Acoustic Guitar Construction

Okay, say you have a 3/4" mdf piece, sides not perfectly straight, you have no jointer.

You want to produce , out of that piece, a rectangular piece about 6"x4" with 90* corners and completely straight sides.

Basic. Not easy? How would you proceed, given you have a band saw, sanders, hand planes, drill press, thickness sander?

There's a bunch of these articles out there that could help. You'll have to modify your tool selection.

http://workshopcompanion.com/KnowHow/Te ... Lumber.htm

Don't know if you wanted more specific.

At the very least you'll need a miter gage that fits your bandsaw -- then screw on an extension to make it longer --up to the blade. Make some practice cuts and adjust the gage until you can cut a perfect 90 degrees. Then you will just need a straight edge on the board you'll be able to rotate the blank and get all four side at 90's

I didn't mention my table saw. Does this change things?

deadedith wrote:I didn't mention my table saw. Does this change things?

Make a crosscut sled for the table saw, and you're golden.
Same concept as what Ken mentioned with miter gage on the bandsaw.
Here's a tutorial vid: http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/videos/ ... -cut-sled/


Rob

That's a nice toot, thanks.

If you're talking 'basic' woodworking here, then basic tools are the best for understanding what needs to be achieved.
All you require is a square, a plane, a ruler or tape measure and maybe a saw if you need to remove a fair amount of material.

Plane one side straight and then test with your square to see if it's square to the faces, when it is, measure across 4" and plane to that line again making sure it's square to the faces and then square across one end and plane to that line. Lastly, measure 6" from the end and square across again planing to the line.

Not sure why you want to do this? But when I did my apprenticeship in engineering many years ago, one of the tasks I had to complete was to make a perfect cube out of an irregular shaped lump of steel. I was allowed 40 hours (1 week) to complete this task at a bench with a vice and only a file, a micrometer and a square as tools. What seemed like at a glance an easy enough thing to do, turned out to be an unbelievably difficult task. My finished cube under close scrutiny, was far from square and far from dimensionally cuboid, but omg, did I learn a lot!

Yes it's easy with the right machine tools, but the trouble is that we come to rely on them too much and expect the tolerances to be near to perfect and therefore we skip the checking of dimensions and squareness. Craftsmen of old didn't have access to exotic machine tools and yet still managed to produce work of exceptional quality.

I'm not against using power tools though as they are massive labour savers and can even in unskilled hands produce work to very close tolerances, but the use of hand tools tends to give us a greater appreciation of how to achieve the desired result. My 2p.


Bob