Acoustic Guitar Construction

So today I started gluing in back braces. I feel like the sorcerer's apprentice. At this moment I have two braces clamped in place. Nine fiberglass rods doing the clamping. Of these rods, five of them are delaminating. One other has already broken.

I must be doing, or have done, something wrong. The fiberglass driveway stakes I cut in half to make clamps are 24" long, 1/4" in diameter. The distance between the deck upper surface and the inside of my mold is 21.5 inches. Gotta bend the stakes to get clamping pressure, but any suggestions as to the relationship between the stakes and the air gap in the deck?

Any advice, comment, encouragement, or dope slaps, will be most gratefully received.

Thanks, folks.

Your go-bars are likely very stiff. Mine are also cut from longer fiberglass rods (Harbor Freight wire-running rods). They are around a half meter long (~20"), but are only 5/32" thick. When flexed an inch or so, each exerts around 5 pounds of force. If flexed two inches, the force increases to around 6.5 pounds.

Hans, thanks for describing the compression struts you use. I think I was overbending the quarter-inch rods I had (past tense, eight of them exploded). I'd seen photographs of decks in use, and in those images the rods were very seriously bent. I copied what I thought I remembered I saw.

Cheap education, all told.

I actually bought rods from a kite builder supply and put rubber tips on them. I ordered 48 inch rods and cut them in half. Adjusted the deck height to give them what felt like the right tension. It’s worked it very well for me.

I've read in numerous places that a 2" bend is more than sufficient. More than that does not add useful tension, and in fact creates more of a hazard.

I sure found out that too much of a bend can be a hazard - - - flying partial fiberglass stakes...

That actually happened to Herman, and the damage it did explains a lot of why he is the way he is....