Cuban Mahogany and Lutz Spruce 00

[Darryl Young]

I don't have a jig to cut the radius into the back braces but I do have a CNC'd template that has convex and concave sides the proper radius so I used that to draw the arch on the braces. I then used a plane to get close to this line and did the final cleanup to the line by sanding in the radius dish. I used a drill press table I bought at Harbor Freight to hold the brace stock while I planed. This went quick.......5 to 7 sec per end once the brace was clamped in place.

Here is a shot of the setup for planing the radius to the line drawn on the back brace. You can see that one end of the brace is radiused and the other hasn't yet been cut.

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I then trued up the brace radius on the sanding dish.

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[Darryl Young]

And finally, I glued a couple of braces to the back tonight. Ran out of go-bars so only did two of them and will glue the other two tomorrow. I guess I need to order a few more go-bars from John!

BTW, when notching the center reinforcement strip for the back braces, I realized I need a good chisel that is 1/4" or less wide. My narrowest chisel is 3/8" so it was more difficult than it had to be.

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[johnnparchem]

BTW, when cutting the center reinforcement strip for the back braces, I realized I need a good chisel that is 1/4" or less wide. My narrowest chisel is 3/8" so it was more difficult than it had to be.

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The work on the back looks good. I end up using my 1/4 inch chisel a lot, It is worth having.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Yeah, got to get yourself a 1/4" chisel. I'd like to get one smaller too.
Go-bar deck works great for the braces doesn't it. I like the look of that mahogany Darryl.

Kevin

[darren]

yeah that is one pretty back. tasty!

[Jim_H]

My favorite chisels are my cape forge curved edge chisels. They are go-to for brace carving. Especially on scalloped braces. They are pretty wide at 1/2" and 3/4" though.

I also have a couple of blue spruce 1mm and 2mm chisels that I've found are pretty useful.

A few weeks ago I bought a 6mm chisel from LMI (I believe it'se a Lie-Nielsen) because I too was lacking anything in the 1/4" range. The 6mm is just a tiny skoche under 1/4 inch, which I found really handy cutting the notches in the kerfed lining for the braces on my dreadnought build. I believe these run about $40 at LMI.

[Darryl Young]

I forgot to post a pic of the back after all the bracing was glued on so here is one. I still haven't yet carved the braces. This was done before Christmas.

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[Darryl Young]

And today I worked on the rosette after getting a few pointers from John and Jim on another post. Here is me cutting the rosette channels.

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Test fitting the purfling (note the teflon filler strip where Ablam will later be placed). You can see the pearl I plan to use which has a lot of pink in it which my daughter likes. Note I used a green purfling inside the outer ring. I plan to use this same purfling under the binding so it shows from the side. Hope that ends up looking ok.

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And here is what the rosette looks like after glueing the purfling with Duco cement (and before the pearl is installed).

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[Darryl Young]

And my neck came in from Hanallei Moon. I used a 3 piece neck with a single, thin, black purfling line down the middle. Since it is a short scale with a 12 fret neck, I'm using a Gibson style heel to give a bit more room. Here is what the neck looks like:

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And here is a closeup of what those Cocobolo headplates look like on the headstock. This is a wineglass volute.

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[johnnparchem]

Nice job on the rosette. I like the back of that headstock, I am going to have to figure out how to do that.