Roughing out the top and bottom boards

Fig. 1 - qin template with hands saws on top && cut out Paulownia piece next to it

Fig. 2 - Ze big routing straight cut bit from Stew-Mac (maybe?) - note top and bottom bearings

Fig, 3 - straight and curved back wood files (on cut maple bottom board)

Fig. 4 - Jigsaw and curve on maple bottom that awaits cutting

Fig. 5 - routing table and bottom board that has been routed out (nut side not cut yet)

Fig. 6 - top board and routing template (post cut)

Fig. 7 - desktop electric planer (needing new drive belt)

In this section I will describe how to take your chosen top and bottom guqin boards and plane, cut, and sand them to make a rough sanded pair that fit each other and are more or less the shape you want for your qin.   Hammers are not involved. There are roughly two or three major steps here - one is cutting the boards out to match your design (you have a design right?   You need one ...  there are plenty of traditional guqin shapes out there -- however my design is an even simpler variation on the traditional "Confucian" shape).   So a preliminary step is to basically make a design and a template of some sort (say made out of wood) that you can use for tracing an outline on your wood. Post cutting however done (and there is more than one way to do it), you will need to use a few tools to even up the sides (the four sides including the front and back count too).  The final result should be two pieces of wood that are basically smooth all over with nicely matched side contours and a flat bottom board.  You may want to see the next blog post about measurement and put down the center lines for top and bottom boards at this point too in order to help you accurately place the outlines.

I'm not going to tell you to run out and buy a table saw or whatever.   I am going to explain how I do things at this point which is more complex than things were when I started trying to make a guqin.  A couple of preliminaries do need to be mentioned.   In wood working there is this notion of a "jig" which is basically a tool you make on the way to help you with tasks especially tasks done over and over again.   In Figure 1 on the left hand side of the routing table there is an instance of a "jig".  This particular jig is something you must have in some form.  It's basically the outline of a guqin shape.   I will call it the (guqin) template.  My original version was made of cardboard and was only useful for marking out a shape on a piece of wood with a pencil or pen.  The current template actually serves two purposes - 1. of course it provide a handy form for marking the outline on a new slab be it top or bottom, and 2. in this case it is a routing template as well.   This template is made out of Paulownia mostly because I have plenty of it and Paulownia is easy to work.  However if you want to make your template out of ironwood or steel - have at it.   Sooner or later a template (especially a routing template) may get devoured by the forces of chaos.   However you need to make this template as accurate as you possibly can by measuring a center line and making sure that the various parts of the guqin outline (shoulder to yueshan/bridge area, etc.) are symmetrical and fit your desired design outline.  Assuming you make your template out of wood you will need tools including sanding blocks and various kinds of saws and files as found in the pictures above.  I actually did not make most of this template with a jigsaw but that might be one approach.   I made it with a very strange jig that I made for cutting guqin sides that fits on a tablesaw (this jig is currently semi-destroyed due to problems with its hold downs) that was all about cutting straight lines that were not exactly a rip cut made with the grain.   The jigsaw was used for cutting the curves however.   I have another template which can be assumed to be an arc of a circle that is used for cutting the nut-side curve which I do with a jigsaw.

All of that said it might be a good thing to point out a couple of obvious (to me at least) preliminary steps.   I am going to assume you have read my translation of the Yuguzhai Qinpu in particular "Volume 2" which is on how to make a guqin and has various pictures, with names of parts, etc.  It is not very exact and in fact is somewhat crude but it should give you a traditional reference (and one interesting part is that it has pictures of tools from the mid 1800s).   The other notion is that actually owning a guqin to use as a model is not a bad idea either.  Hopefully it is a good model.   The top of the guqin is basically a three dimensional wonder and is non-trivial to get right but more on that later. One piece of advice for a novice guqin builder is to get a bad guqin and take it apart (and then possibly try to fix it).  This can be quite the learning experience (I did this). 

In general according to Zeng Chengwei, you cut the bottom board out first (template to bottom board to top board).   One obvious reason for this methodology is that the bottom board is skinny and cutting out something that is on the order of 3/8s of an inch thick is easy.   Then the bottom board assuming it came out ok can be used as a template or at least a sanity check for the top board which is thicker and non-trivial to cut at 1 1/2 inches thick.   At some point with the bottom board you carve out sound holes and these bottom board sound holes (as well as the wild geese feet holes) can then be used to help you figure out where various bits of the inside of the top board go.   Thus you should make the bottom first.   It's simpler that way - believe me.

