Official Luthiers Forum!

Put your rosette on the back?

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Building the drawers for a new shop cabinet (Yay!) Using my Porter Cable Dovetail Jig.

Had a little collet slippage on this one that required a redo

Had a little brain slippage on this one, but the drawer will still go together if I do it in the right order:

Yea, I like to do finger joint for boxes too, but I hate all the dust and expensive jig it requires.

So I am exploring using a laser to cut the joint then just fit it.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I originally posted a new bumbling luthier thread and then remembered this is where I should have posted it.

I'll start off by saying I didn't realize the importance of building the backstrip in from the beginning. Next time it will be part of the glue up. I didn't think it would be a big deal to inlay it after the body was assembled, big mistake. not having a router bit the same size as my strip, I had to do it in 2 passes and getting those 2 passes perfectly parallel and to dimension turned out to be above my pay grade. So I tried running a 1/8 bit along the edges of the poorly fit backstrip. Again, I missed the mark and had gaps and a small area near the neck end that would require an inlay. Screw that, I had a nice piece of cherry about 1" wide, I'll just re rout and glue that in. This went very well so I put it in my new go-bar deck with a backing board to distrubute the pressure. I managed to glue that onto the back strip. I said no problem, it's hide glue, I'l just give it sideways wack and it should pop off. Nope, so I started prying it off with a putty knife. Nope, I'll have to apply some heat to get it off. Lesson learned, use wax paper under cauls in the future.

So, now I'm going to remove the cherry strip completely and start again. This time I'm going to get a little fancy, the groove is good so I'm going to glue up some different woods, I have some what I'm told is Brazilian rosewood that was given to me. I think I'll use that for the wide center piece and add a 1/16" strip to each side and fit that in. I'll make it long enough that I can also get tailepiece out of it or should I make a tapered or smaller piece for that? I'm not sure how a tapered one would look beside the wide back strip.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I don't have the option of sandwiching the backstrip into the guitar back. The backstrip I have is only 1mm thick, so unless I make the back that thin, it won't be possible.

Also the 4mm thick backstrip sold by Stewmac is not 4 times the price of Taobao's backstrip (which all have a max thickness of 1.6mm), but 20 times the price, before shipping is accounted for. I thought about sandwiching 4 of the thin backstrip together but I am afraid it could lead to other complications.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Since you're remaking the back strip, think about what all your binding and purfling woods will be and try to coordinate everything. If you are going to match the back strip with the end wedge (which can look very nice) think about what your side purflings will be and if you are able to use those likes on the end wedge to mitre into each other. That may help you decide what lines you want in the back strip.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I suggest using a router bit that is the correct size for the strip or smaller and then fit the strip into that. I'm going to make mine slightly wider than my current groove and slowly fit it until I have a nice tight fit. That's my next plan. Good luck and I hope you learned what not to do from my errors.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I had planned to just use white binding with no frills other than the herringbone purfling. You have me thinking but I already used the plain white binding on my fretboard. Looks like I need to slow down and think some more. Thanks

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

If you are doing white binding with no purfs then it gets easier to keep everything coordinated. You just have to decide if you like the look of a 1 inch wide end graft and if you want it tapered or by how much. Or, if not, what direction you want to go. You could use masking tape to mock up some endgraft options and see what floats your boat.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

A wedge is much easier to fit so I may go with that but then a 1" end graft might look good, at least it would match the back.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I enjoy doing dovetails by hand. They are a lot of fun, except when they are not. Yes, I really did that

Ed

X's weren't big enough Ed

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I'm really lazy... so I did it with a laser...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Tai

Box joints, not dovetails.

Ed

yea, not quite the same but it's a start. I don't think lasers can do dovetails, or at least the kind of dovetails with angles through the thickness without some fancy beam tilting mechanism... With a VMC though that's not a problem.

The only problem with doing a box joint with lasers is I have to account for the kerf the beam makes, or else the joint will be extremely loose. It looks wrong in the image program but it fits tight.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Today I did my first "stealth rosette". It was right after I told myself to be mindful and not do that. I thought about using the "inside" of the soundboard as the "outside" since that is where I put the rosette (a simple BWBBWB 1/8th in. line). I cogitated on it for a bit - thinking - "I can hide the slightly dark glue line on one of the wings with a burst (the same glue line was o.k. on the intended "show side" of the top) and most of the 1/2 inch long, hair size tearout will be hidden by the bridge - but in the end I routed a new groove on the other side and inlaid another rosette.
The top is for a travel guitar with HPL back and sides I am building. It's been a few years since I built the last one and you have to work with it a little differently than wood. So far I have only destroyed one side trimming it on the joiner like I do prebent wood sides - it doesn't react quite the same.

Hey Tai,
If you want to sandwich the backstrip between the back halves, you can first glue it to a backing piece the same width as the backstrip and thick enough to make up the difference of the back thickness

"stealth rosette" I like that!

The big question of course is, how it enhances the overall tone of the instrument to have one of those. Guitar equipped with Stealth Rosette Technology, or something....

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

It seems i forgot to rout the little footwells in the humbucking pickup cavities. Easy enough t get in there with a chisel, but frustrating that forgot it origially.