Rough Graduations Progress

Well, tonight was another fairly productive session of archtop carving. I got the bulk of the inner arch carved in the top and then switched to the flap sander to smooth things out. I then set up the back in the cradle and sanded it as well to lessen the amount of hand tool work that would be needed.

Here are a few pictures with me actually in them, carving the top with the angle grinder:

Thanks to Gomer for being the guest photographer tonight.

After I had gone as far as I dare with the grinder, I clamped the cradle to my bench and started fingerplaning away. The idea is to fingerplane and scrape until all the holes that were drilled previously are gone and you then end up at the desired thickness, in this case 6 mm for the rough graduations. I got a good deal of this done on the back and hope to have the rough graduations on both the top and the back done on tuesday.

Below is a photo of the back rough graduations and you can see how some the holes that were previously drilled are now gone. I was surprised at how accurate I was able to get this, as the areas where the holes are gone are now at 6.2 mm, so only 2 tenths of a millimeter away from the 6 that I was shooting for.
There is definitely still some work to be done here, but it is coming along nicely. I might even be able to rough cut the f-holes on Tuesday! Well tomorrow is electric, so I'll probably post another blog shortly after, but that's all I have for now.