'nother L-OO

[Kevin Sjostrand]

I thicknessed my first 2 guitars with hand plane and pnuematic sander. It can work well but takes a lot of time. Now I have my drum sander and I'll never go back.

Kevin

[Jim_H]

Yep, we all live a lot longer now... we are all just deaf and have nine fingers!

[darren]

ok, time to show some progress here:

rose-001.png

above, I've bent the soundhole binding (EIR) and routed and installed the outer rings (rosewood/maple/rosewood) and the binding and inner rings. I'm taking down the bulk of the binding with a small plane and the chisel.

below, step 1 is scraped down, and now we're routing the center channel...

rose-002.png

[darren]

Here the marquetry has been bent, installed inside some maple/rosewood pins, and scraped down:

rose-007.png

camera doesn't focus too well that close...

and my chicken scratches on top of the finished rosette. As I said in another thread, I think this is about as complicated as I'm willing to get with my low-tek dremmel setup. I'm happy with this one, but need to dial it back for the next.

rose-008.png

I also started on the neck construction and got the back braced up. The back is pretty typical ladder bracing, here's another shot of my gluing fixture in action:

back-brace-002.png

The radiused gluing caul is not 'perfect' so I place a flexible strip of softwood between it and the back to even out a few dips that are in the caul. End results are good, but I need to make new ones for the top and back... someday. :)

[Jim_H]

Very nice Darren! Very tasteful!

[darren]

Thanks Jim...

It's been slow going here, but I got the soundboard thicknessed last weekend(by hand- and so much quicker than the back I might add) soundhole cut out, and this weekend the top was braced and carved. Here I'm gluing up the x and finger braces.

topbracing-007.jpg

I'd like to solicit your opinions though - anyone who wants to chime in, feel free. What does everyone think of these braces?

topbracing-005.jpg

I feel like I'm about 90% done here, I need to cap the x and sand everything down. The top is AA WRC, left at about 3mm, and the x is 8mm wide, 16mm at the intersection. All others are 6mm wide (except the utb, of course.) The scale length is 25.5" and I'll be using medium gauge strings.

topbracing-004.jpg

[darren]

here are a few more shots of the bracing.

topbracing-003.jpg

topbracing-002.jpg

topbracing-001.jpg

critiques welcome...

[Jim_H]

I'm probably the last person that should be commenting this, based on my own experiences, but to my eye, those look pretty heavy, especially for a small guitar.

[darren]

Thanks gents, maybe I'll take some weight off by starting the taper further down.

[Jim_H]

What are the brace wood dimensions? height, width, etc..

And what kind of wood is it?