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Well, I just ground it down on a bench grinder. Marked it with a pencil and kinda eyeballed it. Ground it at the right angle, and that was it.

Should be no problem with it getting dull since all it will be cutting is fairly soft bracewood and there ain't that much cutting on one guitar.

G

That is one damn fine idea. Thanks for sharing

Man, I looked through my build threads and was simply amazed at how much time has passed with little progress. And now I see Dennis L all stoked up and cranking along.

I gotta do some building!

Well, when I did the rosette log and inlayed a test rosette, it was in the top for this guitar. So since that is done, guess this is the likely candidate for getting going again. I will be incorpoarting the changes that I mentioned to my top bracing pattern to eliminate braces running perpendicular to the grain of the top. I have been doodling on a piece of paper, and I think I have an idea about ready to hatch.

Stay tuned.

G

whitespruce wrote:amazed at how much time has passed with little progress.

Story of my life...
Thats a stunning set of Coco!
Also love the idea with the braces, how do you orient the grain on them?
I gotta get building too!

Ed

Ed, I don't worry too much about the grain orientation on the back braces. But I also laminate most of the top braces, and I keep the grain vertical as normal on those.

Now, I am trying something new on the top purflings. But I can't take photos yet because the batteries died on the camera. I will show you in a day or so.

G

Yeah, bout time, slow poke! You've been watching too much TV!

Dennis

Hey grant,

Nice tutorial!

All things being equal (when does that ever occur in lutherie), compared to a ladder braced back, do you have a sense of what this lattice will do to the sound?

Erik

Erik wrote:Hey grant,

Nice tutorial!

All things being equal (when does that ever occur in lutherie), compared to a ladder braced back, do you have a sense of what this lattice will do to the sound?

Erik

Well, I have 2 guitars strung up which have this back bracing. I think they are my best sounding, so far, but I have no idea if the back bracing is related to that. But, at least it hasn't hurt anything.

My reason for going this route was to avoid the situation of having braces run perpendicular to the grain of the back. Having them at a 45 to the back grain should lessen stresses from shrinking and swelling of the back during humidity changes, and a lower likelihood of back cracks. Notice that I don't have the cross brace at the ends of the "X" that I have seen some folks do. That would have negated my objectives.

The other thing I immediately noticed is that this bracing really holds the dome of the back well. At this point, the only reason that I would do a ladder braced back again would be if I were wanting to do a historically accurate replica of a vintage guitar.

G