Before we cut the shapes we need to plane the boards to their rough thicknesses.   I am going to assume that the yueshan/bridge end  of the boards is basically square and this should be done beforehand with some sort of saw if the wood you obtained (1000 years ago ...) does not already have this feature.   You might use a handsaw, table saw, sliding chop saw or trained beavers or something to make sure that condition is true.   I make sure that the bridge end at least of a bottom board is square before it goes into my woodpile.   If say the top board was 1 and 3/4s inches thick it should be planed to 1 and 1/2 inches. (Assuming you are making a guqin of current overall height - this has important impact on the overall size of the sound chamber in the top.  Tang dynasty guqin apparently had bigger tops - more on the order of 2 inches thick).    If the bottom board was 3/4's when obtained (often the case) it should be planed (a waste but still) to 3/8s of an inch.   The bottom of the bottom should be absolutely flat and so should the top of the bottom and the bottom of the top.  The top of the bottom and the bottom of the top will have to fit together and rest on each other.   This will probably be true post planing for the top of the top as well but given that the top of the top will eventually be sculpted into a guqin top shape courtesy of planes -- this is not so important.  I use an electric planer for this process and proceed slowly taking off a small bit at a time (say a millimeter).  My current electric planer may be viewed in Fig. 7.   I don't really have a very good setup in terms of dust collection and the electric planer is probably the worst offender in this regard.  It makes a mess.   I don't use it very often and finish work in my garage should not be going on when it is being used.  I don't use wood that might need a jointer.   I don't have big enough of a band saw to consider doing "resawing" (cutting into parts lengthwise) with a 4 foot board that is approximately 9 inches wide.  Resaw work is tricky anyway and on a few occasions in the past when I needed it done - I took it elsewhere to have experts do it.  Even in that case they told me that planing was cheaper although the resaw work (compared to the cost of some boards especially something fancy) is not really that expensive.  If you do need to level a board for some reason you might get by with a jointer plane which is basically a very looooong plane (up to 2 feet long).  

How to cut given a marked outline?  You really have three choices including: 1. manual saws as with a coping saw, or Japanese blade style saw for straight sections.   This may be appropriate for the true woodshop ninja but not for me.  2. You and your handy jigsaw.   I have done this and to some extent I still use a jigsaw for touch up work for the most part.  3. something much more lethal.  See Figure 2.  In this case we have a tall straight cutting router bit intended for trimming the sides of guitars based on a template (template routing).   This means that the wood to be cut would mostly be trimmed close but not perfect with some other saw (a jigsaw or possibly a band saw) and then a lovely template would be attached to the desired wood to cut.   If the template is laid flat it can then be pushed against the router bit bearing on the routing table.   The template itself should be the height of a bearing on the router bit and the wood to be cut should be "above" it (assuming the bearing is on the bottom of the bit).  This approach (with the template on the table) has a con which is that you can't see the template as you trim the wood but if there isn't much wood to trim - it will work.   On the other hand, you can lower the bit in the table and put the template on top and use the bearing at the top of this bit. In Figures 1, and 2 we have the routing template, and the routing table and bit.  In Figure 6 we see the template attached to a Paulownia top board post cutting.  How do they get stuck together?   Double sided tape.  Don't skimp on it. You do not want the wood flying apart in the middle of routing.   I have to confess that I am addicted to double sided tape.  Another thing to do before feeding something like this to a router is to use the jigsaw and make an approximate cutting pass that leaves just a little stock for the router to remove.  It's best if the router has little to do other than even things up - else there may be some tearout.

Using a jigsaw is an alternative and simpler approach with some obvious caveats (like you might not make a straight cut).   Patience is certainly a requirement. 
If and when you use a jigsaw to cut the top and bottom, note that especially with the top board jigsaw blades are weak puny things and may deflect with thicker stock especially in unwanted ways.   This is one reason for using the routing approach (that routing bit isn't going to deflect).   This isn't likely to be much of a problem with a bottom board.  With a top board it's a good idea to make sure you are cutting with the bottom of the top on top so that any deflection that occurs is hopefully far enough towards the top of the top that it will work out to be unimportant.  This means that the 3/8s of an inch in the top board that you are cutting is the only wood at the edge of the top that will remain - the remaining 1 and 1/8th inch will disappear later with a plane.  Take your time with this or any other cutting approach.   I have a jigsaw now that has its own light and that is a very good feature.   It may also be a good feature to have one that blows sawdust out of the way but I do not possess such a tool. 

In the next blog post we will talk about laying out center lines on both of the bottom and top boards for a qin.   However you might want to draw them in even at this stage.  For example - possibly you want to make sure that the circular part of the top and bottom at the nut end is laid out to allow enough room for the nut and bridge on the top.   If so draw center lines in to help you lay out your design before you start cutting.

One final step before we go on is to put the top and bottom together (possibly held together by a couple of cloth "belts" or once again use double sided tape) and check the two sides, and the nut front part and the bridge back part (look at all the sides).   I have a simple jig that I will show a picture of later that is more or less for side work on a guqin - it may be used here to get access to a side.   I also have a way of attaching a guqin vertically to my main workbench (with a rug on the floor) so that I can have either end up.  This allows access to the top or the bottom that is not awkward.   In the process of cutting or even before the cutting there will be certain imperfections.   Possibly you have saw burns, gouges, etc in the sides.  So using some combination of low cunning, your jigsaw or some manual saw, your wood files, and eventually either an electrical sander or a block of rough sanding paper - smooth the sides so that they line up and can be lacquered (later - much later).