Acoustic Guitar Construction

The rosette came out great! Can you only see the flaws with magnification, because I could not see any issues.

I used to use a dremel with the basic base and it works just fine. The issue I had with it was the depth adjustment and the radius adjustment. There is no fine adjustment and I had trouble getting the channels as tight as I wanted. Also, the dremel bearings are mounted to a plastic sleeve inside the machine that can give a bit when you are cutting almost parallel to the grain lines which results in less than perfect channels. But, I used it for 4 or 5 guitars with no complaints from the owners, so it can do the job. I upgraded to a Bishop Cochran router base and a Bosch Colt and I am very happy. It was one of my two big tool splurges.

I have said it before, possibly to myself, possibly in this thread, but that is some killer EIR. Really pretty!

Thanks guys, you can't see it but the fuzz is there. I am not a perfectionist by any means, butt this kind of thing bugs me, I want to see a perfect line from these purflings. I did sand more on the rosette as I found the shell was still a bit low. It is better but still not how I'd like it. I inlaid the shell about .010" below the top just so this wouldn't happen and I could take it down without having to sand the shell. The top in this area is now at .120" so I'd rather not take it down anymore, but I might go another .005" just to see if the lines will clear up.
I looked at the close up picture of a similar rosette on the cover of the Kinkade book, and he has fuzzy lines worse than mine so I guess I could be satisfied with my turnout since he is showing the whole world his fuzz!! Ha ha.

I have used the dremel circle cutting jig for all my rosettes and it has worked okay....you are right Tony, it is very difficult to adjust finitely. I try to undersize and then sneak up on the dimension by putting the jig in place, dropping the bit into the channel and sliding up against the wall of the channel with a little bit of pressure........I know very scientific.......then I make the cut and I can get just a couple of thousands that way. Usually works.
How much is that cocrane base?

I use my RO sander to take most of the purflings down, then I scrape, and then I might do some light sanding if I need to take the shell down as it doesn't scrape very well.

Kevin

The Cochran base is about $300.

ouch! My dremel circle cutter was $12

Kevininca wrote:ouch! My dremel circle cutter was $12

Mine was $10 with free shipping. I like the Cochran base better though, and it looks so darn cool.

Sounds like there might be a market opportunity for someone to supply a $50-$100 tool, avoiding the two extremes.

There are jigs in that price range. I saw one on eBay that was not drilled for a router allowing you to use any router you wish. I think it was around $70 which seemed pretty expensive for a piece of lexan.