Bracing.....

Well, I think spring decided to go away for a while. This morning I woke to a lot of snow flying, and 27 degree temps. They are saying it is supposed to stay this way for several days. Bummer. Oh well, I got to spend some time in the shop today working on the OOO. Since the humidity is low, I decided this was a good day to cut the braces and get started with the back braces. First I measured and marked the braces on my billets, then cut them all with my table saw. Then I cut them to length. Of course, I messed up a couple of them by getting in a hurry. Fortunately I have plenty of stock so I just cut more pieces. I radiused the back braces and sanded them to shape. I decided not to glue them down because of the temps in the shop after I turn the heat off. I don't want frozen joints.

Not much else to say, I just did some of the mundane parts of the build today. Tomorrow I will try and glue them up and start working on the top routing out the rosette channel. I am thinking of attempting to bind the soundhole with bloodwood. I have some thin strips that I can bend so I might give it a shot if I feel it will look good. I have some green abalone on order to cut out my inlays. I am thinking of putting my deer head on the peghead, and my "D" initial on the tail piece. I am also thinking of doing something different with the fret markers. I saw a guitar online where the builder put the fret markers close to the edge, between the 5th and 6th strings and the double markers were small and stacked vertical. I liked how it looked. I might try it on this one. I have some small abalone dots coming and I will play around with it to see how it looks. I kind of want to build this one with a little bit of a modern flair to it. I have some ideas of how I want to carve the bridge to make it look a bit more 'artsy'. Who knows, either this will look nice, or look like a nightmare! Either way, I am having a lot of fun doing it!

The back brace pieces sitting on the rosewood back.

The top braces all cut too. These are Adirondack spruce.

This time I CAREFULLY laid out the braces so they are perfectly square. I learned my lesson on the OM! Also, note that I marked the center line. After the OM, I want to make sure I know exactly where the center line is.

The back braces all radiused and sanded to rough shape. I will do the final shaping and sanding after it is all glued up. The back wood has a slight bow to it so I have it sitting in the radius dish. I figure I might as well use the bow to my advantage. Fortunately, both sides look good enough for the exterior so I can use it either way.