After the glue did it’s job, I ended up with a single piece of wood. Ok, it had really small ridges at the joins, but it is definitely a single lump. This is good.

I was busy trying to level out the seams with a scraper, when my instructor spotted me. He very quickly jumped in to help me understand how I could get better results. It turns out that a scraper is useless. Unless of course it is backed up with the other relevant equipment.

The 3 things you need to make a scraper work properly are :-

• A whetstone or a sharpening block
• 3-in-1 oil
• A burnisher

The technique seems easy enough but it makes a huge difference for sure. I am sure it applies just as well to other tools that you need to make sharp. I was thinking how best to describe what I had learnt, when I came across this guide to sharpening and using a scraper at www.stewmac.com.

Beyond that, Stewmac have lots of info for luthiers and parts you cannot find anywhere else 😉

Now my mahogany body is glass smooth and looking nice.

You can still see the holes from where it was salvaged, but you will note these are around the edges and will be removed.

Next up, I will be drawing on a template pattern and cutting the block to shape.

Gibson SG’s generally have a solid mahogany body and neck, so it seemed logical to use mahogany for the SU’s body as well. The trouble is, mahogany is expensive stuff. At the time I am writing this, a electric guitar blank in mahogany turns in at around £60. Yikes.

I was lucky, as a kind gent on my luthier course had some ‘scrap’ mahogany that he gifted me (thanks Tony). It came as a single plank, and it had a few holes in it. The ends even had some broken screws in them, but with some careful selection cuts and joins, these bits will all end up in the waste bin. As I had already drawn up plans, I knew the dimensions and which areas I could afford to have the waste holes in.

I sawed the plank into three parts, which my instructor, Mike, took away to machine plane for me, as we don’t have access to machinery at the college. A week later, the 3 flat pieces where back with me and I proceeded to glue them together and clamp them up tight. The clamps are known as Bar Clamps, and they helped pull the three pieces of wood together. I had some cheap metal scrappers that I picked up in a discount pound shop that I used to remove the excess glue that seeped out.

Next time, I will show you how the ‘body’ looked after I removed from the clamps, and go through what happened next.