Archtop Guitar: a Major Rethink

I'm reasonably satisfied with the back and sides of this guitar having carved, bent, and assembled them, even after acknowledging that the outcome is some way short of perfect. It's a prototype, I tell myself!I'd been steeling myself for a struggle as I prepared to carve the outer and inner arches on this back plate - it's a hardwood after all. As it turned out, it was a dream to carve, and in many ways a far easier process than shaping the soundboard. After I'd dissected an old Douglas fir coffee table and reconstituted a soundboard from several pieces of the wood I salvaged, whose grain orientation was all over the place, it's understandable that the two-piece back posed fewer difficulties where predictability of grain direction was concerned. I'm now more adept at honing an edge on my gouges and curved plane blades too, and I'm sure that working with consistently sharp tools had some bearing on my enjoyment of this phase of the project.It was my treatment of the soundboard that…