New skill needed

[Woody OKeefe]

Hi Guys,
I love building kit guitars and probably will never get to the scratch stage. But in each guitar I try to learn a new skill set. I’m working on two guitars one is getting purfling both top and back, and on the other I’m going to installing a pau Abalone rosette from Andy DePaule. Here is my question….. finally, they all moan….. On what kind of wood should I practice? I’m using the Stemac rosette jig and my Dremel.

[darren]

ideally the same kind of wood you'll be doing the final inlay/rosette in.

If your top is profiled already you can do test cuts in the waist area of the offcut.

Though, nothing motivates you to get it right like learning on the AAAA top you've got already joined and thicknessed. :)

[Tony_in_NYC]

Another soft wood. Pine planks from home depot are cheap and you can practice a bunch on one board.

[David L]

I'm working on the same philosophy as you, trying to increase the amount of skill set that I learn on each one. On my second one (this one) I'm going to do side purfling and miter the joints, also I am using the exact same rig as you are for the rosette installation. I'm not going to "practice" so much, just going to use some wood on hand to set depth, width, etc...

David L

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Woody,
I like to do test cuts in MDF. I take it you won't actually glue the abalone in your test cuts, but you can practice laying it in, and then when you get ready to do your cutting on your top; make your inside cut on the mdf, then make it on your top, then make the outside cut on your mdf, measure, make sure it is correct, and then make the cut on your top. Just remember it is easy to cut too wide, so better to creep up on the final channel width.
Hope this helps.

Kevin