Fitting the Linings

Top Linings

Fitting the top linings seemed to go OK – I mostly used clothes pegs with rings of bicycle inner tube wrapped around them as clamps, but made a couple of matched cauls for the tightly curved areas around the upper bout and waist

When the dust settled, however, I could see a slight gap in a few places on the inside edge of one of the linings – it had all been tight when I dry fitted it. On the outside edge, the joints were all pretty tight. Poking about with a feeler gauge showed that the gaps weren’t actually all that deep:

The worst bit was on the waist which went in about 3mm

The first lining I did was pretty much OK. I think that I over did the initial clamping of the second one and that this stopped it ‘finding its place’ as I clamped the full length. I then made the mistake of trying to ease it into position which resulted in it twisting away from the side slightly.

Some medium viscosity superglue was wicked into the gaps to fill them up and to maybe reduce the likelihood of future buzzes, etc.

Back Linings

Lesson learned, I fitted the back linings with clothes pegs along the full length before clamping anything up, and let them go where they wanted.

Joint wise, I think they came out perfectly, inside and out.

They did end up rising up above the sides quite a bit at head and tail, so the linings will end up quite short here, but I guess will still do the job.

Levelling the Linings

With a freshly sharpened block plane, it was an absolute joy to plane the linings down to within a hair of the sides.

I love the pinstripe shavings!

I levelled the top linings and put a slight bevel on them with a radiussed sanding stick – I used the 25′ radius for the lower bout and the 15′ radius (that I’d made for the back) to do the steeper curve at upper bout around the head block and fretboard extension. (I may need to refine these when I come to fit the top.)