Once the size and design were settled on, it's time to start building. As mentioned in the previous post, I had plenty of help from the blog posts at Schuur's. Follow that link and you will find plenty of information on the build process as well as detailed plans and pictures of every step.
The only added perspective that I have, compared to Brad's posts is that I have a tiny workshop and do most things using hand tools. Brad certainly knows his way around hand tools as I have gleaned from his site, however if I owned a shop full of machines I would definitely use them whenever I could.
I will go into some detail on how I executed what was essentially Brad's plans using the tools that I had available to me. I also took some shortcuts or easier paths either because I didn't have to tools I needed or the skills needed to execute as per Brad's plans.
The frame
The frame is basically 4 boards of wood joined by dovetails. It is there to support the board that holds all your pedals. Your power and instrument ins/outs will also be mounted to the frame.
At this stage you should be settled on how big you want that board to be, so the frame needs to be sized accordingly. One consideration when sizing the frame is how the board will be mounted to the frame. There are 2 popular choices:
you can create a rebate/channel such that the board will sit on top of the frame. The depth of the rebate will need to be equal or slightly more than the thickness of your board, that way it will sit flush with the frame. The width of the rebate will depend on the width of the pedal board. Pros: you don't need any additional mounts and this will save you some space underneath your board. Cons: you will need to create a rebate with a router.
you can install some additional mounts to mount the pedal board to the frame. This can be in the form of aluminium brackets, or blocks of wood glued to the frame. Pros: Easy to execute (IMO). Cons: Adds weight when using blocks of wood.
Since I went with method 2, I won't comment on what is needed for method 1. It should not be too hard to work out on your own though.
For method 2, you just need to size your frames so that the "empty" area in the middle of the frame is exactly or slightly larger than the board that your pedals will be on. So, as an example, my board was 900mm x 450mm. The stock used for my frame was 18mm thick. That would mean that my long boards would need to be at least 900 + 18 + 18 = 936mm. And my short boards would need to be at least 450 + 18 + 18 = 486mm. This would only work if you're using a joining method such as dovetails or finger joins where the stock is "intersecting" each other. If you are planning to use butt joins or the like, adjust accordingly.
Next we will address the slant. As you can see in the pic, the back board of the frame (i.e. the board facing the audience) is wider than the front board. This allows the pedal board to be slanted in the players direction. Also note that because of the slant, the empty area is now slightly more than 450 x 900 (in my example), but this won't matter too much as it will likely work out to be a tiny difference.
To implement this slant you will need to:
Cut out the slant angle on the two shorter side boards
Bevel the two long boards so that the slant carries all the way through the piece
For me, I chose the width of the back board and the front board by what was available at the lumber yard and then let that dictate my slope angle, i.e. the actual value of the slope angle did not matter to me, as long as there was a smooth slant from the back of the pedalboard to the front.
To start working on the frame, cut your stock to length and then make sure they are square. I did this using a handsaw and a shooting board with a plane. Once finished, do a dry assembly and check that all corners are square. Your board will not fit on to it at the moment because the joins have not been done.
Next, I marked out the slant angle and bevels needed on all 4 boards. The front and back boards would need to be beveled, and the 2 side boards would need to have a diagonal line cut out of them to support the slant. Work on the side boards first. For the side boards I used a handsaw to rough cut the diagonal, then used a hand plane on them both to get them to be smooth and match exactly.
Image above shows a marked out and cut board to be used for one side of the frame
Above: Once both boards have been cut, put them together and level them out with a plane so that they match
Above: After the side boards have been cut, put the pieces together just to make sure the dimensions are correct.
You can just make out in the image above that the bevelling of the front and back boards haven't been done yet. This can be done after the dovetail joints have been established. In the diagram below I attempt to show what it should end up looking like. It is a side view of the pedalboard - the blue denoting a side board and the greens denoting the front and back boards. It also shows the waste that needs to be either cut or planed out, and the intersecting dovetail joints.
So on to the dovetailing. Pretty much standard fare here, same process as I went through when building the cab. Although this time the stock used was oak so it's a little harder on the tools. Go back to the post on building the cabinet if you need details on the process but basically the hand tools you will need are:
Marking gauge
Dovetail marker and set square
Tenon saw
Marking knife
Pencil
Dividers
Chisels and Mallet
For the back board, I used 3 tails and for the front I used 1 tail, per side, as per the diagram. As usual, do a dry fit after the joins have been established. Do not glue up yet, as we will be going through the routing of the inputs/outputs in a later post
