The same that I've done with the front needs to be done with the back. The grain already runs almost parallel to the joint so I don't need to fix that. But I did make them match on both sides so that one is the mirror of the other. The figured hard maple of back is quite a bit more difficult to work with than the soft spruce of the front. Having a sharp blade on the plane is a must.

I want to get the grain going nicely on the front. That means two things for me. One is to get the two sides of the front to be good mirror images. Which means that I need to identify the same growth ring on both halves. Luckily that wasn't too difficult. Secondly I want to have the grain to run parallel to the centre joint. In order to do that I just followed a growth ring and marked it with a ruler. This bit of wood was quite out of parallel to being with.