A poll.....

Today I spent some time working on the top and fingerboard. First, I sanded the rosette flush with the top and took a good look at it. I like the simple clean look of it and decided against installing an outer ring. Once that decision was made, I cut out the sound hole. I am really happy with how it turned out. I cut the sound hole so there is 1/16" of spruce between the hole and the black line. It looks really nice.

Once that was done, I glued up the center brace on the back and put it in the go-bar deck.

After that, I worked on the braces. I radiused the bottoms, and then rough shaped them. I am going to use parabolic bracing on this one. I have read several articles about it, and a lot of people are getting good results with it. Once I get them glued on, I will try my hand at a tap tuning. Of course, I have no idea what I am listening for, but I do know that I am looking to hear a nice ring that sustains. I am hoping to hear a difference as I slowly carve and sand the braces to their final shape. Because the back was in the deck, I couldn't do any glue-up so I will do that next time.

I then decided to sand the fingerboard to a 16" radius. I had originally thought about making a router jig to do this, but I went with a low-tech method, a radiused sanding block. It took a lot of elbow grease, but I finally got it sanded to shape. The Granadillo fingerboard really clogged up the sand paper with a sticky-sappy type substance. It made the sanding a slow process because I kept having to stop and scrape the paper clean. Once it was shaped, I played around a bit with the layout of the markers. I am using small abalone dots and want to do something different than the standard 'dots in the middle' thing. I am posting a lot of different pictures of this hoping some of you might have some feedback for me. I think I know what I want to go with, but I would like some other opinions.

Here is the rosette after the sound has been cut. I like the thin line of spruce before the rosette. It looks clean and simple. I really like the Stewmac precision router base with the circle cutting attachment. It makes these circle cuts a very secure and safe operation. I never felt like I could make a mistake with it.

The top braces after the "X" brace has been cut, and the bottoms are radiused.

Here are the braces after I rough shaped them. Note the parabolic shape.

Here is the back center strip being glued up.

Here is the fingerboard after about a million passes of the sanding block. See the clean and shiny section on the right? That is the section that was causing the paper to gum up so bad.

The fingerboard radius. I went with a 16" radius.

The next several pictures are some of the different fingerboard marker layouts I am playing with.
#1 All stacked vertical in the center

#2 along the bass edge with the doubles side by side.

#3 singles and part of the doubles along the bass edge, and the other half of the doubles along the treble edge.

#4 sort of a diamond pattern down the center.

#5 Singles in the center, doubles staggered on the bass edge.

#6 All along the bass edge with the doubles staggered.

#7 Everything stacked vertically along the bass edge.