So bearing in mind that this is going to be as much a work of art as a musical instrument I allowed myself a bit of latitude in bracing the top and pulled together a whole lot of ideas that I have seen or thought would be useful.
The lower bout bracing is straight from some pics of Ervin Somogyi's guitars but I felt that it'd suit the King Wiliam Pine given it's usual lack of stifness along the grain. I also like the idea of not leaving great swathes of the lower bout unsupported. This sort of bracing allows more control over the ultimate stiffness of the top, both along and across the grain compared with the Martin style diagonal tone bars that I usually use.
The lattice work is surprisingly strong after glueing it all together. The lattice brace diminsions are 5mm x 3mm.
Bridge plate is a laminate of Osage Orange and Brazilian Rosewood and is much wider than I usually build. This again is to compensate for the lack of stifness in the KB top and to resist too much bridge rotation.
Working with the bridge plate is aother layer of King Billy around the sound hole to stiffen it up so that it won't dip. (you can't really see it from the pics)
The upper transverse brace is capped with 2mm Carbon Fibre courtesy of Mr Hickey.
The X-brace is slightly scalloped in the Martin Tradition.
The finger braces are angled slightly more across the grain than I usually do to add some stiffness.
I don't think KB is suitable for anything bigger than an OM but I've had some success with it on parlour guitars.
The X-brace fairly standard 6mm x 12mm.
I thought I'd throw these pics up to spark a bit of discussion about bracing and why you do certain things to achieve your objectives
- FIL26128.JPG (116 KiB) Viewed 25921 times
- FIL26129.JPG (120 KiB) Viewed 25921 times
- FIL26130.JPG (3.93 MiB) Viewed 25921 times
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Bob, Geelong
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If Becks are a sponsor next year I guess we'll just have to give East Augusta a miss.
