#4 backplate

I’ve just completed carving the back plate for Archtop #4. In order to cope with the irregular grain of the sapele, I started off with a good sharpening session. I can’t over emphasise the importance of sharp tools, especially when dealing with high figured wood.

The first step on the outside, was to do some rough shaping with the Wagner Safe-T-Planner; always with trepidation.

And then much planning, scraping, and sanding by hand.........

There’s more detail in the video.

Here is the finished outer surface; it’s had a quick coat of sanding sealer, just to pop the grain- doesn’t it look lovely!

 Then on to the inside. From a woodworking point of view, I was extremely happy with how this went. My squirrel-tail round bottom plane works like a scrub plane, it’s good for relatively rapid removal but doesn’t give a smooth surface finish, hence making the wooden one, a few posts back.

As it happens, the wooden plane worked much better than I thought it would, giving a really good surface finish.

And the video!