French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

A damaged corner. The wood was a bit spongy and torn as a result of several top removals/replacements in the past. One way of patching this would be to plane a flat shelf right across the edge and fit a flat piece, then cut and reshape the edge. But the edge was clean, and I wanted to preserve it. So I decided to do a fitted inlay patch. This is more work but will lead to a better result, I think.



Starting the bed. You can see the cracks and splits!



The maple patch piece with alignment marks.




Rough shaping the bottom of the patch. This is going to be more time consuming than fitting a sound post patch; maple is much harder than spruce.



Checking depth and shape of the bed. I make it perfectly smooth and polished and keep the edges as clean as I can.



Chalking the bed



Trimming the patch with a scraper



Checking the fit – a fair way to go yet. The surfaces need to fit perfectly in all dimensions.