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this one's blue paua zipflex in peruvian walnut on redwood. this is about as detailed as I can get with my dremel setup - maybe santa will bring me a new jig this year...

Nice rosette. I think I may start making my own after the three builds I am doing now are finished. Nice work Darren. Very clean and a good tight fit.

That looks really nice. I love this style of rosette. I'm trying to do something similar only in EI rosewood over Western Red Cedar. I don't know if I'm going to attempt a zipflex ablam inner ring though. It seems like it may be beyond my skills.

thanks guys.

Neil, If you can cut your own rose and install it on a top you can inlay some zipflex - installing it was as easy as installing b/w or b/w/b, as soon as I got the channel width right - a bit more expensive, though! ;) ...sure had my fingers crossed when I was sanding it flush...

Darren,
Your rosette looks greally nice, simple and elegant.
Doesn't it feel good to have the focal point of your top come out nicely?
Great job.

Kevin

Thanks Kevin, this is going on a LOO body so I thought the rosette should be a little more petite, and simple.

darren wrote:thanks guys.

Neil, If you can cut your own rose and install it on a top you can inlay some zipflex - installing it was as easy as installing b/w or b/w/b, as soon as I got the channel width right - a bit more expensive, though! ;) ...sure had my fingers crossed when I was sanding it flush...

I'm sure, but I don't even know how to install the purfling yet. I've never even seen it done so I'm left to use my imagination. One person tells me that I have to glue the purfling to the rosewood before I put it in the soundboard, another tells me that I glue the rosewood in first then rout more for the purfling. That's why I'm frequenting these boards! These picture tutorials and youtube videos are a great guide.

Neil,
Well so far I've done 3 rosettes and each time I've routed a single channel for the purfling and wood, and installed the three pieces in one gluing operation. For this last one I then routed out the channel for the zipflex and that went in separate. I wanted to make sure the wood and b/w were flush and clean before gluing in the paua.

Lots of ways to do things! Pick the method you like and can wrap your head around. Try it, if you don't like it, don't do it that way next time. (there will be lots of next times.)

The 2 kit builds I've done, I've routed for the purfling first, because it goes further into the body (into the face of the top), and because it is shallower down the sides. Then I adjusted the router bit to cut the binding. It then leaves a couple of ledges that look like a backward 7, or an upside down L.
I then glued in both at the same time on the first guitar.
The last guitar was a bit hairy because I had 4 purfling strips that were only connected at the heel block by some CA. So I did them alone the rest of the way with Elmer's Glue All, and the next day, did the binding by itself.
But I would do all the routing at the same time to prevent an accidental cut into whichever part was glued in first.
When someone uses paua, abalone, or something like that, they often glue in the binding and put in teflon strips that correspond to the width of the paua, etc. Those strips won't stick to white glue (not sure about CA), so can be pulled and then the purfling installed separately.

Neil - were you asking whether to glue the purfling to the binding first? In my opinion, that would be hard to do and might not allow the purfling to match up with the channel that was cut for it. Some people who put a small strip along the sides of the guitar below the binding do glue them together, but they're the same thickness and are stacked, so there's not an issue as there would be for purfling on the top. You can actually buy binding with laminated wood of a contrasting color for side decoration.
Bob

Bob