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Greetings, What is the minimum length of side plates for a dreadnought guitar? I have a chance to get a great set of Cocobolo, but the side length is 30 3/4 inches. To small? Thanks in advance for the help. Ken

Take a tape measure to a dreadnought and see. My limited experience says, for me, I want two inches more than the finished length. Too easy for me to shift a side in the bender and seriously hope for enough excess built into the side material to allow for the miscalculation.

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Peter Havriluk

Take a tape measure to a dreadnought and see. My limited experience says, for me, I want two inches more than the finished length. Too easy for me to shift a side in the bender and seriously hope for enough excess built into the side material to allow for the miscalculation.

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Peter Havriluk

I get 30.5 on my template, so that leaves virtually nothing for trimming.
You can compensate with the end graft and situating the heel. You may need to glue in the blocks without the sides touching at the graft.
Or make slightly smaller dread or other model.

B

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

this can make it but to know for sure be careful as you bend and you can always use a piece at the tail and neck block to add. A nice tail wedge can give you a 1/2 in and at the neck block you can rob another 5/8 in
backs are 20 in long and 15 1/2 wide

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I recently put the equivalent of a tail wedge at the neck end, just to do it and see how it looked. If you combine that with a wider than normal tail wedge, you can definitely make these sides work.

If using a block-style heel and the aforementioned wider end graft, the sides might be as much as 1-1/4" shorter than the center-line to center-line length of whatever body template you might employ, although this reduced-length side also puts a premium on eliminating any error in positioning the ends associated with the side bending process.

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We have become a civilization that elevates idiots, prostitutes, and clowns. Am I still to defend it? Yes, for its principles. Yes, for what it was. Yes, for what it still may be.

-Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel)

You could also use a piece of an off-cut from the back , same material as the sides and run the grain horizontal for a tail graft, using 2 strips of bwb purfling on each side, to make it appear like there is no tail graft.