Hollowing and thicknessing

1. Mark out an outline on the bottom side of the plate, see the red outline in Fig. 1. "a" is 21 mm, "b" is 19 mm, "c" is 7 mm.
   
2. Mark a second green outline using a marking caliper set to a 5 mm thickness. This will create a safety margin.
   
3. Mount the plate bottom up in the plate holder. See [[Tools|Tools]] section for an example.
   
4. Start removing material within the green outline. Work across the grain. Keep checking the thickness with a caliper or your fingers.
   
5. When you are getting closer to about 6 mm thickness, use a graduation punch set to 4 mm. For graduation punch schematics see the [[Tools|Tools]] section of the site. Beware that this only applies to the front plate. The back plate has different thicknesses.
   
6. On the top plate, remove material all over the surface up to the red line, down to 4 mm, which means that the holes from the graduation punch will start disappearing. On the back plate, remove the material down to 6 mm.
   
   

Now you should move over to the Plate tuning section to read up on how you might want to tune the plate.