable. Another detail I added was to surround the nut with the headplate.



Next up, continue finishing he fingerboard. It's getting close. After that, wait for some decent weather, so I can take the pieces out and stain and oil them.

After that, DONE! My estimate is another two to three weeks. Considering I wanted to have the whole thing done by the end of March, I'm over schedule, but since I'm not building this for anyone but me, it's all good.

Part 7g - Refinements 6

This weekend:

1. Shaped the headstock away from that pointy shape to a more rounded shape, that follows the horn contour of the body.
2. Tightened the fingerboard radius, for better ease in bowing.
3. Started carving the headplate.

The first two of this weekend's refinements were successful. The third is still in progress, as Mrs. Jimbug and the little 'bugs came back from their afternoon adventure much earlier than I'd hoped for. Also, that birds-eye maple headplate material is much harder than I thought it would be.

Pictures soon.

Part 7f - Refinements 5 - The headstock dilemma

What to do about the headstock? How to carve a headplate to match an already-existing headstock? (the headplate is the veneer-like facing on the headstock, for those not in the know about these things, including yours truly.) The easy steps in this process are to trace the headstock onto the headplate and rough-cut the headplate around the tracing. To do that, all I need to do is to remove the tuners, trace the headstock, and start sawing. The challenge happens after that, in boring the tuner holes. One way is to glue-tack the headplate to the headstock, and then bore the tuner holes through the headplate full-size, using the existing holes in the headstock as guides, and the 9/16" spade bit. A danger here is that if the bit goes wild, it can bore out the existing tuner holes in the headstock, so that the tuners will no longer fit. If this happens, it's Game Over for the neck. Another way would be to glue-tack the headplate, and drill guide holes through the headplate from inside the tuner holes. Then, use the Dremel tool to carve out the headplate holes to match the tuner holes in the headstock.