With the f-hole guitar out the door and off off for finishing, it's time to finish up the woodwork on this one! The emergent theme on this build has been incorporating four main elements (koa, ebony, spalted maple, maple) in an offset design to echo the asymmetrical nature of a cutaway. With the rosette up next, I realized I'd have to venture into some new territory for me -- I think every rosette I've done has been symmetrical! An additional challenge was to maintain consistency with the very linear headstock design, but obviously in a circle...
First up is making the bulk of the rosette, in this case ebony. To do this I have use a table saw sled with a fence set at the correct angle for a twelve piece ring. As I cut up the initial pieces from a larger block, you'll note that I keep track of the direction of the grain with a little arrow on each segment. I want to make sure that the arrows always point in the same direction -- this helps insure the light reflecting off of the wood (chatoyance for fans of fancy words) will be consistent and minimize visibility of joints/color differences.
Joined up in to a ring...
I typically inlay my rosette rings slightly larger than their final size but still a bit smaller than the final rosette dimensions. This allows me to rout for the inner and outer strips once the inner ring has already been glued. It's much much easier, and I find more accurate, than to glue everything at once...
First piece in and a bit of mid-process mess!
After routing for the koa section, I realized it looked pretty neat holding the top up to a lamp. Turning that picture black and white then isolating the initial color shining through led to a pretty cool picture...
And the final rosette!
There's a whole bunch of golden ratio stuff tucked away in there -- the various arc lengths relative to each other and the overall circle, etc. Definitely a fun and satisfying one to work on!
Up next bracing and tuning the top!