martin gurus, what is this???

[Mark Daigrepont]

Trolling ebay I found an assembled dread. rim that the seller matched up with other misc. martin parts to sell as a kit. For $300 it seemed like a good deal. Got everything in today....and the rim is NOT a dread! I'm messaging back and forth with the seller and it seems they'll make it right, but could any Martin gurus out there tell me what rim this is?
The dimensions of the assembled rim have me puzzled.... It's just over 19 3/4" long. 16" wide at lower bout, 12 1/4" at the waist, and just over 12" at the upper bout. rim depth is 4 1/2" at the rear, and 3 5/8" at the upper bout by the neck joint.

[Clay Schaeffer]

With the rims floating free like that, dimensions are pretty adjustable. Pushing the sides closer together should grow the length some and get all the dimensions closer to standard. The depth of the rims sounds pretty close, at least in the tailblock area (the top and back will bring the depth up to 4 7/8 ths inches). The waist may have widened out a bit from it sitting around for a while. It happens to the best of us!

[Mark Daigrepont]

I sent the seller a pic of the dread top he included with the kit on top of the rim... He was very apologetic. He said he thinks this may be a grand auditorium rim, but I'm not at all familiar with Martin sizes.

The good side is that he offered to build a new rim for me to fit the dread parts that came with the kit; so basically I get a free (unknown yet) rim to play with. Seems way more than fair; the guy really is going out of his way to make it right. These are all Indian rosewood, so hopefully they'll make some nice sounding instruments.

[Ryan Mazzocco]

The waist may have widened out a bit from it sitting around for a while. It happens to the best of us!

........................ .... Oh! hehe I just got it.

[Alain Lambert]

Here is a nice table of Martin guitars dimensions from the archives

http://www.mimf.com/old-lib/martin_dimensions.htm

It is prety close to a D, like Clay mentionned, it just need to be placed in a mold.

[Mark Daigrepont]

Thanks Alain,

good info

[Mario Proulx]

It's probably a dread rim, but it has relaxed so much that it has lost most of its shape. The dimensions also seem to jibe.

Build a dreadnought form, and force the rim into it, and all should become clear..

Nice EIR RW, no matter what the shape it ends up being...

[Michael Lewis]

It looks like a Martin D to me. Like Mario suggested, make a body form and put the rim in it to hold the correct shape during the gluing process to attach the top and back. The angled relief cuts in the top of the neck block look like they are for the "new" Martin "A" bracing system.

[Matthew Lau]

Let us know how it goes!

I'm pretty sure that it's a Dreadnaught rim, from the depth of the sides.

[Mark Daigrepont]

Well when I originally messaged back and forth with the seller on ebay, he said that he'd make me a new rosewood rim. Now, I'm starting to feel guilty though, and will likely message him back and tell him that I'm just going to put it in a D mold and try it....

Thanks for everyone's valuable info!