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Well, I decided to take a day off from work today and mess around in the basement. I finally was able to finish some rosette tiles and rope border. Here is my process:

Thin the veneers to size using the drill press sanding jig (shown later). Then cut the veneers to size, approx 10" x 2".



Next, stack the veneers in the correct sequence and glue up using epoxy (water based glues expand the veneer way too much. It will mess up your pattern)




Veneer sandwiches ready to be cut.






Here I cut thin strips off the sandwich which are glued up again to make the final pattern. I'm using my fret slotting blade with a blade support from Lee Vally. The strips come off smooth as silk and very uniform.




Each individual strip is taken to the drill press and thicknessed down to .030" and prepared for glue-up.




Here are all the individual strips thicknessed and ready for glueing




Individual veneer strips make up the sandwich--ready to glue up into final log which tiles will be cut from



Piece of log. Tiles are cut from the end making the final pattern in the endgrain section



Sanding the glued veneer for my rope borders


Completed tiles and ropes ready to be inlaid into the soundboard to complete the rosette


Sorry for the long post, hopefully you find it interesting.

Cheers!

John

Wow, John!!! Fascinating process. I know you're a classical guy but there are some interesting concepts that would look cool on any style guitar.

Thanks for sharing.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Thanks for sharing John, very cool post and if you don't mind, i saved it!

Serge

Nice work and excellent pictorial. Thank you for sharing.

Yes thanks John

I love your Rope

[QUOTE=John Elshaw]
Sorry for the long post, hopefully you find it interesting.

Cheers!

John[/QUOTE]

John. Please don't apologize for the long post, it means a lot to be able to see some fairly arcane processes.

thaks

larry

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Thank You and Best To All

Very nice John, I am in the process of doing (or tryng) a rosette in similar fashion. It is quite time consuming to glue all this stuff up but hopefully it'll come together and make it worthwhile. Keep up the good work.

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

Whadyamean long post? Very informative! Did yo have trouble with uniformity of the thicknesses of each layer in your rope? I tried some herringbone a couple weeks ago and had trouble with the pattern running off after about an inch or so. I did in fact use titebond. Reckon that`s the culprit? Thanks for posting!

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Thanks for the post John, very timely, I'm just in the process of working on a Torres style rossette and you've given me some great ideas on 'how to'. I've got to make some rope and you've now shown me how. I'm a great fan of the drill press sanding disc, another use is always welcome. Great stuff.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

VERY nice job John, you make it so simple; I'm shure I will need much more than a day off from work to make mine
Luigi

Wow! that makes inlay seem easy...

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Paul Bordeaux
http://www.bordeauxinlay.com

Hey, this needs to go into the jigs, tools, & techniques section. And maybe re-name this thread as "How to make....Pics inside"

Great pictorial John. This stuff really contibutes to the whole community. Thank you

John, thanks for taking the time to document the process.     It is always better to see the devil in the details and I'm betting that guitar is going to look great. Oh, and by the way, you are using a push block arent' ya!

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Thanks for all kudos guys.

I did have a little bit of runout on the rope, but only through the last inch on the end. I always make the ropes a couple inches longer so I can trim the ends off if they're a little thin. One way around this is to a use a couple solid wood parallelograms during the glue-up. This helps keep everything square and even while cutting on the saw. I didn't post pics of that but I will if I can dig up a few photos.

Cheers!

John

Thanks again John and looking forward to see the prallellogram at work!

Serge

Thanks John. Looks like a lot of work but a very nice end result.

I agree with Terry. This should go up in the "how to" section of this website.

Thanks for sharing.

Nice job John! Thanks for sharing!!

Cool! I love that binding!!!!

That reminds me...a few months ago, the NEL group got to see Alan Carruth demonstrate how he makes his amazing mozaic rosettes, including those fabulous maple leafs and such. Goodness, the man is a Master at it....



Don Williams38760.5788541667

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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."

Wow, are those little leaves in the binding and outside of the rosette miniature tiles? I've seen that rosette before and was under the impression that they were inlayed whole pieces, not tiles. That's an amazing rosette, and I feel his pain in the amount of time it must have taken him.

John

That - is- some--MAS-TER-PIECE!!!!!!!!