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I seem to keep having the same problem. Every time I go to radius the top and back after glueing the blocks in I end up with the front and back close to the same height. I profile the sides so that there is an inch difference between the two when I cut them out before I bend them, by the time I have removed the chalk line around the rims my back has dropped quite a bit. I mount the dish to the table and "drive the bus" trying to keep the center of the mold in the middle. Should I be off setting the mold so that the neck block is closer to the edge of the radius dish?
Can't quite figure it out.

Richard

Thats a great question. I'm looking forward to hearing from some of the more experienced builders out there. I profile my sides after they are bent by sitting the sides, after glueing the blocks in, on a flat surface and raising the back by the amount of the difference between the front and back. I don't know if I explained that very well, but I found it here:

http://gicl.cs.drexel.edu/people/sevy/l ... ining.html

After that, I also radius the edges by keeping the sides in the mold, and doing it by hand.

Hope that helps.

Sean

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I think you'll have better luck if you get the sides closer to their final profile, either before bending, or by marking and using a plane, or some other method to take them down to the mark, before sanding in a dish. I suspect it takes alot of sanding to make the tail 1" thinner. It probably would also help to have the blocks cut to an angle. When I used to use a dish the back side of my neck block was cut to something like 83 degrees, instead of square. (I no longer radius, but use a lateral arch, like Laurent, Haans, Howard and others). When using a radius dish careful planning allowed me to spend less than a minute "driving the bus". I use Colins method for profiling my sides. http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10102&t=8117%22 For wedged guitars I tilt the mold to make a pattern, and make a pattern for both sides.

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