I'm currently in the very early stages of doing my first build from scratch. Since I already have an OM and two dreads that I love and little space to keep guitars I decided to do something different: a mahogany medium jumbo with a Western Red cedar top. I bought the plans for Michael Payne's OLF medium jumbo and have been busy building forms and molds out of MDF and birch plywood.
The going has been very slow and I've already had to do some things over but I have the top and back plates joined and sanded to thickness at a friend's shop. At the next opportunity I want to inlay a rosewood rosette and get started with bracing. My outside mold/spreaders and bending forms are nearly ready for the sides which have yet to be sanded to thickness.
Here's the back way back when it was just being joined:
...and the top, which cracked but fortunately the fracture was clean and my friend managed to save the top and repair it:
In the meantime, I've been busy learning how to use the tools (I'm a complete newbie) and have been fashioning an outside mold out of birch plywood with pine spacers:
...and a solid bending form out of MDF (that was actually the cutout of a failed first attempt at an outside mold with MDF):
The bending form still needs some work but it may be close enough for bending mahogany with. If not I think I know what I need to do to and hope to have it ready to use soon:
