Molds, Dishes, Tools, Templates
It took me a while to make the radius dishes. I used a long compass to draw the curves on a template, then used the template to make rails that I ran my router along as I spun double-layered MDF around a center point. Worked okay. It was messy, but doing it outside helped reduce the nastiness.
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After looking at the prices of deep-throat gauges
I decided to make this with a $25 gauge I bought on Amazon. I could have spent $15 but this one seemed a little more durable. Glued up some scrap plywood, sanded on a spindle sander and voila! Seems to work pretty well as I used it, some hand planes, and a scraper to thickness my back and sides. I'm not satisfied with my little wood spacer I used on the bottom of the jaws. I originally was going to use a round bolt head there, but it was too difficult to get it perfectly centered using my hand drill.
I made a shooting board not pictured. The white mold pictured in a photo below is borrowed from my dad.
I initially decided to try to follow the free http://www.grellier.fr OM plans. This meant I'd have to build another mold, but after looking at my dad's, I decided to just roll with it. There is some variation in the waist (marked in red over the grellier plans), but the rest of it is very close. I think the mold is built off a template he got from his luthier buddy.
If I get around to taking photos of my tools, I'll post them here.
UPDATE (4/15/2015):
The mold that I referred to before didn't work. It was too tall, and I didn't want to mod a mold that wasn't mine. So I made one. Looking back, it wasn't that difficult and was definitely worth it. Some things I included in this mold was shorter sides, more relevant outside angles for clamping, latches for opening the mold, and dowel for registers to make the mold seat accurately.
It seems to work well. I kinda wish I had a taller one as well.
Having access to the sides while kerfing was essential, but at one point I left a set of wet sides in them overnight to hopefully "lock-in" the shape, but the neck day the part of the sides not supported by the mold had warped a little. Not too significantly, but enough to be annoying.I also made a go-bar deck using some plywood and threaded rod. I used a junk oak board that was warped for the clamping rods, and the natural curve in them seems to lend itself to easy bending. The oak is a little hard and leaves little imprints in the spruce, but that is easily sanded out.
Update (4/21/2015)
Binding tools seem to be quite an industry, and I'm sure I'm about to find out why as I start the binding process. I looked at lmi's gramil and decided to try out an alternative before I went down that route. Here's a circle cutter for a drill press converted in to a purfling cutter. I just epoxied a drill bit in to a section of dowel for a less abrasive register. The great thing about this is that I can switch it back to normal by putting in the old bit, or add on a different register I want to cut rosettes by hand.
Although I think I hate the bending even more than the channel cutting. Maybe someday I'll switch to the heating blanket bender and router based channel cutter like everyone else...
The drawer slides I bought were a little long, but they were heavier duty than the alternatives. I initially wanted to use a pulley/counterweight, but I have this spring on hand that seems to handle the load well enough. I'm only borrowing a laminate trimmer right now, so I was hoping to build the thing with this plunge router. I'll probably turn a donut for the rim to ride on sometime tomorrow.
