I have been running my own construction business for the last few years and as it turns out I had a shop that I was renting for my business, and was only using it for storage, So during one of my great moments of thought I determined that it was space not being used to its full capacity, and things were slow due to our wonderful downturned economy so to keep myself from going stir crazy I started rearranging things into a working space.
First, I did not even have a workbench, so I started out using some sawhorses that I had made twenty years ago and set a piece of scrap plywood on top to get started. This was fine since I was used to working off of sawhorses anyway. I had four or five sheets of plywood, so I set off to my local big box lumber yard bought some 2x4's and made a real work bench. I made it the same height as my table saw so I could use it as an extension and helper for big sheets or long lengths of wood. I built a shelf platform about 6 inches off of the floor to store stuff that I will be using on the bench. The shelf has also come in handy as a go bar shelf for gluing braces that I will discuss later (maybe). It's a little tough working on the floor under the bench, so I have put a go bar frame on my list of things to build.
In the mean time I started purchasing books on lutherie and building guitars and one of the things one of the books said I had to have right in the beginning was a solera. It mentioned that there are many ways to build a guitar, but with a solera life would be much better. So I set off on building this next. I had a sheet of oak veneer plywood that I must have been saving from something years ago and this worked perfect. I took a dreadnought guitar body that I had and trace out the pattern about 4 inches bigger. I used the leftover scrap plywood to make the clamping blocks, and went back to the big box store and bought some small carriage bolts and wing nuts to hold them in place.
