Acoustic Guitar Construction

The little pieces of wood are glued on with a hot glue and there to index the sides in the mold so it's in the same place every time I remove it and put it back. I did this because I ran in to some trouble couple bodies back where after radiusing the back/top and taking the sides out, things shifted and one of my bodies ended up with a exaggerated radius on the top.

I was visiting a luthier friend and noticed he ads those little blocks so thought I'd try it out and so far I like it. Adds a degree of certainty when replacing the sides back in to the mold without having to measure.. they should come off easily with some plyers and a light scraping once the back/top are glued on.

Good idea to use the tabs. I use the mold to draw a couple of lines where the rims are suppose to be in the mold. I do two lines and use the lines depending on if I want access to the top or back side of the rims. The lines are drawn early from the non profiled top side of the rims using the rim as the template to draw the lines. I set the rims 20 mm from the top side draw a line than I move the rims 40 mm from the top side and use the rims to draw another line. When ever I remove the guitar from the rims I make sure that the body is sitting correctly in the mold using one of the two parallel lines.

I can now see using both methods. The taps to make replacement into the mold easy. The lines as a reference if I knock off a tab or two.

Been a while since I updated this thread. I have made a decent amount of progress. Here are some photos of the bracing on the top and back.

I glued together some neck blanks. For this build, I decided on a walnut neck. Pictured is a quarter saw piece of walnut, Started as 3"x5"x72" long. Was a good find at the wood store and I think it should make nice necks. It will be a stacked heal with scarf joint. I also made a few blanks from Sapele while I was in the neck blank building mood.

Glued the box shut.

I worked on the end wedge and router'd the binding/purfling channel. The channel was a bit tricky since I was decided to add purfling on the sides and around the end wedge but it worked out well and I am happy with the results.

I did abalone purfling with white/black on each side. Since not mentioned earlier, I decided on lighter coloured walnut binding which will match the centre on the back.