Front Soundboard

I chose a curly maple wood for the front soundboard.  I bought a 3/4" thick piece of lumber for this.

Since I don't have a band saw, I had to work a little to turn this piece into two book-matched pieces for the front panel.  I used a table saw to cut the a 3 inch groove all the way around the piece.  Then I used a handsaw to finish the cut leaving me with two pieces that were about 1/4" thick, 24" long and 10" wide.

I took the resulting two pieces and ran them through a planer to smooth them out.  Then I brought them to my bench and hand-planed them smooth on one edge.

I followed the book's recommendation to perform "candling" on the resulting joint.  Once I verified that I could not see any light through the seam, I glued the edges together.

You can see in the picture above that I then drew the outline of the soundboard on the maple.  Then I cut out the shape, allowing about a half inch all around the outline.