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Not that I'm planning to copy the design, but I am curious. How would you go about making something like this?

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I would do a dance around the appropriate materials at midnight under a full moon and hope for the best.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

That would work about as good as anything I've come up with!!! Any maybe more fun. There will be whiskey involved won't there? Joe Beaver38963.6553240741

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I've seen stuff like that done by laser cutting. I use plane jigs to make my braid rosettes, but unless you have special planes you can only make straight cuts. It's possible to make curved parts by driling holes and filling them in, but that design would call for some pretty fancy machining to do it that way if the background is wood. So I'd guess it was something more 'high tech' than the usual luthier's shop.

Alan,
The best I could come up with is just treat it like a regular inlay. Cut the maple pieces indiviually with a jewlers saw then inlay in a ebony background but I doubt that is how he does it.

You are probably right. The whole thing is probably laser cut and then inlayed.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

With this type of design, the black could be some type of mastic. First cut the "inlay", spot glue it in place, and then flood the rosette with black epoxy.

Those pieces look so regular and consistent, it's probably CNC cut. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

It dawned on me that the design could be made many ways. Start with a single piece of wood, shape the profile with router bits, hand planes, etc - like an extrusion. You could then slice off thin pieces (like a classical rosette) and assemble them in the soundboard.

SteveSteve Spodaryk38963.7074189815

Steve,
I thought about making a single piece of wood, sawing, filing and sanding it to shape then cutting .05" pieces off of it. I'm not sure I have the ability to do that. Maybe I'll try a less difficult design first.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Shameless bump!

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Sam Price is on holiday, so I'll shamelessly quote her from another forum.....

[QUOTE=SAm Price]More stuff..last batch of pics before the hard slog of finishing and neck setting..

This is a rosette I designed...



freehand drawn rosette onto paper, then traced onto dressmaker's carbon onto Rosewood veneer...



Same tracing onto pine veneer..



Okay, scalpel...CA glue...



quarter of the way there..



Finished rosette, hand cut, ready to install...



There we go, ready for finishing..

[/QUOTE]

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CNC.....that's the way to go.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

That's some nice marquetry in those latest pics. One would like to see it in person, of course.

It was the apparent precision of the original that made me think of laser cutting. Those thin lines would not be easy to make by hand in a log. A close up to show the joint lines, if any, between elements of the design would help to resolve the issue.

I'm with Don...CNC

Al

Sam's way or the highway!

Thank you Martin.

Never heard of dress makers carbon but I think I like it. Sam did a beautiful job!!! I think I might tackle a simular project.

I believe that may be the way Petros does it, except I think his are CNC or laser cut. (they seem to be perfectly cut) When I blow his up I can see how he cut the maple. It is an arc with a dogleg on it. He just used the one cut for the entire design. I can't tell if he set it in epoxy or ebony by I suspect ebony. (I'd guess it was computer aided since there are no visible misfits, no matter how slight)

Sam's & Petros' are both beautiful work.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Thanks to Martin and Sam even if she's absent, great way to work!

Sam's rosette looks to be quite a bit more difficult to make than the one in the first photo.

If you take a good look at the first photo, there are really only two shapes: a curved piece and a short straight piece. So if I were to try and duplicate that pattern, I would see if I could shape a curved "log" from which I could cut thin strips for the curved pieces. The two straight pieces that connect the inside and outside curved pieces should be easy to cut from a flat piece of the same material. To me, the biggest challenge would be making that curved log.

Even Sam's design -- which I really like, btw, cuz I'm a sucker for Celtic knots -- can be done similarly with the repeated elements.

Best,

Michael

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