Why you need more than one smoothing plane

[Andrew Seemann]

You never know when you might need to put more pressure on the center of a soundboard rib:) There were probably better ways to clamp this, but they didn't occur to me until after I had put the glue on the rib.

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[Rob Luter]

Well played sir.

[Tom Bender]

In an earlier post it was stated that gravity's effect on planes is very reliable.

Also, gravity rarely causes parts to squirm out of place like camps do.

[Andrew Seemann]

Speaking of clamps, you can never have too many of those either.

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[Stew Denton]

Andrew,

It looks like we all need several smoothing planes, but only need one jack plane.

Stew

[Jim Koepke]

You can also use pieces of 1X to spring between your rafters and bench top to hold things in place.

jtk

[Andrew Seemann]

Called "go-bars" in the trade, and commonly used for this operation. I had thought of using them, but the ceiling is 6 1/2 feet up and is covered with squishy acoustic tile. Plus there is a risk of one slipping and poking though the 1/8" soundboard. Mostly it was because I didn't have the 1x stock on hand, but I did have the clamps:)

[Jim Chan]

Curious, what kind of instrument are you building? It appears to be a harpsichord of some sort, but I've not seen one like that before. Is it your own design?

[Andrew Seemann]

It is an English spinet harpsichord. The specific design is the Keene and Brackley spinet from 1715. Peter Barnes has a picture of it on his website. The defining characteristic of the English spinet is that the keyboard is set at an angle to the back, which allows the instrument to be much shorter and take up less room space than the traditional wing (grand piano) shape of the harpsichord. On the flip side, the instrument is more difficult to make than a standard harpsichord. All the angles and the geometry of the bridge, nut, strings, and jacks kind of make your head want to explode.