Bits 'n pieces

After recoving from Xmas celebrations I was able to spend most of today working on my guitar.

First job was to glue and shaped the back reinforcing strip. The strip is just length of spruce offcut (cross grain ) from the soundboard.

Next on the to-do-list was to inlay the rosette. I wasnt looking forward to hacking away at my 'perfectly' flat and clean soundboard but it had to be done.

I made myself a very basic circle cutter using a small piece of pine, 1/4 inch bolt and a sharp blade. The bolt acts as the center of the circle (pivot point), marked out the radius I wanted (4.5mm) from the center of the circle, made a small cut for the blade to fit into.  It was just a matter of steadying the blade and rotating the blade around the perimeter.

After etching the inner and outer circles for the rosette it was time to start chipping out the channel. I used a 6mm chisel. I took my time, slowly slicing the spruce out. . I lightly sanded the channel and I was ready to glue the rosette.

Errr... the rosette wasnt exactly round and didnt fit my perfectly carved channel.  Fortunately when I was testing the circle cutter I had cutout a few circles with the internal diameter of the rosette. To get the rosette circular again I placed it in some hot water for 1-2mins and placed it around the plywood circle I made earlier.. To keep the rosette in place I tacked a few nails around the outer edge (not in photo).

Once the rosette had dried out it was time to glue it down.

 (photo below - rosette glued in placed and sanded flush with the soundboard. Wedge to fill the gap is on the to-do-list)

Made 2 mistakes when gluing it in.. Well 1.5 mistakes. The major mistake was it was a tight fit getting the rosette into the channel, you can see in the bottom of the photo, 6 o'clock  (below) where I stupidly just grabbed the blade and screwed up outedge attempting to get the rosette to fit. Now I have a ugly gap down there.. There are a few small chips around the edge which I could live with but the hack job at 6 o'clock is disappointing.  The other minor mistake was the gap in the rosette was not suppose to be so off center but the glue became too sticky so I was unable to center it. Not to worry the fretboard will cover it up, but it could have been disasterous.

The last task I managed to get done was to roughly cutout the shape of the headstock using the scroll saw and drill the tuner holes.

Next time I hope to finish shaping the headstock, soundboard - make and glue struts and prepare side/ribs for bending.