I mentioned that this was an old kit (2009). There’s some evidence of possible water damage to the sides, possibly just due to poorly controlled storage. Fortunately, the top and back have no issues.
Hopefully, you can see the grain that I’ve been dealing with. I’ve worked with wood for a long time, and this stuff was confounding. The sides are mahogany. There is a grain between the hard straight areas of lengthwise grain that rises out of the plane of the wood, creating a fuzzy texture. It was really hard to tame it.
What finally worked was my Alan Carruth ‘super scraper’ followed by some light sanding. This scraper is about 3/16” thick and made of a hardened steel. It works because of its hard, sharp edge - no burr required. Alan notes that it’s akin to glass scrapers used in violin making. I had to make sure that the edge was honed ‘just so’ and put in a lot of elbow grease.
And even with the scraper, you have to be so careful to ‘read’ the grain direction. Each fuzzy patch is slightly different. PITA!
While on the way to this solution, I also tried some miniature planes (Harbor Freight specials that were tuned up), and some very sharp straight chisels. Both worked, but not great.
After it appeared that I got it to where it was acceptable, I used the old trick of wiping on mineral spirits to see what the grain looked like and confirmed that it was good enough.
I’m not out of the woods yet. The inside face of the wood is ‘wavy’ and may need some flattening before gluing the side braces. And of course when finishing, you often don’t see issues until you start putting the filler\finish on. Any area with grain coming out of the surface is going to preferentially suck up the color. Complicating all of this is that further scraping is going to make the sides thinner and I would assume, this would affect their strength. I am borderline tempted to purchase a couple of new sides as insurance.
Luthiery is a great hobby for those who don’t have enough surprises and problems to solve in their life.
