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Looks like that worked. Just for fun here are some shots of the top and back in the rough.

The top has some "character." The back has a little bit of sapwood, it looks Locke it might have a little bit of mild figure in it too. I guess I'll have to wait until it is cleaned up to see.




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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

That back is really pretty.

On your tapatalk deal - you may want to go back over it.... I see you got spell corrected

Ha! I really do an embarrassingly bad job of proofreading when I post from my phone. I don't type well with my thumbs and my phone likes to change tiny type-os into completely different words.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I agree, the back looks good.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Last night, after the oven cooled, I took my wood out and in clamped it. The cupping was gone and it did not move as it acclimated to the house unrestrained. There was some sticky cooked sap that had come to the surface and hardened. It looked like it has sweated up to the surface like a slow cooked hot dog. The color was darker but that was only skin deep and could be scrapped away. I decided to give it another go today and bake it for a few hours; getting extra sap out of the wood can only help right.?. After baking today there is a little more sap on the surface and it has darkened more. I'm assuming that color will sand away. Also the smell has changed. It doesn't smell nearly as "piney" as it did and now has a somewhat "roasted" smell.

I suspect that once it is thicknesses and everything it will not look or feel any different. But I am now confident that it is dry. Having worked some of the sap out the finished top should be a little bit lighter too.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Not much to update here. Some good news some bad. The bad news came from resaw inch the sides. A long time ago, I got some cherry boards to saw into sets. I resawed the backs and ended up with 5 sets. I never got around to sawing up the side sets. The board I intended to cut sides from was long enough to get 2 side lengths from. It would have easily given me 4 side sets (even if I was sloppy). But since I was able to rescue this (the 5th back set) to use on a small guitar, I got greedy and tried to squeeze 3 side sets out of the first half of the board. Long story short, I only got one set . Now I'll end up with 2 orphaned back sets.

The good news is that the back set ended up with a cool combination of mild curl (really just some waves) and some sections of medullary rays.

More good news: The baking of the top appears to have worked well. It came out of the clamps and not only was the cupping was gone, it hasn't moved since. I cut it thick to deal with the possibility of cupping. Now that I have it joined and am ready to do the rossette, I have enough thickness that I can get a redo if I mess up the rossette.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

That's exactly what happens every time I try to sneak a little more yield or get a little greedy when resawing. With one quick move - I can turn 4 great sets into 1 reasonable set and 4 pairs of useless wood that's too wonky for anything I want to make.

The top and back look great. Looks like it's coming along well.

I spent a chunk of time in the shop over the Holliday weekend. All I got accomplished was to make the mold and bending form (last layer of plywood being still in the clamps but basically done). I hate when I get workshoppe time and only have molds and stuff to show for it. But so be it.

I made the mold adjustable for width. It is designed for a 12" parlor close in dimensions to a size 2 but can expand to make a 12 3/4" lower bout. That puts it in size 1 range but about 5/8" shorter than a size 1.



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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

At least you made forward progress - that's always good!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Oops, sorry for the giant picture. I'm sure you all wanted to get good detail of a plywood mold. . . I'm still trying to get used to posting from my phone. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I was out of town all week but I just now got a chance to get in the shoppe. I spent several hours but got nothing interesting done. The bending form is now made and the sides are thicknessed. At least now I can actually start working on the guitar next time I'm in there.

The sides came from the same tree as the back and have the same very mild curl, you'll have to wait until there is some finish on yo see it:


While I am posting, I'll show my fancy jig for profiling the heel and tail blocks to match the body shape. I used to draw it out on both sides but now I just go at it until it fits. . .


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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

At least you're making progress. Good! I've done some thinking but have two setups to finish before I can get back to it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

It may not be the nicest rosette in the challenge, but unless I am mistaken, it is the first one posted



I'm leaning towards going to go pretty simple with the decoration on this one. I think I am going to do jatoba purfling to go with the bridge and fretboard. With that in mind, I used it in the rosette.


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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I'm thinking of using this binding I made a while back. The maple is not very curly at all but the stick I had was bang on quarter so I made bindings out of it. The rays provide visual interest without being too loud. It seemed like that would be a good fit for the overall feel of this project. The problem is, I'm partially done with a workshop rearranging project and I can only find two pieces (I know I have 8 or more around here somewhere.



