I feel better now.
Okay, I know that I promised that I would post last week after getting back to work last Saturday. Well I didn't get a chance to work on the guitar until Sunday after church. I started by removing all the clips holding the kerfed linings on the top edge and fit the kerfed linings on the back edge. I glued them up and got them clamped in place. I then turned my attention to the top. I needed to lay out the sound hole location based on the 12 fret short scale design the guitar will ulitmately be built to be. It took some work figuring out the actual measurement but I finally got it. Hopefully it is right! I laid out the brace locations on the inside to make sure that the sound hole is actually in the right spot. It is kind of scary trying to lay such an important part of the guitar with no plan to work off of. All I had to use was a plan of a short scale 14 fret guitar and a plan of a long scale 12 fret guitar. After comparisons and some math I was able to figure out the actual center spot for the sound hole.
Once I had that done I dug out all of my rosette blanks to see what wood I wanted to use with the redwood top. I settled on Ziricote. I like the dark brown striped coloring with the redwood top. I have several pieces of Ziricote that I can also use for headstock veneer so I like the idea of matching the two components. I cut the rosette ring with my Dremel and circle cutter, routed the channel in the top and glued it in place. I will sand it flat tomorrow and then I will route around the inside and outside edges to inlay a black/white/black trim around it. I think that will give it a nice classy look. I have done my rosettes this way on my last 4 guitars and I really like it. I do the solid wood part by routing the channel for it. Because of the hardness of Ziricote, the circle cutter does a fair job but it puts imperfections all along the edges of the rosette. I like inlaying it in the top first and then re-routing around the edges, just skimming the actual solid wood piece which gives the edge a nice clean line. It also allows me to do the rosette in 'phases' instead of trying to get the solid piece and 6 strips all glued in at one time. This method just seems to work better for me.
So tomorrow (or next time I get back in the shop!) I will sand it flat, route the inner and outer channels and inlay the strips.
The rims with the second set of linings clamped and glued.
This is the brace layout. Note that there is only one tone bar. Because of the small size, a single tone bar will allow the top to vibrate a bit more freely. It should give a bit more low end tone.
The rims with the clamps removed and the insides sanded clean. I still need to do the side braces. Yep, I forgot them before doing the linings. I wanted to use cloth but now I will use wood.
Here is the first stage of the rosette glued in. It is a nice stripy piece of Ziricote. I like the contrast with the redwood. The B/W/B trim should give it a really nice look.
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