Some small progress again for today: I am halfway creating a peghead veneer.

I selected a piece of leftover from the flamed Maple top, with the Wenge veneer at the back. It’s about 6 mm thick and I need the veneer to be 2 mm thick in the end. Difficulty is that it bent like crazy with the already slightly warped Maple core, the Wenge veneer and lots of Titebond. So I made a sled and mounted the piece on it, forcing it back to flat. I figured that if I’d thin it from the back, I remove the Wenge and glue, so removing the stress from the sandwich and I’ll end up with a rather flat piece of Maple I can use as a veneer.

All went well, but when I was thinning the top with the sled on my router table, I noticed that when I reached 4 mm thickness, the center of the piece started to bend in the other direction… This would make my veneer uneven, so I stopped right away, removed the Maple from the sled and cut out the piece I needed from the larger leftover:

Now, I will need to find another way to plane it down further, but since this piece is smaller and a lot less bent, I think that won’t be much of a problem. But to continue the way I was planing the piece would’ve led to an uneven veneer.

This bass serves me a lot of experience working with wood that is not working with me. It’s slowing things down but it’s a great experience. In the meantime I’m pondering about my home made drum sander and dreaming about buying a jointer / thichkness planer and bandsaw.