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Typically before final thicknessing.

Thanks Clay. Am I remembering correctly that you are in the Southeast as well? I'm in Chattanooga.


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Hi Justin,
I am in the north east corner of Maryland. Just below the Mason Dixon line.
I forgot you mentioned having a #3 plane. That will work to thickness the sides and plates.
I like to lightly plane both sides of the top to select the side I want to show, sand that side smooth and install the rosette, then plane and sand the back to final thickness. That way if you go a little deep with the rosette channel you still have some wood that you can remove from the show face and not make the top too thin.
If you don't have a laminate trimmer that might be a good thing to buy instead of the circle cutter. You can make a simple jig for cutting circles with a router and use it for numerous other guitar building tasks. You can buy one for about the same price as that circle cutter.

Thanks for the advice. I do not have a laminate cutter, but I'll look into getting one. I have a block plane that I used to prep the top and back plates for joining, but I'm guessing that's a little too small for the thicknessing.

I think the next project for me will be to build a decent workbench. I've been working on a piece of plywood laid across a pair of saw horses.


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I'm just north of Knoxville. For your first, you said OO Martin or Gibson? John Arnold, & John Hall have very nice detailed tracings of prewar OO Martin guitars. Get one and try to duplicate that tracing. You will have a pretty good to excellent guitar.

Clinch,

You're the person I was thinking of who lives near by! It's a Martin OO and the template I have for the top is one of the acrylic ones sold by Waldron Music. Do you think I still need to buy one of Mr. Arnold or Mr. Hall's tracings? I'm really trying to take my time with things and get it right. Currently I need to get my hands on the necessary tool(s) to cut out the rosette and then I'll start to thickness the top. I'm a little worried about thicknessing by hand because I'm using Western Red Cedar for the top. I also need to get to a friend or family members house to use their table saw to cut the Sitka brace wood I got from RC Tonewoods.


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Waldron templates are great make your mold from that, but the tracings are really affordable and have top thickness, brace sizing, location, (scalloping) bridge plate thickness just like the pre-war guitar they were taken from. Answers a lot of questions. I'm working on a O-18, Deep-body Black Locust Herringbone OO, 1936 GIbson AJ and a couple more 13 fret 1937 Gibson Nick Lucas specials.
Here is the OO Top, Red Spruce from Ted Davis's stash, Red Spruce bracing and a black locust bridge plate,

Thanks Clinch. I'll grab the plans and move forward from there.


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I searched and searched and I can't find anywhere to buy these tracings. Can you help me out? Where do I find these?


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Both are members here, send them a pm. John Hall is Blues Creek Guitars google that.

I did. I was familiar with Blues Creek before I joined, but didn't see the plans on his website.

I'll send him a PM.


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