It's been a full day but a fruitful one
The Cherry constructional veneers were due to arrive this morning so I set out on a quest to get the necks glued. I planed, squared up and thicknessed the outer thick laminates, then thicknessed the inner Mahogany laminates. Just as I was finishing the veneers arrived
I ordered enough for three necks but I was sent enough for seven, a bit of a misunderstanding somewhere, well they won't go to waste. I ripped those up into strips on the circular saw with an 80tpi blade.
Then after lunch I used a bench plane to clean up all the glueing surfaces, if you remember from the Les Paul build I don't consider a surface straight from the planer to be suitable for glueing, that's just me perhaps, it is done daily by many woodworkers without issue. After that (yes I was tired!) I glued them up, I changed glues for this, let me explain why. Titebond although it is considered the industry standard and with good cause it has a very short open time before it becomes less than ideal. As I had twenty surfaces to glue up in one go I needed a glue with a long open time, I chose Cascamite, a Urea formaldehyde glue, it's a powdered glue you mix with water, it is a very ridgid glue which has less tendency to "slip" when set than aliphatics so you can argue it is better for laminated neck
s but it will be no worse. It isn't an ideal glue for other aspects of luthery whilst it would be fantastic for glueing set necks you wouldn't want to use it because it is very very water resistant, you could never ever get it off again without a saw.
So anyway, glue, clamps and three necks glued up
The last picture is the aftermath of the day in the workshop, I am far too tired to sweep it up this evening, a job for the morning I think
The difference in colour on the laminates is because some are planed and some sawn, they are all identical really
Tomorrows first job!