Making a couple rosettes

Hey, I have some time, so I’m catching up.

Here is how I made the rosettes for these two guitars.  I went with a geometric style.  Very similar to my first rosettes.

Started with humble beginnings of walnut, cherry and flamed maple.  These were glued up as you see here.

 

Then I used an incredibly high tech fixture to cut 45 and 42.5 degree angles on each piece.  The goal being 7.5 degree segments.

 

These segments were glued into logs.  Notice the “sorting matrix”.  This helped keep the pieces separate.  There were three different variations of wood placement and each of those had opposite angles on each side.

 

Then the logs were sliced and sorted.

 

Then I played with some variations of patterns.  There were a ton of permutations.

 

I picked two of my favorites.  Then I cut a test channel into a piece of scrap and bent up the purflings.  Fitting these was very low tech.  Cut to approximate size.

 

Inside and outside sanding block to fit.

 

Then I cut the channels into the real tops.  Used a home made circle scribe.  Now that I’ve done at least 12 channels with this scribe (7 for guitars and at least 5 tests), I should really take my time and make a nicer one on a mill.  This one was made with a hack saw, files, a drill press, and some taps and dies.  The only thing I would add is a dial height adjustment for the blade.  I made the blade, a spear point with  W1 tool steel that I sharpened, hardened and annealed.

Then a chisel, followed by a mini router plane.  

 

These are my 6th and 7th rosettes.  I’ve never used a power tool for this.  Cutting a .050″ deep, accurate channel, in a .095″ thick piece of soft wood was really intimidating at first.  After the first one, I loved it.  Its really one of my favorite parts.  I like the peace and quiet, as well as the clean cuts, when using hand tools.  

The first rosette ready to install.

 

This is my favorite part.  Planing and scraping down after the glue has cured.

 

First rosette done and scraped close to flush.

 

Second rosette installed.  This one in a cedar top.

 

This is where the guitars stood just prior to bracing the tops.

 

Ok.  Last two posts almost caught up to where I am now.

Should be closing these up soon.

A bit late on guitar updates

I’ve been really bad at keeping this up to date.  There are probably about 15 posts I could make at this point, but I’ll keep it short and post a pictoral update.

I actually made a test guitar body to try a few things out.  I’ll skip all that stuff and move to the real guitars.

For these two, I wanted to try laminated linings, made of basswood and walnut in this case.  After one other attempt in laminating right on the guitar form, I made some simple fixtures and roped them together.  This worked really well.

 

These will be my first cutaways.  The sides were thicknessed, primarily with the drum sander, then switching to a scraper.  The bass side was a simple bending operation.  The treble side was a bit more complicated.  I bent the waist and lower bout, then cut the side at the start of the cutaway and bent the remainder in reverse.  All this to get a good match on the wood grain and ambrosia stripe.

 

The match was good enough that I decided to try to miter the point and skip binding it.  Worst case is if it didn’t turn out, I could resort to binding.

Mitered the tip.

 

Came out nicely.  I even wrapped the side over the neck block, simply because I didn’t decide on a final style for the heel yet.

 

Back to the linings.  Rather than just radius the inside corner, I had a scratch stock that I made.  I used it to dress the profile.  Came out well and probably didn’t take any longer than a simple radius.

 

Inside detail of finished rim.

 

Finished rim.  Minus soundport.

 

The tops and backs were joined.

The bracing was split and prepped.

I did a fairly tight radius on the backs.  This led to a rather unorthodox clamping method, both for the changing radii and for a quick glue up with hot hide glue,

Trial fixture.

 

Better final fixture.

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I also made all the binding from raw wood as well as the rosette.

Here is the binding.

 

And purfling.

 

I’ll make a separate post on the rosette.

Thats about it for now.  Short post for a lot of work.

Starting a couple more guitars

After a brief hiatus and doing a bunch of small projects for the shop and in the house, I decided to start a couple more guitars.  On the subject of shop projects, I should post those soon.  I just haven’t felt much like writing these days.

So… the guitars.  Going for a couple OO size again.  This time with a cutaway, 14 fret neck, one with a spruce top, one with cedar.  Other options might be a sound port and a slotted peghead.

Start with design.  I wanted to make my own shape.  Started with a list of standard dimensions from OO and OM size guitars and drew my own.  Used the bent stick method of drawing curves.

Made about 4 versions and picked one I liked.  I did a full scale drawing and I’m still kicking around what I want to do for bracing.

I made the form.

