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Paul, Thanks for the great tip of seaing both sides with shellac, i sure will do that on no 3!

Coe, sorry to hear about your rosette, and thanks for your encouraging comments, well, let's say the party ain't over yet, i still have to level/sand the rosette with the top and my drum sander was showing signs of fatigue lately so 'ill have fun too! Oh, Coe, check out your mailbox this week bud!

Thanks a lot Mike, lookin' forward to see pics of your rosette also !

Serge, mine is actually not purple heart. It's camatillo rosewood, which is what I used for the back and sides as well. When you sand it though, the dust is as purple as Barney. It's hard to keep off of the spruce. Anyway, I thought it was wierd that we both had similar looking wood with the grain running diagonally, and you have a similar cutaway marked on there. Let me know how well the purple heart sawdust goes!



And yes, the fretboard will cover the gap (i think...)

Mike

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Wow thanks Mike, that camatillo rosewood rosette sure looks nice and for i what i can see through the sound hole, that wood's got some nice figure! your cutaway looks great too. i hope the PH sawdust cleans as easily as when i thinned the piece with the drum sander, i'll let you know!

Thanks for including this nice pic dude!

Serge

I'm getting in on this thread late, but I have only used CA when gluing my rosettes. And you may all yell at me but I have never sealed the top or rosette (I am going to give it a try). I have only had one cedar top discolour from the CA. While I have not been sealing the top what I have done is paint right around the edge of the channel with accelerator about 5-10 min before I flood with CA. The accelerator stops the CA from getting into the top. Say what you like but I have been doing it this way for 3 years and leaned this method from Sergie de Jonge who has been doing it a lot longer. Like I said I only had one problem and I think that was due to not enough accelerator.

I do like the shellac idea and I will give it a try.

I install the rosette dry to make sure it fits. Then I flood with CA. After that is done I flip the top over and rout a 3/32 channel through the back of the top till I just hit the solid wood rosette. Then I flood this channel from the back. This insures that the CA has a chance to soak under the whole rosette. The channel in the back of the top is later covered by a wooden sound hole reinforcement patch.

Josh

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Josh House

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Josh, I don't think you are crazy doing it that way. What a lot of folks are saying is CA getting into the top is often CA pulling the color from the joining wood into the top. I only had troubles with one soundhole binding and that was because it was a particurally purple piece of EIR. But that was really a buzz kill when I came back and saw little purple lines leaching into the top.
I now use shellac for "just incase" protection.

Josh, the accelerator is acting as a sealer, so Yes, you have been sealing the tops for the past 3 years, same as shellac

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Serge,
my turn now! ;)
looks great to me.
the purple-heart "main ring" along with the "further away" black stripe make for a very unique appearance.
and i too, as other have mentioned, think the cutaway might be a bit too close to the soundhole.

on times like this dont you just love it that you have this great bunch of people willing to throw each his .2 cents(with a couple hundred members thats quite a few cents isnt it?) in order to make your life easier and the construction process a bit more fluent?
i know i do.

keep up the good work!

Udi.

Thanks Udi, yeah, i feel blessed to have so many friends watching over my shoulder and it makes the learning curve more interesting and less painful. I sure will do something about the cutaway, the rosette seems to get bigger every day! When i compare this to what it would look like on a dread without a cutaway, the rosette makes more sense than this shape above.

Thanks again

Josh, great idea of the routing from underneath,sure sounds like more top protection, do you have any pics of this patch and specs like thickness etc ?

Serge

Here is my router which I use for all my sound hole and rosette work. The channel in the back is cut with a number of really light passes as you don't want to cut into the wood rosette. I go until i just touch it.



The patch is usually a little thinner than the top. The grain is running horizontal.



After it is glued in place I cut out the sound hole.



Then I shape the edges a bit with a plane. I also bevel the patch back along the inside of the sound hole so that it is not visible from outside the body when the box is closed up. The top in the picture needs a bit more bevel than what you see there.



I have found on occasion that when I flood from the top the glue doesn't always grab all the way around. This could be due to the fact that I use the accelerator to keep the glue from getting into the spruce. Once i flood from the back the whole thing is locked in place. Remember when you flood from the back to put some wax paper under the rosette. The thin CA will find its way through any little gaps. I glued my first top to the work board I was using . Fortunately the top came off without any damage, just had to remove a bit of glue.

hope that helps

Josh

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
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House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
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Thank you very very much Josh for this! Very good explanations, i guess you thin your tops on both sides before, then make your rosette and then flip the top to do this last operation, the underside of the top, already thinned to it's minimum, you're then ready to glue that patch so you don't have to go back to planing the top again right?

Serge

In the first picture the top has not been thicknessed (is that a word?). The top is thick when I install the rosette. Once the rosette is installed and levelled I thickness the top by removing material from the back only (drum sander). Once I like the thickness I draw where my braces are going to go. I don't draw most of my tops with that much detail. When I am trying a new bracing pattern I occasionally draw the whole thing so I can see how it will look. The pictures are one of my older patterns.

Josh

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Canadian Luthier Supply
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House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

[QUOTE=Pwoolson] You might also want to seal the rosette itself. Double protection. [/QUOTE]

Paul do you recommend dry fitting the rosette then sealing or sealing the rosette then dry fitting and hitting it with CA?

SERGE -- lookin good - it's great logging in from time to time and seeing your progress!Anthony Z38813.0269560185

Thanks Josh for the explanations, it's exactly what i meant, so if i wanted to give it a try, i'd still be ok then! Thanks bud, i dunno if ya rock or folk but your workmanship is music to my eyes!

Thanks Anthony, i really appreciate the encouragement!