Gluing Up a Blank

For some reason, I never seem to get around to working on my new project, the cheapo guitar. It is mostly laziness combined w/ the fact that I have a new band started up which takes a great deal of my time. Also, it's fall now so by the time I've relaxed for an hour after work, it's already getting dark and I'm not keen on using power tools w/o proper illumination. However, I did finally get around to gluing up the body blank, which is a relatively simple process.

First thing, the two pieces of alder I bought off the world's most famous auction website had roughly sawed edges that needed to be straightened to be jointed so I could glue them. Originally, I had planned on using a router table for this but, alas, the one I got off that same auction site is the right kind for my router--thought I had a great bargain on it too. Instead, I used a hand plane, which is a fun tool that makes fun, long shavings:


Having never used one of these bad boys in the past, I spent about twenty minutes fixing the mistakes during the first five minutes. Nevertheless, I managed to get it pretty well straight. I checked my progress continually throughout this process w/ a straight edge to make sure I was keeping it real.

Then I put a generous amount of wood glue on there. The brand I chose was Titebond but only because Elmer's (which should work just fine) seemed to commonplace for use in luthiery. Plus, I was pretty damn certain that I wanted it bonded tite-ly.

For some reason, I always think wood glue looks delicious, like a vanilla milkshake:



After I got the two pieces together, it was just a matter of clamping things up and wiping off the excess glue:


Unfortunately, I wiped too much excess glue off and actually manage to suck some out of the joint w/ a paper towel. Just a little but once it was dry, I squeezed some more glue in there to fill up the crack:


Now it is right as rain and feels completely sturdy, like it's a solid piece of wood. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the two pieces of wood completely even. That is something I'm going to be able to hopefully deal w/ this weekend.