THE BACK - Mountain Music Fills the Air: Banjos and Dulcimers: The Foxfire Americana Libray - Eliot Wigginton, Foxfire Students

Mountain Music Fills the Air: Banjos and Dulcimers: The Foxfire Americana Libray - Eliot Wigginton, Foxfire Students (2011)

THE BACK

Take a piece of black walnut 3½″ wide×30″ long×about 1″ thick. Try to find one with as much grain or figure as possible, as we will bookmatch two pieces to get a nice design on the back. Run this blank across a jointer or planer to get one surface smooth and flat. Square both of the edges. Make a pencil mark on one edge at a slant. By lining up these marks, you can arrange the cut pieces in the same position as they were in the original board. Set the rip fence on a bench saw for a 1/8″ cut. Place the blank on edge and cut two 1/8″ pieces. By using the pencil marks, get these two pieces in the same position as they were cut, then open them up like a book. Note the pattern of the grain. If it’s not the best, close the “book” and turn it over and open it again. Always look at the inside of the book, as these two surfaces are the only ones that will match. Now joint and edge glue these pieces together. This is called “book-matching” or a mirror image. Reinforce this glue joint on the inside with thin pieces of wood, with the grain direction 90° from the glue joint. This should give you a piece of wood 7″×30″×1/8″ from which the back is made.