Assembly Begins

Finally all those pieces of woods I order a few months ago are now starting to look like a guitar.

I spent nearly two days working on the bracing for the soundboard. By the time I cut the braces, sanded them, glued them (1 by 1) , shaped them, recorded tap tones and triple check measurements nearly two days was taken up. The measurements (stiffness, density, weight..etc) will be useful data to do comparisons against future builds.

Those who are formilar with the Bouchet plan will notice a few changes:

1. I did away with the circular soundhole reinforcement as I didnt have enough spruce to make a circle. Instead I went for 2 vertical grafs either sides of the soundhole.

2. The 2nd and 4th fan struts are supposed to pass through the lower harmonic bar in the plan but with the removal of the circular soundhole reinforment which these bars joined to I made an executive decision to stop them before the harmonics bar just like the others.

Its basically a tradional 5 fan braced design with the Bouchet bridge bar.

Before I could glue the neck to the soundboard I had to sharp the heel , make the wedgs for the rib joints and final shaping of the headstock. Big tick for all of those tasks.

I dont really like how the headstock came out, its certainly not what I had in mind. I considered just rounding off the top with a dome as I found it difficult to get symetry. I managed to get it reasonable close, next build I will use a router and create a template.

The shape of my heel is a bit chunky but making it nice and slender would have meant reducing the surface area for the ribs to glue to.. For my first build I wanted to err on the safer side hence the chunky heel.

(Photo: the ruff cut wedges are there to protect the back of the heel when carving.)