soldering of sides "second version"
Due to some displeasedness of the result of soldering the front and back to the side, we hope that a special jig will help. Thanx to a laser-cutter company the jig was made out of a lots of wooden parts, which fit precisely to the bent front and back plates.
The result: The sides can be pressed as near as possible to the front / back plates while the jig-pressure can be adjusted by 3 (or more) clamps.
Also we will solder the sides to a ring BEFORE inserting into the jig, to gain precision.
Side (still not solder to a ring) and the back-plate inserted into the jig
Front-plate inserted into the jig, note the jig-assembly (this was just for test, while in the next pics soldering takes place)
In the pic above the side is already soldered to a ring and inserted into the assebling jig
Next step is to prepare the wooden jig, tho withstand the falmes of the burner, some aluminium-tape will do....
Additional clamps are placed to optimize the presserure of the side. First test show, that the sides have contact to the plates all over the rim, while in the last-time-set up we had to deal with distance up to 1mm!!
We used a simple burner to get heaten up the brass parts, use as less solder as posibble...
Now the top-plate is inserted upside down. The clamps are tightened to get a close fit again. After it looks fine, the side is fixed from the inside with some solder around the contour.
Thanx to the jig, we only used 1/4 of solder to get an air-tight bond. Also (almost) no further work is needed to get a smooth edge. When processing the next guitar we think we will use a thinner material for the sides than for the current model. In fact a thickness of 0.4 - 0.6mm will still be sufficient in terms of rigidity - but much more easier to be processed.