Cuban Mahogany and Lutz Spruce 00

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Darryl,
That rosette turned out great. Super install job!
I haven't talked to Andy in about 8 months, didn't know he was moving, but I noticed they are selling out of Vietnam now too.
Good for him.
That color can't be too deep, can you just block sand it off?
You might try naptha, but then you may smear it around too.

Kevin

[Darryl Young]

Chronicled on another thread but here is the X-Brace after cutting the lap joint.

X-Brace.JPG

[Darryl Young]

Things have gone slow lately. I messed the radius up on the X-brace shown above so I re-made the X-Brace (put too much radius in the very end of the arms). Did a pretty good job the second time around but I hate wasting extra spruce.

I also transferred the body shape and brace pattern to my spruce top. Cut the shape of the body out using my bandsaw with a 1/4" blade. I picked up an oscillating drum sander on Craig's List a while back for $40 and I used that to sand near the line in the tight part of the waist as I didn't want to chance getting too close with the bandsaw blade. The top has a little ring to it even without braces. Hope that is a good sign!

Night before last I made the maple bridge plate. I had to work at making the angles fit perfectly but I finally got it right (I won't cut any corners in this critical area of the soundboard). The bridge plate is rift sawn hard rock maple with light figuring. I'm a little uncertain about the figure but I'm guessing it will make it less likely to split. I want to use this Maple as it came from a board I bought around 1994 and I like using wood with some age. I ended up making 0.091" thick.

Last night I clued the X-brace and the maple plate to the soundboard. Not sure if it's better to glue the X-brace together and then glue both arms to the soundboard at once......or glue one leg at a time to the soundboard but I did it one arm at a time in a spur of the moment decision. First one went great and I felt confident (like I knew what I was doing?) and I grabbed the other arm, spread the glue evenly........and I put the glue on the top of the arm instead of the bottom (I'm half stupid if you haven't yet figured that out). So I scrambled, wiped off the glue best I could, spread glue on the other side, wiped off the excess, aligned and put it in place, then added go-bars (which may now be glued to one X-brace arm <smile>). I cleaned up around the braces and then glued the maple plate to the soundboard and the X-brace arms. Looks like this now:

XBracePlateGlued.JPG

[Darryl Young]

I'm torn if I want to radius the bottom of the upper transverse brace or glue it in flat. The radius is stronger but not sure more strength is needed on this huge brace. Thoughts?

[johnnparchem]

I'm torn if I want to radius the bottom of the upper transverse brace or glue it in flat. The radius is stronger but not sure more strength is needed on this huge brace. Thoughts?

On my current project I did both. I put a radius on the brace, and then flattened the center of the brace under the fret board. I use a 28' sanding disk for the rims so I just felt this was the best compromise to have the top match the radiused rims and have a flat area for the fret board. I probably read this somewhere, but I am not sure.

[Darryl Young]

I like the idea of the soundboard being radiused in the uper bout as it lessens the chance of splitting in low humidity. I'll ponder a bit more on it. That's a good option John, place the flat spot in the UTB instead of thinning the top. It's acutally a very tiny amount that the UTB or top would need to be thinned to have a flat area for the soundboard.

For folks that have done this (left the upper bout radiused), ho much did it impact the neck set? (vs sanding the upper bout at a 1.5deg angle from the soundhole north)?

[Jim_H]

I do it the same way as John, and the neck set was fine. As long as you flatten the area under the fretboard, you should be fine.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Darryl,
I do the same thing, I only radius that top brace on the ends, leaving about a 4" flat at the center. My fretboards have always laid flat on the top maintaining a radius out at the rims.
I've never glued the X braces to the top separately, but I don't see why this shouldn't work, actually might make it easier to tweak their position if necessary. I think the bridge plate thickness should be fine anywhere around .100" to .125" as long as it is flat sawn.

Kevin

[Darryl Young]

You guys that are using the combo flat/raidus on the UTB......how do you clamp it for glueing? I was about to radius the UTB yesterday and this crossed my mind. Only way I can think of is to use clamps on the the free plate (no go-bar deck, no radius dish or flat, etc.).

Monday I'm headed to Atlanta to the International Poultry Expo (for work) and won't be back home till Friday........so nothing much will get done this coming week. About to head down to central Arkansas to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday with my in-laws. Be back home tomorrow.

[Darryl Young]

Made a template this morning for trimming the sides before bending. This is a method I read about on a forum but I can't recall who posted it.

Tape paper to one half of the mold.

SideTemplateTapedInPlace.JPG

Lay the mold on the radius dish. Place a pencil in a washer and roll it around the perimeter of the mold and it will follow the countour of the radius dish. the line marked shows how the height of the side should vary to follow the dish contour.

DrawingRefLineOnTemplate.JPG

I then used scissors to trim along the marked line. Now I have a template for marking the sides on for a Martin 00 14 fret body. To use it, I measure and mark a line at the depth I want the sides at both the neck and tail ends (deeper at the tail end typically; also, add a little extra height to be safe). I then connect these two lines using the template and draw along the template which will be my cut line. I didn't even bother removing the tape from the paper template.