An unwelcome surprise.

[John Parchem]

I joined, thicknessed and installed the rosette in a really nice red spruce top. After the rosette was install I was scraping the top down to close to my final thickness and a pitch pocket showed up in the treble side of the lower bout. . Unfortunately it is deeper than I can sand. The top is so clean everywhere else so it really stands out. I am going to put this top up for some future project and start a new one.

[ken cierp]

A few of the factories I've been to including Martin have a shadow box lit with a very bright intense light, the blanks are placed on it -- when lit the sap pockets and other defects jump right out.

[Herman]

You did not rout the soundhole out. So you could use it for a smaller guitar. With a extraordinary giant rosette as a standout. But otherwise is is a bummer indeed.
Personally I like certain defects as it is wood. I have a neck on my first guitar that has as significant knot. But customers prefer wallpaperlike wood.

[John Link]

I understand why you don't like this John, especially since it is the only visual event of its type in an otherwise clear field.

There are solutions besides abandoning the top. You could inlay a small decorative shape over it with the same wood as the rosette, then repeat that shape or something similar in two other places, one further towards the butt, and the other perhaps actually crossing over into the binding, spaced according to your innate sense of what looks balanced. I've found "one" is lonely, "two" looks divided, but "three" (or more) of anything tends to come together and look purposeful and in a case like yours, innovative. Tops are seldom treated like this.

The motif you thus create could be repeated as position markers on the fingerboard too. Likewise, you could cut entirely through the top in the extreme upper bout with the motif (or a couple, they would be small), and back it (them) with a piece of the rosette wood, to complete the design and let it assert itself.

The ultimate goal of design is unity. A singular deviation always reads as a flaw. But inventive use of multiple deviation can result in enhancement by counter point - paradoxical, of course, but quite pleasing to the eye. Even the most minimal guitar design is full of this technique. Multiple straight frets played against the supple curves of the body, for instance.

Many times a design problem is an opportunity for innovation in disguise.

[Kevin in California]

John,
Can you flip it, and rout a new rosette? Perhaps one that is narrower and would fit within the boundaries of the one there. I think it would be sturdy enough. No one would know but you.

Kevin

[Herman]

Smart thinking Kevin!

[John Parchem]

Actually that is a great idea! For insurance and to hide the evidence I will use a spruce doughnut ring for reinforcement of the sound hole.

I am at the GALconvention now and have not found a top as nice as that one (other than the pitch pocket. )