David's Guitar Building: Awwww crud......

I went up to the shop today to work on the SJ and grabbed the top to cut the sound hole out. That is when I noticed something just wasn't right. The top was warped a little, but that wasn't the problem as I the humidity was about 5% higher than yesterday so I expected it. What I didn't expect was how it warped. It was like one half was cupping one direction, and the other half was cupping the other way. I couldn't figure out what was happening but I didn't worry too much about it as I would glue the braces on when the humidity was back down to 40%. I went about cutting the sound hole and then took it to the thickness sander to get it down to .110". After a bit of sanding, I noticed the grain looked funny. Part was 'fuzzy' and part was smooth. The experienced builders among you have probably figured out what happened by now. Anyways, I set the top down next to the window and grabbed some brace stock to lay out the brace cuts. I happened to glance over to the soundboard and noticed one side looked dark and the other looked light. That is when it hit me what I had done. When I glued up the two halves, I accidentally flipped one side from top to bottom. That makes the grain direction 180 degrees opposite from half to half. Looking straight on, it isn't noticeable at all, but looking at it with the light shining across it from an angle, it is quite noticeable.

So now I have a dilemma. Do I continue on with this soundboard and just go ahead and use it, or do I start the top over from scratch. Right now I really am about 50/50 on what to do. One part of me says that if I were building this for sale, I would start over however this is still a "training" build so would it really be a big deal to use it? I know I see pictures all the time of guitars where the top wood has this side to side contrast so I know it happens and people build with them anyways. If I hadn't already done the rosette I would just cut the center on my table saw and re-join the top. But, since the rosette is done I either use the top, or trash it. What makes it even more of a difficult decision is that the top has a really great ring to it. I know it will make a great looking and sounding guitar.

Ugh, what a mistake and what a decision I need to make. I think I will order a new top, rosette blank, and some abalone but think on what to do for a while. If I decide to start over, I will have the materials here to do it, but if I decide to use it, I will have a top for another build.

I did cut the braces and layed out the brace pattern on the top. I also sanded the radius on the brace stock. I think I will put the top aside for a bit, brace up the back and work on the neck while I think about what to do.

Here is the rosette after I routed the outer channel for the abalone and last black strip. You can also see that I set the abalone strips up so the good side is facing up. It was a little tricky lining the strips up so the bad ends were under the fingerboard.

Since I was going to use superglue for this last step, I sealed the end grain with 2lb cut shellac. This will keep the superglue from seeping into the spruce causing it to discolor over time.

The rosette all glued up.

Here is the rosette all sanded down and wetted with naphtha. It really turned out nicely.

Then I cut the sound hole out. I kind of like doing the rosettes so there is a very fine line of spruce before the rosette starts. It looks more sophisticated to me that way. I did this on the OOO too.

This is the view I saw when I realized that I had made a big mistake when joining the two top halves. It is very clear that there is a change in grain direction causing the top to be dark on one half and light on the other. Ugh!

The top and back braces ripped from blanks. I was lucky to have enough mahogany for the back braces. In the middle of the billet there was a knot and grain flaw that made a big piece of the wood useless.

Here is the top with the bracing pattern drawn up. Although you can see a little bit of grain color difference from side to side, it really isn't very visible looking at it straight on.