Soundboard 1

Now that the keyboard is substantially complete and the weather has settled down again after an unexpected heat wave that resulted in record temperatures for a few days I can start working on the soundboard.

The soundboard has already been cut to approximately the correct size and shape but it is slightly over sized so the first thing that needs to be done is to fit it to the case by cutting it down to exactly the right size.

I started out by attempting to make a cardboard template that was exactly the size that the soundboard needed to be. This was only partially successful - I used a sheet of corrugated cardboard salvaged from the box in which the parts had been shipped, but it was difficult to cut accurately and I wasn't really satisfied that the result was accurate enough to be useful.

Since I had a sheet of hardboard lying around I decided to practice on that before tackling the soundboard itself. I drew the outline of the actual soundboard on to the hardboard and then cut the hardboard to approximately the right shape using a jigsaw. Then I started to try to fit the hardboard to the case. This took several hours but at the end everything fit (almost) perfectly and I had learned some valuable lessons along the way. I say that the fit was "almost" perfect because within the first 15 minutes or so I had succeeded in breaking off about two inches of the very acute angle at the tail by twisting the board slightly as I took it out of the case - something I vowed not to do with the real soundboard ...

Now that I had an accurate template I started to figure out the best way to tackle the soundboard itself. I was able to verify that the long straight edge of the soundboard that fits along the spine of the instrument was, indeed, perfectly straight so I lined the hardboard template up along that edge and marked around it on the soundboard. It looked as if about 1/2" needed to come off the tail, the straight part of the bentside and the cheek and a bit more - perhaps 3/4" - from the curved part of the bentside.

I started off by planing the cheek down until it just fit in the case - then I could start to slide the soundboard in and see how well it was going to fit. Since everything looked OK I trimmed the tail down to about 1/8" over size using a veneer saw and checked the fit again. Things still looked good so I decided that it was safe to cut the bentside down to 1/8" over size as well - I used a plane for the straight part of the bentside and a coping saw for the curved part.

Getting rid of that last 1/8" was a very slow and careful process that took place over the next two evenings. Things would have been quicker if I had the skill to use a spokeshave to trim the curved part of the bentside, but preliminary experiments with some scrap wood quickly convinced me that while I could use a block plane reasonably effectively I was likely to do a lot more harm than good with the spokeshave so I took the safe but slow option of using 80 grit sandpaper to get the curve just right.