Monday, November 9, 2009

Top bracing

The X-bracing on the top has a 25' radius cut into it. But the bridge plate, the finger braces and the upper transverse brace are all flat. So I glued these down first, in order to get a nice flat surface for a better glue fit. On my first guitar, I did this backwards. I glued down the X-braces first, and fit the other pieces up against the X. When I did that, I was trying to glue flat pieces onto a curved surface.


Here's the bridge plate being glued down.















I could've done more than this all at once, but I like to just do just a little bit at a time so that I have good control, can clean up the glue squeeze out, and can make sure nothing is sliding around before the glue tacks.















Next I glued down the [whatever it's called] brace. The one with a hole in it that the truss rod wrench goes thru.

4 comments:

  1. Is there a 15' radius to the top braces on a 00-17. I figured it would be 24 or 28 like most other guitars.
    I use cork under my go-bars too! If the dowels you are using are too hard to manage, I bought twelve 4' lengths of 1/" fiberglass rod from a kite shop for $12 (including rubber tips) and cut them in half. They work great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. hi Matthew,
    DUH! I have been calling em the wrong things. It's a 25' radius on the top, and a 15' radius on the back. The back does have a greater radius than the top. I just had the numbers mixed up. My dowels work ok. I'm gonna look out for the fiberglass rods, though. I bet the pressure they exert is more even.

    ReplyDelete
  3. [After reading Matthew's comment I edited this post also].

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good! I was sure you didn't mean what you wrote. I bought mine from a place in Charleston, SC called Kites Fly'n Hi. You can call and order 1/4" fiberglass rods just like the luthier supply places at less than half the cost. Get the rubber tips too!

    ReplyDelete