Taking shape

As you can see the sides are bent. I left the sides clamped in the solera overnight to dry. After unclamping the sides held their shape pretty well. A few tweaks will be required as there is a bit of spring back where the sides will join (upper and lower bouts).

I had a hard time getting the middle to bend to the exact shape of the plantila. In the end I was concerned about over working that area and doing damage, so I got both symetrical and left it like that.. Its around 5mm difference from the plan and as I was very generous with my rough cutting of the soundboard and back 5mm increase is not going to be an issue.

Back to the rosette. I played around with fragments of spruce, epoxy and spruce saw dust to try and fill some of the gaps. No luck. Im resigned to the fact the gap is going to stay. So I plugged up the gap in the rosette and moved on to the soundboard bracing.

I spent a good hour or so carefully translating the Bouchet bracing pattern onto the soundboard.

Managed to get the there upper bout crossbar struts ready for gluing. I have ruff cut the remaining braces I just need to clean them up before they are ready for gluing.

The headstock is basically completed. I am starting to consider inlaying a centre strip to give the headstock a bit more character. I have ordered a few different inlay strips which should arrive this week and Ill see how they look on the headstock and make a decision.

Was bored so I cut some of the excess wood of the neck just so it would start to look more like a guitar neck.

Ive been hold off on the neck trying to decide which method to use to join the sides to the neck i.e. the traditional spanish method or Romanillos wedge method. I will be using the Romanillos wedge approach as it seem more forgiving. If I screw up the wedge I can cut another and try again. If the cut on using the spanish method is too wide, it probably means a new neck (maybe?)..

Im not far off assembly now (finally). My aim is to have a closed "box" by the end of Jan.