I do not want to tune plates or braces to a specific note

[Jay McClellan]

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about Mr. Siminoff personally, and his book had a few useful ideas (like the deflection jig Ken mentioned). But I completely reject the idea that one can "tune" an isolated plate or brace to a specific scale note and have any meaningful effect on the dynamics of the completed assembly. From an engineering standpoint it's utter nonsense, especially when applied to very tightly coupled components like plates and braces and as Gore and Gillet illustrated it's invalid even with loosely coupled components because their resonances interact. Certainly modifying an isolated component will affect the final assembly, but in a very complex way and the fact that it resonated at a "C" in isolation means nothing, except that it might allow one to produce slightly more consistent results from one instrument to the next IF you can keep most other variables relatively constant (which I think is very unlikely even in mass production, much less for a custom builder).