Rough-cut basswood before planing.
Case
The case is made out of basswood, from the Linden tree, brits call their similar species "lime" but it has nothing to do with lime trees -- typical woodworkers with their annoying jargon (supposedly it smells limey when cut?). I had a heck of a time finding a source for this, and couldn't get 1/2" finished boards at all. So I drove up to New Hampshire and got some 1" thick rough-cut basswood of assorted widths (as wide as possible), all 6' long. Then I rented a Ridgid TP1300 thickness planer from Home Depot (for $38.50/day -- they claim $35 but there's a mandatory 10% surcharge they don't mention, how nice) and turned my big woolly boards into pretty boards and a big pile of chips/shavings/sawdust.
Rough-cut basswood before planing.
The mess the planer made in front of my house
Rim
This part was dead easy. I ripped a bunch of my basswood boards down to 7 1/2" wide, and then just built a box. I've never done dovetails so I used this as an excuse to buy a cheesy plastic dovetail jig at Lowe's, and dovetailed all the corners. I'm hoping that will make it all a bit stronger. Anyway the only tricky pieces were the cross-braces, since they have to have 1/4" deep dadoes for the removable nameboard to slide into, and slots for the liner that goes behind the nameboard, which is much taller than usual, for strength, to make up for the fact that the nameboard isn't a structural member. Also they're clearanced a bit on top, to stop them from blocking up the interior of the case and killing the sound.
I also cut 1/8"-deep dadoes in the spine (the back wall of the case) for the cross-braces to fit into. So far I'm not using nails or screws at all, so I want to do whatever I can to help the glue out.
I kind of skimped on taking pictures as I went, all I have is the finished rim.
The outer rim of the case.
With the bottom I cut matching rabbets into the outer edge of the bottom, and the lower edges of the case sides. The idea was to increase the gluing surface because again, no screws or nails. I didn't realize until I got started that I had the wrong guide bearing for my router's rabbeting bit, and the rabbet wasn't square (the shelf it cuts is 1/4" deep but 3/8" wide so two of them won't fit together at a 90-degree angle), so I had to make the bottom oversize and then rip off the excess (to get it down to 1/4") after cutting the rabbet. Which didn't go so well in my crappy Sears radial arm saw. Never skimp on tools! Well I got the right guide bearing so next time will go better.
The bottom is made up of three boards edge-glued together. I stupidly tried to be cute and lap the edges (again to increase the gluing surface), but I don't have a router table and I'm not very coordinated, so this ended up being messy and the joints are not great. And they sure as heck weren't flat. But I got that more or less under control with a belt sander.
Finally, I cut 1/8"-deep dadoes into the bottom for the cross-braces to fit into.
Why did I glue the bottom on first, instead of doing the soundboard and action first and fitting the bottom last? Because I'm an idiot!
The completed bottom, face up.
Flipped over and glued (quickly!!) to the case. I need more clamps.
The completed rough outer case.
I'll do the lid and block-off board later. The name board slides in and out and is held in by friction.
Meanwhile my cockatiel thinks the case is pretty cool. (Here we go with
the pet pictures that no one else cares about!)