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Maine

I have done a couple of bound sound holes and I got tips from our own John Hall that make the job simple.

If you have already cut the soundhole out - first cut the strip wider than the soundboard is thick, so it sticks up a bit and down a bit when it is in position.

Second, cut it a bit too long, then cut an angle on either end at sharper than 45°.

When you install it, you can see that you can adjust its diameter by sliding the two angles against each other to push it against the soundhole edge. Now install your plug. Sorry I did not take a shot of the angled ends, but you can see from my simple plug that I only needed to push where the pieces overlap, and then opposite that.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/ ... 130471994/

This way is dead simple - if you have not yet cut out the hole, use your rosette cutter to cut a single slot extra deep (close to all-the-way-through) at the eventual location of the binding, then glue in the binding (you can use the angled-end trick here too for a better fit). When you run the back of the soundboard through the thickness sander or hand plane it to thickness, you end up exposing the bottom of the binding and the hole plug easily comes out.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/ ... 776959267/

Ed

Good ideas! I've used the angled-ends trick on previous jobs. Not sure why I didn't on this one. It works quite well.

I've got the back and side braces glued on. Now I'm doing final shaping. The first photo shows the side braces, along with a chisel I picked up at a local flea markiet. It was made in Sweden, and it takes an excellent edge.

In the second photo, I'm tapering a back brace using my favorite little block plane. I put down some stainless steel shim stock for the side of the plane to ride on. It keeps the plane from marking up the wood where it rubs, and it also guides the plane up and over the center seam reinforcing strip.

I'm now looking at the ship's knee braces on the head block. I don't know what else to call them. Nikos Appolonio, who built the cittern I'm copying, used to be a boatbuilder, and it shows.

Those are interesting - they are a great way to make a lightweight corner brace. Thomas Moser used laminated knees in his Windsor chairs to hold the legs on without stretchers. There has to be a place for them in instruments - maybe a resonator. - see below

Here's me cutting a big knee about 1996:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/ ... 100435423/

For the 350 ton Kalmar Nyckel - best tall ship around

Ed

I borrowed Jud's cittern again and with the help of a pair of button supermagnets plotted the layout of the bracing on the top. I've started gluing on the braces according to that layout.
Fiberglass rod driveway edge markers make great "go-bars" ... and they're cheap!

CNC makes it possible for even me to do a good inlay. I used CNC to cut the lizard fugure and the pocket for the figure.

I also glued on the top braces and glued the top to the sides. Normally I would glue the back on first, but I want to be able to get at the area for the "ship's knee" bracing and figure out what, if anything, I want to do there.

It's really coming together. Love the lizard!

I first tried using a gramil to cut binding and purfling grooves for my 3rd guitar build....which still isn't *quite* done, but it's close.

Anyway, I found that using a gramil was much less painful than I had anticipated. In fact, it worked quite well. Certainly not as fast as a router setup, and I don't get quite as clean a channel as a router gives, but it's not bad. It's a meditative activity, and as long as speed is not of the essence, I think it's a good alternative.

Here's a photo of cutting the binding channel for the cittern top. I score the lines as deeply as the gramil seems to want to cut, then use a chisel to take out the wood to that depth, then go back to the gramil to go deeper until the full channel is cut. As you can see, I got some pretty good shavings, going down about 1/16" at a time in the cedar top. Cutting the hickory sides is taking longer!

This is certainly not an original idea, but I'll describe how I do it in case somebody doesn't know about it yet. It works extremely well.

First I made a caul out of Delrin to match the radius of the fingerboard.

Then I positioned the cual and the fret to be pressed in over the fingerboard slot, in the jaws of my vise. This is a bit of a juggling act. It would be make the job easier if the caul was attached to a vise jaw.

Wind in the vise, and press in the fret.

Result: perfect!