I love wood

Time to buy the wood! I ordered the body blank last week and this week I gave Vox Humana a call, if they also had a nice 6 mm maple top. They did and I drove to Vlaardingen on Thursday to pick up the wood, along with glue (Franklin Titebond!) and some useful tips. I must say this wood is really, really beautiful!! The Honduras Mahogany is about 40 years old, has a nice texture and of course, it’s bone dry.

I started out by glueing the two body halves together with Titebond. For this I bought three really heavy duty clamps and some tape to cover the wood around the joint to easily remove excess glue. Then I glued the top and drew the outline on it.

Today I spent almost all day on rough cutting the top and body with my jigsaw. Since the blade of a jigsaw easily bends when going around curves and 40 mm-thick hardwood isn’t an easy job for such a tool, you have to be patient and cut v-e-e-e-ry slowly. I tried to cut straight lines around the outline as much as possible and I think I did a great job.

Also I learnt that sawing mahogany produces a lot of dust compared to other kinds of wood.. and since I wasn’t wearing safety wear I now know what mahogany tastes like, how it feels up your nose and that it isn’t very pleasant to have in your eyes.