Irish Bouzouki - The Rosette

I managed to complete the rosette this morning. There's no hint of chipping which has frustrated me in the past, thanks to a tip I picked up from a long-forgotten source.

Prior to routing the inner and outer purfling channels that border the rosette, which I complete after the inner tiles have been glued in place, I applied Titebond to the soundboard in the immediate vicinity of the rings and let it dry overnight. The rationale for doing so is that the wood fibres of the soundboard are less likely to tear or chip when the channels are routed as they are supported and stabilised by the glue. I believe the original suggestion involved the application of shellac in the vicinity of the rosette, but as I'd already managed to smear some Titebond on the soundboard when gluing the inner tiles, I figured it would achieve the same goal. Mission accomplished!

Cheers
Pete

A Broken Promise, and Some New Rosettes

After promising myself I wouldn't begin my next guitar until the two I'm currently waiting to spray were complete, I've relented a little and have spent some time fabricating and inlaying some new rosettes over the past week. With wet weather still the norm, and a trip to Africa looming large, it was becoming increasingly unlikely that I'd get to apply finish to those guitars any time soon, hence the broken promise - an opportunity to spend time in the workshop!

European Spruce, with Zebrano, Ebony and coloured veneer rosette

Port Orford Cedar, with Zebrano rostete

Sitka Spruce, with Zebrano and Ebony rosette

Engelmann Spruce, with East Indian Rosewood rosette

I wouldn't tempt fate by proclaiming that I've in any way mastered this aspect of guitar construction, but I'm pleased to be able to produce rosettes like these to an acceptable standard fairly consistently these days.

Cheers
Pete

Guitar-Shaped Objects

With these guitar bodies assembled at last, I'm better able to imagine what the completed instruments might look like. It's very satisfying to have reached this stage, but I know there's a lot of work remaining.

Sitka Spruce/Claro Walnut; Sitka Spruce/East Indian Rosewood; Redwood/Claro Walnut

Having laminated the veneers from which I'll slice the purflings, my next job is to prepare purfling and binding strips, then rout out the ledges on the bodies to accommodate them. With the right jigs and tools this shouldn't be a particularly challenging job, but as a "hobby builder", the interval between guitars is significant; I'm not usually able to perform this task frequently enough that I ever feel entirely at ease with the process. With three instruments in the pipeline though, I should be feeling more confident by the time I carry out this step on the last of the current crop.

Cheers
Pete

More Fun With Rosettes

After the recent experience of having several instruments under construction at once, I vowed I'd restrict myself to building one instrument at a time once they were completed. That promise was soon broken however, as evidenced by this East Indian rosewood/Sitka spruce guitar which I'm building alongside my claro walnut/redwood fingerstyle instrument.


Where the rosette is concerned, I decided to contrast the spruce top with a dark wood - again using a radial design. Macassar ebony seemed a natural choice, with a dash of red adding some zing to the combination.  Top, back and side purflings will extend this black/red theme.

Cheers
Pete

The Fingerstyle Guitar - Installing the Rosette

I'd probably still be fitting abalone rosettes to my guitars but for the fact that the shell blanks are now unavailable from my usual U.S. sources.  Perhaps that's a good thing: the radial designs I've adopted make a welcome and attractive change - at least I think so!

Routing the rosette channel

Dremel rotary tools attract criticism from some quarters due to their questionable robustness (this one is my third), but when combined with one of Stew-Mac's soundhole jigs and their router base, they're well suited to the task and I'm able to achieve a near-perfect fit of the rosette and the adjoining purfling rings.  If there's a secret to success, it's in exercising patience and "sneaking up" on the final channel width in tiny increments, checking the fit of the rings after each cut until they slip into the channel with light pressure.

Dry-fitting the rosette and purfling rings

Once the rosette has been glued in place and allowed to dry, I feed the top through my drum sander until the rosette and the rings are at the same level as the top. I can easily check when I've arrived at that point by holding the top at an angle such that the the scratches left by the sander are clearly revealed against the light from the workshop door. I want to see continuous scratches along the full length and across the full width of the top, including the rosette.  Once that's achieved, I bring the top to the desired thickness using the drum sander to remove material only from its inner face.       

The zebrano rosette - glued and levelled

Click on any of the images for a closer look.

Cheers

Pete

The Fingerstyle Guitar - Progress Report #1

By necessity, progress on all of my instruments takes place in fits and starts and typically drags out over many months - or longer!  It's been especially difficult lately to find large chunks of time to devote to guitar building, although I can't complain too loudly: one of the reasons has been a leisurely three-week trip exploring Australia's east coast between Melbourne and Sydney - a long-awaited and enjoyable break from the normal routine.

Diversions and distractions aside, I have managed to spend some time on the claro walnut/redwood guitar I discussed in a recent post.  The back is complete, the sides are bent and, after stealing a few hours away from my day job through the week, I've managed to join the halves of the redwood top and fabricate a zebrawood rosette.  If all goes to plan, I'll inlay the rosette and thickness the top over the coming weekend.  The really fun part - bracing and tuning the soundboard - will follow.

Cheers

Pete

Two Rosettes

The finished rosettes:

I'm pretty happy with them both, and they provide an attractive alternative to my more usual abalone rosettes.

Click on the image for a better view.

Cheers
Pete

A New Rosette

This rosette is a departure from the abalone versions I've recently installed. It's a simple radial design in Macassar ebony which I hope will work well in the visual sense; the final verdict will have to wait until I can marry it with the guitar's other decorative elements and see it as part of an overall design.

Dimensions marked on 1/8" MDF

Sliced and diced: ready for tapering

Tapering the wedges on the disk sander

Wedges tapered and glued

Routed to size - a spiral down-cut router bit keeps things tidy

Ready for installation in a redwood top

I have two of these rosettes ready to install along with their edge purflings. I'll post pictures when they're done.

Cheers

Pete