Jointing and blocks.....

This post is for the last couple of days. Yesterday I cut the neck and tail blocks and glued the tail blocks to the sides. Today I routed the mortises in the neck blocks, glued them in place, and then set to the task of jointing a set of back plates. Since I only have one jig for plate jointing, I will have to do one each time I am in the shop until all 4 are finished. I had a bit of trouble getting a good tight joint this time. I have joined 4 plates so far, and those have been pretty easy to get a good tight joint on. This one for some reason gave me quite a bit of difficulty. First I would have the center tight and one end showing light. Then I would try and fix it some more and would get another spot with light showing through, but the first problem area tight. I finally tried something different, I used my table saw to just shave the finest edge off of the two plates at the same time. As hard as it was to believe, I got a perfect joint straight off the table saw! I got it in the jig, glued and clamped up.

My order from LMI arrived today with two new neck blanks, 4 pieces of kerfing, and some black and white strips for bindings. This weekend I will try and get the kerfing all glued in, and get all of the plated glued up. I also want to get the braces roughed out of the billets if I have the time.

Here they are with the tail blocks glued in and clamped. This was yesterdays work.

Here are the two neck blocks glued in. This was today.

The first back joined and glued up in the jig.