The Luthier Community

Yeah, that is a nice tute Grant!
Sure helps wrap my mind around these things to watch it unfold like that.

And here we thought you'd just been kicked back on the porch dozing all this time.

Joe

This is great! I love to see all the little details put together. I am going to have to make some cool purfs like this soon.

Nice work, Grant.
That's a real "now why didn't I think of that?" idea with the blue tape to lay up those tiny tiles. Brilliant.

Mac

Grant, very cool detail in the backstrip. When you set your mind to something, you make it happen.

Dennis

Incredible work on that backstrip, and oh man that coco...

This is going to be fun to see!

This is becoming some serious wood porn and eye candy!

Thanks everybody for the comments. If you have questions on anything, please ask away.

Well, I needed a break today form the other stuff I was doing in the shop (sorting artifacts in the archaeology lab), so I worked on the rosette.

The style 27 Martins from the late 19th century had the same rosette as the first style 45 later had (remember the 1-45 replica that Gary Demos built), There are 2 outer rings b/w/b/w/b (wood) and an inner ring with an abalone center and b/ivory/b/w/b going out on either side. The only thing I am doing differently is to use ivoroid instead of ivory.

Here is what the original looks like

Also check the photo near the top of my last post

Since the color of the abalone on the original does not seem to really match any of the presently commercially available choices, I cut my own from red abalone shells. So here is the process

Basically saw out rough pieces from the shell with the diamond bandsaw, sizing them to be reasonably flat. Then grinding the inner surface level on the wet wheel.

Then I bandsaw a slightly over-thick slab off that face.....


....and grind the sawn face until the thickness is correct

This actually does not take much time, and....

.....you soon have a nice pile of abalone slabs


So I select a slab with the color and pattern I want, stick a blank paper label on one face and cut and sand a curve on one edge that matches the curve I need for the rosette pieces

Then I mark out a strip just eyeballing it. The sandpaper stuck on the round block is what I use to shape the edge

And saw it off


Here is a bunch of strips


Then I sand the sawn edge on another curved block (forgot to photo this) until the strips are the correct width. They end up like this

I did all of the abalone a month ago, so that was all ready to go

So I So this morning, I sanded the top


And cut out the outline oversize


Then I marked out the soundhole and the rosette rings


I don't have a nice new fancy circle cutting jig like most of the folks here seem to have, but my old standby works quite well


Here are the channels, all routed


Some of the veneer lines in the rosette rings are narrower than others, so I had to thin down some veneer to make those from. I just sanded them thinner with a big sanding block

It only took a few minutes....

....then I cut some strips


So here is the first ring started

5 strips, the center black strip is from thicker veneer. I am putting these in dry, I will flood everything with thin CA later. Notice that I have sealed the channels with shellac

First ring done


So now to do the middle ring. On each side of the abalone ring, I am using an ivoroid strip that has a thinner black line on one face, the black line borders the abalone. Outside of this is a thicker black strip and then thinner white and black strips.

So I start both sets of these strips in the channel with litttle wood blocks holding the center open for the abalone

Then I slide the wood blocks apart to put in the first abalone segment, and work around

Here is half of the abalone in place


3/4 done


Center ring complete


And the last ring done, just like the first

I then flooded everything with CA and let it dry

So then I planed the rosette close to level and ran it through the sander

Then I went over everything with a scraper

Here is a closer look at the finished rosette


So tomorrow, I go back to sorting artifacts and contemplate the next step on this guitar.

Thanks for looking,

G

Looks great Grant! Placing the rosette rings dry and then flooding with CA glue - what a good idea. I'm going to remember that for the next one. Love the back-strip too.
Gary