What a mould needs

I've had some problems. Nothing earth shattering, but they've really slowed things down. They are all related to the mould. The biggest problem is gluing the blocks. I've usually solved them by gluing pieces on the top of the mould on to the sides of the blocks on both sides. It works good. That is what I did on the Montagnana mould from the start. It keeps the block from rocking at all. The del Gesu didn't have it, and it had plywood pieces that I glued in as a gluing surface for the blocks.

Bad idea number one.

While gluing on the first c-bout the block broke off. It didn't break off at the glue line, the plywood delaminated! That put a halt on that for a while. Then it happened again on another block. So I peeled the plywood off and used some scrap pieces of wood. Then I re-glued the blocks. I had one small piece of rosewood or something, and the glue didn't stick to the block with that the first time while trying the glue the c-bouts again. More delays. Then a piece of 1/8" hardboard that I used to get the spacing right split in half just like the plywood did! I finally got the c-bouts glued.

Now the other one is fine right? Sort of. The c-bouts glued nicely. The lower bouts glued nicely, and the seam at the bottom looked OK. I started working on the upper bouts. To hold it in the vice I put a piece of wood on each side of the mould, so the vice wouldn't hit the ribs. I didn't have squared up pieces of wood, they were wedged, and while twisting the rods to tighten the twine, the mold shifted in the vise, and one of the lower ribs cracked. Now I have to make up another rib.

Bad idea number two.

You can see the stock for the replacement rib under the del Gesu mould in the other photo.

I am going to square up, or cut up some dimensioned wood to use as vice spacers. Besides that, I will screw them together through the hole that is near the upper, and lower blocks. Then there will be no possibility of the blocks shifting.

A lot of problems for just gluing up a rib cage.

Don't use wedges like this as spacers in your vise!