Today was a mix of mulling things over and getting things done.
The weather's about to change so the RH in my basement has fluctuated. I don't know which hygrometer's reading to trust either. Today one was as high up as 58%. Tonight they seem to agree, though when placed next to my work on the bench below the RH is about 3% higher. FYI: the floor is concrete and this is a basement so some moisture coming through from the ground below is to be expected.
Since the RH fluctuated so much I opted not to glue in the last pieces of my top bracing (namely the sound hole grafts) but I spent some time making sure that they fit snugly for when the time to glue up
does come. Instead, I chose to start tapering the ends of the braces:
I'm on the fence on how to proceed though. Do I taper the ends but save the scalloping and final shaping for later in the voicing process when I glue the top to the sides? Or do I just go nuts with the chisel now? Gitnoob's talk of voicing and checking frequencies has me wondering what's best. I'll have to sleep on it. For now I think tapering the ends is best. That will get me closer to gluing the top to the sides.
So I did a test fit after I'd tapered the ends of the X brace on the lower bout. The upper bout is a little more complicated though. The plan is to follow gitnoob's lead and trim the ends of the upper transverse brace so that it locks in flush against the inner face of the bent sides.
Carefully, I flipped it over and laid in on a piece of foam posterboard:
I took note of where the centerline on the plate was located and the one I marked on the underside of the end blocks. Using the neck block extension as a guide I had a rough idea of where the lengths of the two components line up. Looking at the thickness of the plywood and the pre-drilled hole for the truss rod I had an idea to thicken that area. The inspiration was from a plywood Martin neck block that I'd borrowed from my friend who's led me down this path:
I figure that shoring that up like that would help stabilize the area even more and allow me to route a channel for the truss rod after all. I'd been resigned to just having the access point at the headstock, which I wasn't crazy about for aesthetic reasons.
FWIW this area is foremost on my mind because that extension is key to setting the neck angle. At some point I'm going to have to take those sides out of the mold and get that top face planed to the right angle. I have my drafter's protractor ready. I'll be shooting for 91.5° and I'll want the top of that piece of plywood to be dead flat before I even entertain the idea of gluing on that top.