The cedar top with the blonde back was made after looking at a photo of a narrow lower bout guitar by Barcelona makers Ribot Y Alcaniz. They made student and low cost guitars at end of the 19th century into the 1920's. I was attracted to the narrow lower bout to work with the idea that less wide can have an efficiency that broad lower bouts possibly don't have. Not a fact, just a working theory to play around with.
It came together by circumstance of having some mismatched components already sitting around the shop. There were a set odf bent Indian rose wood ribs that I cut off of a guitar I made for myself which I end up not liking and I used as a tester for changing tops. The ribs were re-scraped and added to the project. I choose a cedar top, because why not. I got the Australian Gidgee head plate veneer in a wood trade with an Aussie violin maker. I sent him some cherry for baroque violin pegs he sent me head plates. and the back is made of staves of Hinoki a kind of Japanese cypress very similar to Port Orford cedar, which as we know is not a cedar, but actually Lawson Cypress.
The thing that kicked it off was the rosette, which was a total fluke. I was testing out a new router compass I had made and cutting out circles. I grabbed a few scraps of ebony which had a lot of light wood in them, very striped, and I edge joined them in funny ways to make a big sheet about 8" square. I glued it to a thick piece of paper and then glued it to a board. I routed out a rosette sized circle, but first i randomly used a Forstner bit to make some half in holes in the flat square of ebony sheet. Using the corresponding plug cutter, I made some plugs of the ebony and popped the plugs into holes and glued them. I broke out the surrounding areas and used a wet knife to free the rosette circle from the board. I stared at it for three to four months as it was pinned to the wall of the workbench.
Eventually the space aliens in their invisible ship in orbit around the Earth told me what to do with the wooden ring. They said mount it in a cedar top. And I obeyed because I always do what they tell me to do. Then the top was thinned and braced.
To add to the total confusion and randomness of this guitar, I used a variation on an open lateral brace scheme I had seen on a plan for a 1973 Jose Romanillos guitar where both upper and lower later braces are open with small braces passing through them. The Aliens were pleased.
That is how the guitar was built. more pictures to follow.
