We are having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave....

DAY 14

Today the outside temps hit ..... drum roll please.... 33 degrees F. That's right folks, we have officially gotten above freezing! Unfortunately according to our friendly yet unreliable weatherman, it is a 1 day thing. Tomorrow is supposed to have a high of 20 degrees. But hey, it was nice to finally see all that ice melt off of the trees from our ice storm over a week ago. Anyways, I spent some time working on the top of the guitar today. First thing up was scraping the rosette. Once that was done I turned my attention to the top bracing. I first transferred the bracing pattern to the top, then started making braces. I started by writing up a list of all of the braces and their rough dimensions. Then I marked the end of a billet of brace material to maximize the wood and minimize waste.

One thing you need to know about me, I am very cheap when it comes to wood. You see, I am one of those people who will save and use every scrap of wood and will take time to figure out the optimal cutting layout so there is no waste left over. I am convinced that I could build a house and have a scrap pile small enough to fit in the trunk of my car! LOL

Anyways, I was able to cut all of my top brace pieces out of one billet of wood and still have a little scrap left over from it. I also have about 1/3 of the billet left from the back braces, and a full billet left that I never cut. And yes, for all you skeptics out there, I have all the grain directions correct in the braces. I decided I wanted to scallop the crass braces so I cut the curves below the crossing point using my rotary microplane to rough cut the scallops. Then I cut the notches for the "X" and then radiused the bottom to the 30' radius. I used my radius board with sandpaper screwed to the edge of my workbench to make the radius. After that, I cut the final scallop above the crossing point, rough sanded them to shape and glued them down in my go-bar deck.

By this time, the propane tank had run out and the shop was getting cold so I decided to call it a day. Tomorrow I will try and get the rest of the top bracing done.

I used the Stewmac method to transfer the brace pattern. I punched little holes in the plans and marked the corner dots on the soundboard.

A little connect the dots work and 'viola.... a brace pattern.

Here are all the pieces ripped to length for the braces. I had a scrap about 1/2"x3/8" left as well as the full second billet that I never touched.

Here you can see the cross braces with rough scallops. I cut one piece double width plus the width of my saw blade. Then I shaped that piece and then ripped it in half. That way I have two cross braces that are identical.

This is my radius sanding board screwed to my work table. It made sanding the radius on the braces a piece of cake. [Mmmmmm cake!]

Here are the cross braces sitting in the radius dish. They fit like a glove. [Mmmmmm glove, uh, wait that doesn't work here does it. :) ]

Here they are on the soundboard with the scalloping cut and rough sanded. The dark stuff on the side of the brace is burn marks from my table saw. I sanded this off before gluing. Notice how I screwed a caul through the center hole to hold the soundboard in the radius dish. Also, you might notice that I notched out the underside of the cross braces where the tone bars and the bass/treble side braces and the bridge brace go. This is something that I did on my Dreadnaught. The Stewmac instructions said to do it, but the DVD that came with this kit made no mention of doing this. It seemed like it is much easier to do this before gluing them down! I have to say, so far I am not too impressed with the DVD instructions that came with this kit. I am REALLY glad that I built a Stewmac kit first. I would be lost by now if I didn't have that experience to draw from.

Everything glued up and in the go-bar deck. (I cleaned the glue squeeze-out before I left for the night)