Acoustic Guitar Construction

Have been collecting books on guitars in general and building specific for quite a number of years. I have most of those Ken has reviewed. My last purchase was by far the best I have seen. They are the double set Gore and Gilet books. Both steel string and classical covered with plans but leans toward s.s. A bit deep reading by times with a lot of formula that a bit heavy for me.Gore is also an engineer and tends to take a very analytical approach to the whole process of building. Still there is tons of useful material especially towards material selection and testing methods for material selection. He covers a totally new bracing design along with CF strands in an I-beam configeration for braces. Bling and fancy inlay etc is not covered but all else for construction is included. Post tuning is covered very nicely. Books are a bit pricy but to my mind are worth every penny.More info on Trevor Gore Guitars.
Tom

Hi Tom - I've heard the term 'falcate' bracing. What is it exactly?

Falcate bracing is interesting but hard to do. It is a lot like an x-brace but has some advantages structually; avoiding the cross over it is a bit stronger near the bridge than a x-brace. Supposedly a SS still can be made to sound like steel string guitars we know and love. I have not built one.

Here is what Trevor says
"The system is configured to withstand the high twisting forces exerted by the strings over the saddle onto the guitar’s top (tending to rotate the saddle downwards and towards the sound hole) whilst still allowing the top great scope for vibration. There are two major benefits: the stiffness distribution makes for a more even sound across all notes (i.e. there is no “designed in” bias towards a particular frequency response) and there is increased monopole mobility (responsiveness and volume) without compromising longevity, because the strength and stiffness (and consequentially the mass) is where is it needed and not elsewhere, making for an efficient design. "

Does Gore or anyone else sell guitars made like this? Long term life expectancy would be, actually (in my view) is a concern --- wood always has a propensity to return to it natural shape, so the boomerang braces will tend to straighten out over time, there is no stopping the forces resulting from humidity variations, even minute movement can cause the glue joint to fail -- that's my evaluation anyway.

Update ----- Trevor's guitars are available here: http://www.goreguitars.com.au/main/page_guitars__.html Also the curved braces are actually a beam laminated construction rather then simple bent wood I would assume that configuration is very stable.

I don't have the book(s), nor do I even pretend to know anything about the Falcate bracing.
The bracing appears to be a laminate of wood and carbon fiber?

And where might Mr. Gore's website be located? Or its name? I'm curious. Thanks.

Robert Hosmer wrote:The bracing appears to be a laminate of wood and carbon fiber?

The curved braces are laminated, a well proven way of making curved things in wood as varied as chairs and structural sections used in the building industry. Carbon fibre is applied primarily as a way of limiting cold creep without having to use wood in the quantities required to reduce the local stresses to levels at which creep is negligible. So you can expect longevity to be significantly better than all wood guitars of similar responsiveness. CF has been around in classical guitars for ~30 years now and seems to be performing to expectation.