Acoustic Guitar Construction

What would be cool would be one of you guys that does really clean work with your top braces - to take a close pic of the braces with glue on but not yet glued on - to show your glue coverage - and the subsequent amount of squeeze out you get, and then your process for cleaning up the squeeze out. Pictures, pictures.

Also good would be close ups of your bridge gluing - the squeeze out and the complete clean up.

A help for newbies and probably for the rest of us as well.

Please? That's the magic word!

My goal is perfect joints with no squeeze out. I don't have any pictures of the procedure yet.....cause.......it hasn't happened yet.
I'm working on it.

Kevin

Same here. I'm not asking for perfection, but I have seen some very clean internal work and bridgework on this forum and could use a little pictorial revelation.

Well I manage to get things cleaned up pretty well as I'd rather not see any evidence of the glue when I'm done. Actually I've found that a little more squeeze out is easier to clean up after giving it 15 to 20 min to set up and get rubbery. Too soon it smears, too late, and well, then its curtains.

Kevin

Although my work is not the cleanest, I happen to have some pics. Unfortunately none of the brace with glue applied in the pre-clamped state though.

I tend to apply a bead of glue down the length of the brace or bridge plate etc. and then smear it around with my finger so every part of the surface has a thin coating. The glue shouldn't be running off the edge anywhere, not should it be so thin that it's already soaked into the wood and looking dry.

Photo 1: Gluing the bridge plate on. Hard to see the glue squeeze-out, so let me crop the photo to get a better view. Photo 2: Cropped so you can see some squeeze-out. This is what I like - basically a few dots spread out along the interface which will dry and easily flick off with a chisel. Photo 3: One of the tone bars being glued on, and again you can see a few dots of glue has squeezed out. Photo 4: This is a picture of a back brace being glued on, where I used too much glue. However, I wanted to show how much squeeze-out occurs from just one clamp when using the 3x5 cards taped together to make a clamping caul underneath the back. To clean up this glue, I let it dry for 30 minutes and then scraped/peeled it off.

Thanks Dave, good pix!

Anybody else?

Frank Ford has a tip on his website I just love: wait till the glue is rubbery, cut a straw at an angle, then shove the point ahead right at the seam between the brace and the plate...the glue gets shovelled up nicely. when the tip gets too clogged, cut it again 1/8" or so up. Cheap, and it works fantastic, use it all the time.