Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Re-thinking the top bracing

So I glued down the bridge plate and the transverse-brace-above-the-soundhole-with-the-hole-in-it-for-the-truss-rod-wrench-to-go-thru. After doing this, I layed down the bridge and the fingerboard to see how things were going to line up. I cut the bridgeplate to the size of the drawing on the top. And I put the bridge right in the middle of the bridgeplate.
















When I do this, the edge of the fingerboard winds up being a half inch away from the soundhole.































This is similar to a mistake I made when building my first guitar, I built a 000 using an OM top and as a result, the fingerboard wound up being 1/4" away from the soundhole. I like the look of having the fingerboard run right up to the soundhole, like this:
















If I move the fingerboard close to the soundhole like in the picture above, the bridge winds up being off of the bridgeplate.

I removed the bridgeplate last night. I was careful not to let heat get near the center seam on the top. It was slow going but it worked.

I have a new plan. I'm going to build the rim first. Then I'll line up the 14th fret with the edge of the rim, and then figure out where my bridge plate should line up. The goal is to engineer the bracing so that it looks a lot like the 1933 00-18 pictured down below. That's the only example I've seen of a 14-fret 00 that has an X greater than 90 degrees on the lower bout, and one fingerbrace on each side of the X.

I was going by the bracing plan drawn on the top. But it looks like something was either drawn wrong, or I must have misinterpreted something. You'll know I'm building something when stuff gets undone and then re-done a couple of times.

I'm waiting on a 00 mold and a neck block to come in the mail, then I'll be able to work on the rim.

2 comments:

  1. You're right! The 20th fret looks WAAAY short. If you are getting a 00 mold from John, I may have to rent it from you at some point because I think I may try my hand at a spruce topped 00 for #3.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Doesn't it? I sent that fingerboard back today and am waiting on another one.

    I'm getting a mold kit from KMG. I may stay in Bloomington for a day or two in December. I'll just give it to you then, and you can keep it for a while.

    ReplyDelete