I started working on carving the tone bars last night and tonight have them just about finished. Overall I'm happy with the results, although I wish I did a little better on the small tone bars (or are these called finger braces, not sure???). I have never tried to carve anything with a chisel before, neither have I ever sharpened or honed a chisel before so the fact that I did as well as I did is amazing to me. Before starting, I went out and got a sharpening stone and some machine oil and honed the chisels to what I thought was a sharp edge. Once I started working and made my first oops (more on that later) I realized they needed to be sharper, so back to honing I went! I guess that's how it goes when you're trying to teach yourself as you go! ha ha
Below is a picture of the finished bracing, followed by more detailed pics with some more details on what I did.
Below is a picture of the finished bracing, followed by more detailed pics with some more details on what I did.
I started by working on the small tone bars first by printing out templates of the contour I wanted. Then I traced the contour on each brace and tried to carve it to the shape that I traced. You'll notice these braces look a little rougher then the following picture. You'll also notice some gross white stuff. These were the first braces I tried to carve. Chisel wasn't sharp enough and I accidentally split a small chip off the top of the one brace. I held the chip down and tried to dab some CA glue on it, after which I hit it with a spray of accelerator. I didn't wait long enough to use the accelerator so the glue bubbled and frothed a little. I forgot that I read somewhere that this can happen (actually I think it was on a Blues Creek Guitars Youtube video I saw that). I still plan to lightly sand all of the braces to make them look nicer, so that white stuff will sand off.
The next two braces that I carved turned out better then the first two. Still not perfect but I'm still pleased with myself considering the only experience I have carving is using a Swiss Army knife to whittle a sharp end on a stick to use to roast marshmallows! ha ha
I'm pretty proud of myself for my job scalloping the last two tone bars. I marked out the center of each brace, then marked the depth I wanted to carve to. Then I set out carefully carving from both directions until I ended up with a nice even, gentle arc. Out of all the carving I did last night and today, I think I did the best on these two!
I'm thinking of working on contouring the sides next, after which I can work on fitting the top and back to the sides. I expect that will be tedious and time consuming, but my wife is working a lot over the next few days so at least I have something to keep myself occupied!!!