1952 Gibson Southern Jumbo - Progress

So I got a little sleep after making my magnetic clamping cauls, and after cutting a license plate off of my sister's car and putting the new one on, I got back to work.  I had shown in a previous update the mahogany strips I had cut to replace the brittle balsa strips that fell out, and glued 3/5 of them in place using my new clamps.  They ended up working pretty damn well, and even better, the color and grain of my new strips matched up really well with the mahogany back of the guitar.  Waiting until I feel comfortable taking the last clamp off, and then I'll reglue the 2 back braces, and add the last 2 strips.

Stay tuned...

New DIY tool

Awhile back I had read about magnetic clamping on frets.com, and decided this gibson would be perfect to try it out on.  I bought 50 1/2"x1/8" Neomydmium/rare earth magnets on ebay for about 20 bucks.  These little fuckers are pretty ridiculous.  Just one is enough to hold up a steel hammer. 

Instead of wasting precious time casting liquid acrylic into molds for this, I just bought an 18" 1x1.25" scrap of plexiglass and cut and drilled it myself.  Took about an hour total to make 3 pairs with 6-8 magnets per caul, and since these are permanent magnets and don't wear out like Alnico, these will surely be used in many jobs in the future.