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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Those bindings are a really nice match in my opinion.
Continue the hunt for the others. = )

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

As soon as you give up the search, and decide on something else, the rest of them will miraculously reappear!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Man, ain't that the truth!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I found two more along with what is left of the log I glued up and cut them from. With any luck I won't break the 4 I have but if I do I'll be able to cut a few more. I'm sure I have the rest of them bundled together in a safe place somewhere. The new wood storage set up will be great. It even has a long shelf specifically for binding and purfling sticks. I just have to stop making guitars long enough to finish the project and put everything away. Who's idea was this dumb challenge anyway?

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Even better than a long shelf, just stick a couple big hooks in the wall Here's my binding storage:

I took the second side outfly bender when I got home tonight. Bending on both sides went well. I got a small scorch spot on the bass sidelined out that should sand out and or be covered by the bindings. They came out of the bender and with no springbuck and fit the mold nicely. This was the first time I've bent cherry but there was no need to fear.

I was concerned that I misaligned one of the sides in the bender but it looks like I should be able to get the book match to look good. I may have to make the end graft bigger than I wanted. I'll have to wait until I get them trimmed to fit to know for sure.




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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Time for an open discussion. I'll consider all the points raised here but in the end, I'll probably just follow my gut. . .

I'm closing in on the final thickness of this top and I can't quite decide if I want to go thinner. I wish I was set up for deflection testing but I have not yet made that leap. I have been thicknessing by feel up until now. . .

More so than previous projects, I'm second guessing myself. This top has several variables that are out of my experience.
- I have never made a parlor before
- I have never used pine for a top
- The top is not perfectly quartered and goes well off quarter out towards the edges
- There are multiple streaks of very translucent sections and very opaque sections so the density across the grain is changing back and forth

I was not too worried about the top going off quarter since the box is so narrow. My reasoning was that I was less concerned about cross grain stiffness and a little floppy out there could be a good thing. I stopped thicknessing when it felt like I wanted it to. Then I measured it. It is at 0.122ish (depending on where I measure). That is much thicker than I expected a top to be for such a small guitar. It feels plenty stiff along the grain and "just floppy enough" across the grain. I did not measure the density but with it changing back and forth so much, I'm not sure if that is a good way to know anyway.

I'm not really opposed to having it thicker than I expected since the top is so small it will still be lighter than a top on a full sized guitar (but still enjoying the same input horsepower). But if I can lighten it up, all the better. Part of me wants to go thinner and make up for any extra floppiness with the bracing. The box is small and short so the bridge is pretty far back. The bracing already feels a little cramped back there; I had some lingering concerns that it was going to be too stiff across the grain there. Maybe this is all working for me instead of against me. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Exactly The small ones can use a bit of mass. Just make sure the final braced stiffness is low enough. .122" doesn't sound too thick at all, especially if it's sugar pine, which typically has a lower Young's modulus than spruce. You can sand the perimeter thinner after the box is closed up if it sounds tight at that point.

I recently strung up my experiment on minimalist bracing, which turned out great. 14" lower bout redwood, .150" thick in the center down to around .100" at the linings. X brace is 7/16" tall at the intersection, with the lower legs tapering down from there. Above the intersection remains full height because the hole is still a major weak point.

So my question on the top thickness is...

Do you want a brighter or a more warm/mellow guitar.
Thicker/stiffer = brighter.

But a top thicknessed and braced like a dread will make a dead, boxy sounding parlor guitar... Consider that the top is 75% as wide.... Which means the same thickness will end up about 33% stiffer in a parlor.

I personally won't be anywhere near 0.120". Tops on guitars this size end up under 0.110".... More likely to finish a little over 0.090" if I was x bracing.

Thanks.

The more important dimension is that a parlor is 80%? of the length of a dred, but that's the right idea.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I glued in the side reinforcements and laminated the linings. The linings are three layers of whatever scrap wood I have laying around when I make linings; I think these were poplar. Each layer is roughly side thickness (0.085"ish). The side reinforcements are made from the same stock so they are flush with the first layer of linings. The side reinforcements go in first then I cover them with masking take to keep from gluing the linings until I'm ready. Next I cut and bend prices to fit between the reinforcements. Then I bend and cut two more layers to go over that. I laminate the three layers together inside the rim for a perfect fit. Since I taped off the reinforcements, the linings aren't yet glued in, I can take them out and clean up the surface that will be seen inside the box. When I go to glue them back in they snap into place around the reinforcements.

Once they are glued in, the rim is super stiff. Time to drive the bus.


Here is the completed rim.


I decided to try a narrow end graft of three thin strips to go with the side purfling. It ended up a little so key at one end. It should be routed away when I cut for bindings. Just in case, I glued in a sliver of maple after this pic was taken.



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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.