The bad and the ugly

Ok, I'm going where most don't go...show you the flaws. Well, not all of them, only the ones I'm going to fix up a bit. The rest are "character". First up is the purfling that got carved through. I vowed not to do that again, but here it is. I need to make sure my platform around the edge is level, then make sure the channel is cut to the same depth. A dremel tool would probably help here, but I'm against it, at least while I don't have one.



Next is the split wood on the inside of the f holes. Never had that problem before, Englemann cuts pretty easy. This red spruce is a lot stronger and stringier. I did buy a Japanese blue steel knife as suggested by Michael Darnton on maestronet. I just used it to trim the holes up to size, the damage was already done. It cuts real nice, but that is no surprise, my 1" blue steel gouge is a workhorse. One thing I've noticed is knives (all cutting tools for that matter) seem to work better when slid in more than one direction at a time. Don't know how else to explain that, but if you try, you will feel the difference. Maybe the knife will make a difference on the next one.





Finally the rib break. Don't know how it happened. I'm guessing when I planed the top of the ribs after the linings were glued on. Maybe it had a slight crack, and the glue job must have been mediocre. I never like doing planing the ribs. It is so easy to cut more off the ribs than at the blocks. I did have a lot of trouble bending this maple. Nothing else I've used had this much flame. The birch has a nasty deep flame in it, but they are further apart and didn't seem to be as much of a problem. They weren't quartered either, maybe that helped. I'll try to get a piece to match the flame there. It shouldn't be that hard to fix.


Errors are inevitable, but they cut into your time. Fixing things always takes longer than doing it right the first time. At least these things are fixable. It is the same way with the rest of your life. Doing the right thing may seem harder at the time, but will always turn out better than going down the other path. But as soon as you realize you're on the wrong one, stop and get off! The longer you are on the wrong road the more backtracking you will have to do to get back on the right one. Even major errors in life are fixable, but only through Jesus. He's not a magic eraser, but He is the only way your errors can be forgiven. That is the truth, and the word in my title that is missing...the good.