As far as wood goes, I bought a board of ambrosia maple that had some nice flame in it.  I marked off the pieces that I wanted and resawed it to size.  Finally got to use my new bandsaw for something heavy duty, and it worked like a champ.  I cut a total of 4 sets from this board.

There are also some orphan (non book matched) pieces, as I was able to get 5 slices from the thickness.  I will make a test guitar box with those so i can play with some new things Ive been thinking about, as well as some brace options. Here are the two sets I’ll use for these guitars.

 

As far as the rest of the wood goes, I laid it all out.  Cherry for necks.  Basswood for neck and heel blocks as well as linings.  Walnut, cherry and maple for binding, purfling and rosette.  Of course the ambrosia back and sides.

Looking at all of this, I realized that minus the cedar and spruce, which is from British Columbia, the rest of the wood is local.  That being the case, I may go for a local wood for the fretboards and bridges.  It would be cool for the majority of these guitars to be made from materials that came from within a 50 mile radius.

Ok.  More for next time.

 

Afternoon of resawing in my dads shop.

Found a new blade for the band saw. Changed blades after I made a plexi template, then did a thorough set up. It cut much nicer this time. 


Used about 5 feet of the bigger flamed maple board. Resawed two sets of backs and two sets of sides.

Doesn’t show well in the picture but the sides have some really nice figure.

Used the other half of the board I cut the sides from to make some blanks for a laminated maple neck, just in case I decide to go that route. 
Also cut some neck and tail blocks and a bunch of kerfing strips from a big chunk of basswood.


I now have a template for a 12 fret to the body from the build along and a full plan for a 14 fret from LMI. 
Now I don’t know which to do. I like 14 fret, but the 12 fret essentially slides the fretboard down two frets and puts the bridge smack in the middle of the lower bout, which I think may sound better. 
I guess I’ll sleep on it and dream of neck wood and binding combinations while I’m at it.

And more french polish

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Lots of trial and error, but I’m starting to see results.  Maybe I’ll half know what I’m doing when its time to start the french polish on guitar number two.  Still a long way to go though. Taking a break … Continue reading →

Thickness planing backs and tops

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Prior plans of planing proceeding presently! Two redwood tops close to final thickness at around .105”-.110”.  I’ll scrape more after the rosettes are installed. One walnut back getting close and one more that hasn’t been started yet. Some areas of these were … Continue reading →

Back and side cutting

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Saw and resaw were in a tree.  Saw fell out.  Who was left?  Resaw! I needed to use my dads table saw to make a MDF auxiliary table for my little band saw.  So I figured while I was out there, … Continue reading →

Fence board, yes. Soundboard, maybe.

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A bit more on guitar stuff… Visited Martin Guitar the other day.  I’ve lived about an hour away for almost my whole life, and I finally made it there for a tour.  It was impressive.  Very automated.  I think the … Continue reading →

Martin tone wood haul- part 1

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Well, here is my guitar wood bounty… Part 1. Old Martin Guitar wood from a local shop clean out. This is most of the guitar size wood I picked up.  34 Adirondack spruce tops.  A fair amount of mahogany, some … Continue reading →

Wood score- not unpacked yet

All of a sudden I seem to have a wood storage issue.  My new shop area is just being set up.

Last week I regretted not buying some old Martin Guitar wood that I stumbled upon at a workshop clean out.  A couple emails over the week and today I got everything except a couple neatly stacked bundles of rosewood which went to a Ukelele maker.  I’ll find out who got that shortly.

I just semi split it up.  If its all decent, and I think most is, there is enough adirondack spruce for 15-17 full guitar tops. Probably enough mahogany for 5 to 10 backs, maybe some sides.  Plenty of rosewood, maybe some guitar size.  I’d be set if I wanted to try to make ukeleles or mandolins.  Plus a ton of small pieces of rosewood, a bunch of cherry, a bit of curly koa and some random oak.

I think this was a score.  I paid a few bucks each for the spruce and mahogany and rounded up to take everything else.  Probably helped that the shelf was a complete mess and it was hard to tell what was there.  Total cost for all of it would equal about 4 to 5 mid grade book matched spruce tops at current retail prices.

How do things like this fall in my lap? Sometimes I just think about something and it happens.  Like the anvil I was given after I thought about trying out blacksmithing for a few months.

All the wood is sitting in the shop acclimating, I was going sticker and weight the guitar size stuff in a built in cabinet. No Idea where I’m going to put the rest, but I have some thoughts.  Some of it is warped from poor storage, but I think may be able to be flattened.  Any suggestions welcome.

I’ll post pics when there is better light.