Work Placement With Remi is now finished

My work placement with Remi has now ended. I finished my work on the backplate on friday.

This was a great experience, Working with Remi Petiteau on his guitars. So thank you Remi for your guidance. I learned a great deal about arch top guitar building on these 2 weeks.

Work placement with Remi Part VI

Today I started the day by drilling some holes on the inside of the back. I used 5mm depth stop on the drill press, so that I would know how much wood I have to remove.

I used small carving plane to plane the drilled surface down

After that I started thickenssing the back using planes and scrapers and measuring with a caliber

The thickness of the back is not the same on every place so it's going to take some time to scrape the right amount of wood in the right places.

Work placement with Remi Part V

Today I finished doing the re-curve and after hours of planing and scraping. It was finally time to sand the back into its final form. After all the scraping the back was full of bumps and scratches, so I had to sand the back into smooth surface starting with 80 grit paper and moving on to 100 grit and finally 150 grit paper.

Tomorrow is the time to drill some holes on the other side to use as a guidelines to start hollowing the back

Work placement with Remi Part IV

Today I started to arch the back into it's final shape with hand planes and scrapers.

Tomorrow I am going to do the re-curve on the edges and sand the back into it's final form, and after that it is time to move on hollowing the inside of the back.

Work placement with Remi Part III

Hello!
Today i finished planing the long arch on the back and continued carving.

After the long arch was done I started to carve the back with small Ibex carving planes, and again checking with a template.

 I made good progress today, the work will continue next monday.

Work placement with Remi Part II

Today I made some progress on my back carving. I routed the platform on the back using a router. The outlines of the back is 4mm thick and I routed the platform on the lower bout to 25mm from the side and in the upper bout progressively decreasing to 20mm, 15mm, 10mm, 5mm and finally to 0mm at the neck end of the back.

And after that I started to plane the long arch with a block plane. The highest point of the back is going to be 17mm. I used a template to measure and check the arch.

This part is going to take some time. But even though it is hard work, it is also great fun to see the back finding it's shape.

Work Placement with Rémi Petiteau (Leonardo guitar research project)

Hi!
I am now in Meillers, France, in my work placement with Remi Petiteau. I am here for two weeks, helping Remi to build an archtop guitar, using his methods. This work placement is part of Leonardo guitar research project.

I started on monday 16.5 to make a joint on a French walnut back using hand planes.

After that I started carving the back, and that's going to take long time to carve a back by hand. 

On wednesday 18.5 we went to a local sawmill to pick up some wood. We did get some nice pieces of Ash, Chestnut and Robinia.