Florentine Cutaway

[Dave Bagwill]

I had only the one turnbuckle, so I rigged up something as simple and effective as I could - no magic. :-)

The trick is to drill your holes all the way through the block, so that you can reach in thru the soundhole, loosen the butterfly nut, and slide the block toward the middle of the rod (1/4" x 20 allthread in this case. That makes extraction easy. I also use a washer to prevent the nut from cutting into the block.

It'll do until (if) I get around to buying a bigger turnbuckle.

[ken cierp]

Well that's pretty darn Clever!!

[Lonnie B]

Very clever indeed:0)

[Herman]

Yes clever, you "nutty" professor.

[Dave Bagwill]

Herman, you made laugh with that pun. Stop it. :-)
Anyway, back to your Florentine. No more hijacking!

[Herman]

Ok, aside the jokes. Serious stuff:
Flattening the sides. This time dead flat. The upper transversal brace is flat here, so I had to make a slope from the upper bout up to the neckblock. This to prevent a dent in the fingerboard around the 14th fret. I did that with a 1,5 degree sanding stick. Now the front of the neckblock is about 1 mm (0,04") below the topsurface. (If this is not clear, ask Ken, he is fond about the issue)



The routing of the slots for the X-brace and transversal brace.



Checking if the front of guitar is straight:



Since the sides below the neck are a bit lower than the rest of the perimeter, I lay little straps of innertube under the top. So the sides lay smooth to the top while glueing:



After glueing, the area where the fingerboard lies on the top, should be flat.
Also I checked the angle of the top's front. Well, with a staightedge on it, I got a gap around the bridgeposition of about 1,5 mm (0,06") now. Quite nice, I think.



Well this is the thing now. The taptones are very tight now, with the top being 3,2mm (0.126"). I'll see what is left after glueing the back. Probably there will be some serious tuning in a few weeks.



And being a cutawaythread, this is how that's looking. Sorry for the gluebeads. But again, no windowdressing here.

[John Parchem]

Nice looking work. I am really happy you are documenting the constructions of this guitar.