Hi All,
Been a while since I posted. The combination of some travel, high humidity in my shop, and working on other builds kept me from getting to bracing until the past couple of days.
We are building these guitars with a 40' radius on the top. I pre cut my bracing to accommodate the radius but leave a lot of wood on the top side to allow for voicing later. I glued the X braces together then dry clamped them in place to provide a location point for the maple bridge backing plate, which I glue in first. Once the backing plate is in, I glued down the X braces, finger braces, tone bars. Here are some pics of the Engelmann top being braced:
Prior to gluing on the upper transverse brace, I position the brace on the rims and notch the rims so the brace butts tight against my neck block. With the UTB in position on the rims, I locate the top, then reach in through the sound hole and grab the brace and top. I then mark the UTB location and glue it and the remaining top bracing in place. Note there is a lot of wood between the top of the upper bout and that UTB. I had to move the X bracing more into the lower bout as these guitars are 12 fret. I also moved the sound hole lower to provide room for 20 frets.
With the remaining bracing on, the top is ready for voicing, which is one of my favorite parts of building
I'll get to that tomorrow.
Thanks for stopping by!
Ken