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Hello I’m looking for some tips on how to sand a softwood surface with a hardwood inlay such as a top with a rosette or the end wedge area. How can I sand these areas so the surface is even and flat without a raised hardwood inlay?

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Alain
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If you don't have much to take off, back up your sandpaper with a hard level block, say MDF.
Clear the dust often to prevent grinding it into the softwood.
If there's more, then plane it first to very nearly level (careful for tear out) then sand with the block.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

This is the very reason I bought a drum sander.

It's a pain to do it well by hand, but what Colin said is your best strategy.

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-Marcus
http://www.bailieguitars.com
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The Carruth scraper works really nicely for this, it even works with shell.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I use an old block plane body and psa sandpaper. As you move to finer grits the dust discoloration becomes less problematic.

Make a sanding disc for your drill press from two or three pieces of MDF (cut with a fly cutter or circle router jig), countersink the bottom to accommodate a 3/8 to 1/2 in bolt and washer, cut the bolt head off with a hacksaw, look at the photos below for further detail, add some adhesive sandpaper, and go to town. This is a very handy little jig that can thickness all kinds of parts to close tolerances. Adjust the drill stop to your desired thickness and sand away in a fashion similar to a Safe-T-Planer.





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Aaron Craig

If working by hand, the unifying theme is to have an unyielding backer for the sandpaper. A cushy backer will conform around the harder material and sand the softer material faster, making flattening harder to achieve.

+1 Drum sander for tops/rosettes.
+1 Scraper for end grafts, but not sure why those are an issue - basically hardwood all around, yes?
+1 Hardwood (Milo) sanding blocks.

All of the above I guess, situation dependent.

I use low angle L/N vlnmakers plane , scraper, and then a sanding block with 180 , 220, and 320 grit.

We plane off what can be removed on rosettes and end grafts, then block sand with a ply block with 1/16" firm cork facing (rubberized gasket material is best, but the drawer lining peel and stick material from the big box stores works OK) and well radiused edges. With the CA we use on shell work and bindings, we often use a firm pad on a random orbit sander to level through the CA and any shell - we have several Dynabrade ROS with vacuum dust collection for the job, but most portable electric ROS will have a firm pad available. Also note that spruce may be sanded cross-grain where necessary with just a bit of along-grain sanding for cleanup. Finally, a 12" mill bastard file does a nice job of leveling where a scraper will hop around a bit and a block is overkill, like cleaning up that last bit of top binding near the tail graft or neck socket.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

" we often use a firm pad on a random orbit sander to level through the CA and any shell - we have several Dynabrade ROS with vacuum dust collection for the job"

If you only have one R.O. sander and you don't want to keep changing pads, something I have done to make a hard pad, is cut a circle of Formica and spray glue a used hook and loop sanding disc to the unfinished face. I then "hook" it to the sander and stick a PSA disc to the smooth face. The "hard pad" can then be removed like a typical H&L disc.