Looking very good so far Paul....to me the bearclaw sitka top looks like it could be from Brent Cole...the amount of claw and pinkish tan colour looks familiar. If so the stuff I have received from him in the past has been 'very' stiff, so I am thinking that the thin area of the waist may not be such a problem, but as Allen suggests, that would depend on how far it extends toward the soundhole.
It is difficult to tell from the images to see just how tall you have left the finger braces, but it is worth mentioning that one of the reasons why these braces are taken down to nothing on the ends is to eliminate the chance of them forming stress risers. My own experience is that the taller the brace is left at the end, the more chance it has of popping or splitting upon any impact with the top. Something else to consider as well is that the finger braces seem to have more impact on the tone of the instrument than do the tone bars. In fact back when I was fooling around inside cheap old guitars to try and make them sound better, the finger braces where my first target. So my point here is that they should not be considered as purely structural just because they are small.
Finally, if the thin part of the top 'is' a concern, and it does in fact encroach too far toward the soundhole, you could always use a soundhole patch to introduce some integrity. This will have 'far' less negative impact on the tone of the instrument than leaving the fingers too big...Fitting such a patch is a real bitch if you do it after you have cut out the soundhole as you have already done, but it can be done with paper templates etc, I know cause I have done it myself.
Here is an image of what I am talking about. This one was fitted 'after' the original soundhole was cut when I had a change of heart: note the grain direction of the patch?
- soundhole patch.jpg (78.12 KiB) Viewed 11825 times
Cheers
Kim
(It's beautiful wood, but I would have liked a clear board.) If I thin it down to 1.5mm, would it still be too heavy?
