The Luthier Community

Grant, you never cease to amaze and delight, and I’m not blowing smoke!

Taking a much needed break from the metal working. I will be posting the fabrication of the Stauffer style turners as a separate thread as soon as I get all of the photos organized.

In the meantime, I glued together the top plates and started working on the soundhole rosette. Martin guitars from the 1830's have a rather elaborate pattern mostly consisting of MOP and abalone crescent and trifoil shapes set in a black mastic. Here is the one from the first guitar we are replicating. Others from the period are similar. I could find no commercially available precut shapes, so had to cut my own. The crescents are cut from 9/16" MOP dots, the trifoil shapes, abalone cut from scratch. Here are the cutouts laid out on the pattern. I plan to install them tomorrow, and will use black, medium-thick CA for the background filler. Thanks for looking,

g

That, in and of itself, is going to be a pretty cool rosette that if executed even half as well as the metal work will be fantastic! Can't wait to see it, Grant.

Wow! The rosette looks fantastic, Grant.

Thanks, everybody. Here it is finished. g

Looks excellent, Grant - good job!

whitespruce wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 9:37 am Thanks, everybody. Here it is finished.
IMG_7508.JPG

g

Wow! Just wow!

You are obviously a Master!

I’m finding this very inspiring, Grant!


Ian