I have always loved to whittle, but this was about all I could handle. I whittled and finished all of the braces for a Kasha Baritone, and a fan braced concert today. It went like this.
First I cut up a nice piece of fine grain sitka spruce on my new band saw First ripping it to the correct width, then cutting it up into the lengths indicated on my Hana Lima Ai plan. There are 23 little braces on this complex Kasha bracing system. It is going to take a lot of whittling.
Well, here they are, a couple of hours later. all shaped and ready for sanding. My first act was to put a new carving blade in the Exacto knife. These blades are unbelievably sharp, and you want a sharp blade for this work.
Thought you might enjoy seeing where all these pieces are going to go under the Baritone soundboard. First I had to cut the patch that mimics the bridge that will be glued to the top side of the soundboard. Seeking a scrap of the proper thickness from my box of miscellaneous wood scraps I found this nice piece of Olive that I swiped from a woodpile on the island of Corfu a few years ago. Who knows what the stories are behind all of these woods. Anyhow, this is what the underside of the soundboard will look like eventually. Complex? You bet.
With the baritone braces done, I turned to the concert. Here are all of the braces needed for the concert. How simple, after that baritone.
This is kind of a strange build. My drum sander is at the repair shop and I cannot thin the wood=so I am doing all of those things that I might have done later in the typical build
