Acoustic Guitar Construction

Have any of you been able to get a plate joining seem perfect with a router table or jointer?

I have seem people do it with a good properly setup jointer. Once learned it is very simple to do it with a well setup sharp plane and a shooting board. I finally got good with the plane when I thought about what was going on with the plane and making sure I was applying pressure to keep the plane flat to the plate at the beginning and end of the stroke. I find using a plane even easier that sanding on a flat block. But as I said a properly set jointer will do the trick,

John Parchem wrote:I have seem people do it with a good properly setup jointer. Once learned it is very simple to do it with a well setup sharp plane and a shooting board. I finally got good with the plane when I thought about what was going on with the plane and making sure I was applying pressure to keep the plane flat to the plate at the beginning and end of the stroke. I find using a plane even easier that sanding on a flat block. But as I said a properly set jointer will do the trick,

Thanks John,

If I could get a great job done on the plates without having to drop $200+ on a good plane that I would only use for that purpose, I'd like to.


My thought is, if I could build a router table box that runs tight in the miter slot and have the two plates toggled down to it, I should theoretically be able to get a perfect joint. Unless my theory is flawed, which it may be. Any thoughts on that? Anyone?

There are a number of diy projects that show ways to do it - this one has seemed to me to be a good one. Haven't tried it myself yet, but I might.
http://www.woodmagazine.com/woodworking ... -a-jointer

Christian K wrote:

John Parchem wrote:I have seem people do it with a good properly setup jointer. Once learned it is very simple to do it with a well setup sharp plane and a shooting board. I finally got good with the plane when I thought about what was going on with the plane and making sure I was applying pressure to keep the plane flat to the plate at the beginning and end of the stroke. I find using a plane even easier that sanding on a flat block. But as I said a properly set jointer will do the trick,

Thanks John,

If I could get a great job done on the plates without having to drop $200+ on a good plane that I would only use for that purpose, I'd like to.


My thought is, if I could build a router table box that runs tight in the miter slot and have the two plates toggled down to it, I should theoretically be able to get a perfect joint. Unless my theory is flawed, which it may be. Any thoughts on that? Anyone?

I think you idea might work on tops and most back woods, but on figured back plates you may find that you get a bit of tear out. In terms of getting a plane send a PM to Kevin in California. He has been restoring a bunch of planes that would work. If you got a plane from him I suspect it will be well setup.

A jointer that's sharp and correctly set up will work fine - on the more figured woods I take very, very thin cuts and really watch direction.

A no equipment solution is a "shooting sander" a Google search yields some videos and articles. Essentially you build a shooting board and use sandpaper instead of the plane.

I use one of these and they work very well.

http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.a ... at=1,42500