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I am about to try my hand at building a custom rosette using the stick/log/tile method and was wondering if anyone has any tips or tricks they would like to share for making this process as painless as possible. I know that Alan Carruth does this and am hoping maybe he will share some insight.
TIA

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Go take a look at Joshua's site.

Colin

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John,

In his book, Cumpiano manages to illustrate the process quite well.

Also, there is a Java applet, written by a fellow named Jonathan Sevy, I believe, that allows one to create on his computer a rosette design. Unfortunately, the URL link to this applet is broken. Sevy must have been a student at Drexel, and his account no longer exists there.

I have that applet, plus another one that he wrote for designing a guitar outline, on another computer . . . somewhere. I'll look for it, and if I can find it, I'll put it up on my website and provide a link to it.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

I found the applet. I've uploaded it, along with an applet for fretmarker design, and another for guitar shape design, to my website. If you go to the following link, you'll see a list of the files, in zip format. The file names are self explanatory. Just click on one or more, and that should start the d/l process.

http://michaelmcbroom.com/guitars/software

For those of you who may be concerned about copyright infringement, Sevy has distributed this software under a GNU agreement, which essentially states that it can be freely copied and distributed as long as it remains unchanged.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

[QUOTE=Michael McBroom]
Also, there is a Java applet, written by a fellow named Jonathan Sevy, I believe, that allows one to create on his computer a rosette design.
Michael
[/QUOTE]

Hey Michael, you referred me to this link and I appreciated what it could do (for inlay), but I couldn't get the applet to work . If there's any tips to making it work, can you post them too? TIA

Thanks Michael for posting the cool tool. I have my design pretty much worked out and am looking for tips on assembling it into something that I can cut the tiles from. Wondering if there are any tricks for holding this thing while glueing and is it advisable to use CA and such as that.

_________________
Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

John,

Here's a great online reference for making a rosette. I've used it to make a Hauser copy rosette and it came out great. David Schramm has a lot of good info on his website.

Schramm rosette

Cheers!

John

[QUOTE=Terry Stowell]

Hey Michael, you referred me to this link and I appreciated what it could do (for inlay), but I couldn't get the applet to work . If there's any tips to making it work, can you post them too? TIA[/QUOTE]

Hi Terry,

Sorry, I should have pointed this out. You need to have the Java console installed on your computer. A Java applet will run on a variety of platforms, including Windows and the Mac OS. I think this link will provide you with what you need:

http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

If by the 'stick method' you mean the traditional thing using veneer strips to make end-grain patterns, I've used it, but not much recently. My rosettes these days are mostly side grain.

Gene Clark wrote a couple of articles for the GAL two or three years ago that are must-reads on the traditional technique, or for anybody else wanting to make a 'classic' rosteet for t hat matter. His methods of assembling the layers and tiles are great.

He uses a lot of dyed woods, and while modern dyes are certainly better in some ways that the older stuff, I still don't like them as well as natural colors. The trick to remember going 'au naturel' is that all woods eventully fade to brown. You can't think of bloodwood as really 'red', but just a redish brown. The best designs wil be those that use the different levels of brown as a grey scale. Call your darkest wood 'black' and the lightest one 'white', and build your pictures up of different shades in between. Don't count on being able to see a lot of different shades, either: three or four levels of 'grey' between the lightest and darkest woods will usually be about all anybody can distinguish. Walnut and mahogany look pretty similar in small end grain pieces, no matter how different they look in bulk.

Have you layed out how many columns and rows you will have in your log? Have you calculated how wide the wing will be?

If you start by calculating what the tile size will be then divide the remainder and figure that that amount will make up your inner and outer bands it will help to conceptualize. You dont need the outer band width to be the same as the inner bands but use a proportion that looks good to you.

Once you have decided the tile size the Java based program mentioned is a good place to start to design the tile sections. Note that while the log from which you will slice tiles is probably square to rectangular the tile shape that will be built into the rosette will need to be a wedge shape which is easiest shaped while in log form.

The way that I taper the logs into wedge shape before slicing tiles is that once I have laid out how many tiles it will take to complete a circle I divide that into 360 to calculate the angle of the wedge. Each side of the log will then be tapered by half that wedge degree amount so the result will be a wedge that tapers evenly toward what would be the middle of the circle of the total rosette center.

To taper the log I made up tapered blocks that are tapered at the same angles needed for the log final dimensions and then apply sandpaper to the inside faces of those tapered blocks. I then just work back and forth the length of the log between the tapered blocks so that it tapers the log to just the dimensions needed for the tiles. While it is not as critical you can also shape the interior and exterior radius of the tile log by making a curved concave and convex block (that you attach sandpaper to that matches the interior and exterior radiuses of the tile as it fits into the rosette. The finished tile log will then look somewhat like a slice of pizza with a curved bite out in point and really helps to get a good tight fit between the tiles and the inner and outer stripe bands.

For me it is easier for me to evolve my rosette design by laying it out fullsize once I have worked out the other design details. I also built a jig of sorts for test layout of rosette components by routing into a piece of UMHW plastic the trough of the rosette so I can dry assemble the components to see how they look before then gluing and assembling the full rosette.

If I am doing a one off rosette designs I can glue up a rosette in the jig as the glue will not stick to the jig and once dried I can remove from the jig by pushing it out from holes I have drilled through in the trough.

All of this is if you are doing only a few of the same rosettes. There are slightly different methods of assembly into a full rosette log (hollow) that is then sliced in one full piece. The premade rosette available from suppliers are done this way.

The only downside of building a full rosette log before sliceing into full rosettes is that it takes very careful gluing to avoid any voids or gaps in components that you wont see until you slice the log into rosettes.

If you ever buy any "too cheap to be real" premade rosettes you will see what I mean...it only takes a few minor flaws to really show up as the rosette of a classical guitar is a flag that is waved to draw peoples attention to the level of craftsmanship the builder possesses. I have built the whole rosette log method before but if there is a flaw you sometimes lose the whole lot of rosettes so for my I build logs that are pretapered and then assemble rosettes in batches of six as I build six guitars at a time unless one of the guitars in the batch wants a different rosette in which I use that rosettes tile log.

If you want to see an example of an artifully designed and built rosette that really shows the quality of the guitar look at Joshua French's website or Jose Romanillos...both have a very well thought out design that look contemporary yet doesnt detract from the look of an otherwise very traditional classical guitar.

Hi, John. If you're going to make more than one it's a good idea to laminate pieces of veneer together and then cut off thin slices on your band saw. I have one of those luthier's friends drill press attachments from LMI for thicknessing the slices.

Then you can glue the different slices together to make your log. I taper the log sides for the proper angle. Then I cut slices off the log using an exacto saw in a miniature miter box, so I don't get much waste.

The best trick I saw once was cutting the channel in your top for the blocks only. After you've glued all the blocks in, then you route out the inside and outside curves for any bands you might want around the block design. It makes for very clean work.

The only problem I can see with super glue might be a darkening of the lighter colored wood.

Good luck.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com