[Neil K Walk]

After 3 weeks away I almost finished up gluing on the bracing last night. My friend Mr. Kitchen was busy too. He was too busy shooting kiddie pics - including my younger son's preschool - and hadn't been in the shop as long as I had been. He hadn't touched his latest build and my top was STILL in the go-bar deck. He also neglected to empty his dehumidifier so the RH went up to 55% which is a little high for gluing but I pressed on. After futzing around with my back plate I marked where my tone bars would fit into the X brace and I notched a slot with a 1/4" chisel:



Then I worked on the bridge plate, which is made of flat sawn osage orange that I thickness sanded to .096". Then I did a dry test fit.


Everything could be snugger but it was good enough for me to proceed after making a caul for the bridge plate:


Hopefully I'll get to glue those last two sound hole braces next time. It's likely that everything will still look like this when I return:


In the meantime I have some homework to do: cutting the braces for the back so that I can glue them up next time too. I'm getting excited because I"m getting close to voicing the top!