Started design on QCad. Neck and head design. Started thinking about the cutting sequence for the neck.

Sector

 Afternoon laser project: a small sector with a circle tool on the back side.

 I mapped (hand sketched) out the final contour lines on the top surface, then scraped the inner surface to get to the final thicknesses. The most effective tool for this was (again) the round-bottom plane. Taking small bites with the plane, then sanding and sneaking up on the final dimensions.

As a proof-of-concept project, I'm reasonably happy with the way this turned out. Obviously, I did not take this all the way to the final finished surface. There was no need to go that far. The mock-up was a good idea. I found a few issues to stay away from on the next build. I'm going to go ahead and order some sitka spruce and get started on the drawing package for the real deal.

Inner Surface

Well, the last exercise on the outer surface was a mistake. I should have left well enough alone. There's way too much material removed by drilling and hollowing out the recurve. Oh well, that's why this is a mock-up.

On to the inner surface. I set the quill-stop to 5-1/2mm from a center pin and drilled a bunch of holes. I clamped the part to a cut out piece of plywood fixed the whole affair to the bench. Then I scraped out the waste material using an inshave and my round bottom plane. I had to use a spoon gouge to get to the bottom in the middle area, then sanded with 60 grit paper. This went a lot faster than I expected. Pretty happy with the way it turned out.

There's a few holes up near the neck that don't need to be there and I'll leave them out when I make the actual soundboard out of spruce.

Next step is to map out and. refine the thickness.

Some thoughts on my laser

I’ve had my open-frame 5w laser for a little over a month now. Made a few small boxes and did some engravings.

Mostly, I made over a dozen test pieces to determine the capability of the laser on different materials. 

My intention was to use the laser primarily to cut out and engrave templates for my musical instrument projects. Also I had hoped to cut out fretboards for the instruments. 

Thought I Was Done, but…

 Thought I was done with the top surface, but I checked my references and discovered I forgot something. There’s a narrow recessed area on the outer surface called the recurve. It’s more pronounced than I thought and requires a little more carving.

So I set the quill-stop accordingly and drilled some holes about an inch from the outer edge.

I carved out as much as possible with the round bottom plane but couldn’t get deep enough.

So I’ll wait until my new gouge set arrives from Ukraine. 

Fret Slot Test

Cut out a test specimen in artboard for laser cutting fret slots. Looks like a .025 slot works best. The laser’s kerf is small enough that it does not need to be compensated for. I’ll try this on a piece of real fretboard material. Not sure it will be practical to use the laser to cut a fretboard because of the limited capability.