Slow and steady work this week honing in on the final design and beginning to pick away at the rosette. By far the biggest challenge for this rosette is including several different types of stone. I've only ever used recon stone before (reconstituted stone is basically crushed stone mixed with epoxy) which is relatively easy to machine and manipulate with standard woodworking tools. In this case I'm using stones my client gathered from Lake Huron and figuring out how to slice, thickness, and shape them is proving tricky!
First step in this rosette was installing an ebony ring...
Using some teflon strips for radial purfling...
Radial Honduran rosewood installed...
Since this guitar has a cutaway I like to echo that feeling in the rosette as well which leads to an asymmetrical design...
Using some hi-tech precision wedges to glue in a maple border...
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, most of the material for this guitar has been provided by the client with all of it gathered from meaningful areas or times in his life. With that in mind I thought a design hinting at a timeline might be an interesting way to incorporate a variety of disparate elements. One of the pieces he provided was a chunk of coal from Wales where his grandfather was from. In my mind, this is still part of his timeline but separate from the other pieces that come directly from his life. So, the coal still sits on his timeline but is first and separate from the rest...
The rosette is about halfway there with the stone sections (...gulp...) up next!