July 14th 2024

Sure I am a bit distracted playing with my CNC but I am doing some useful work. The bridge pins need to be located and drilled early on a falcate braced steel string acoustic. The primary falcate braces need to go between bridge pins (I suppose I could go pin less!). So to make the placement easy I made a hole guide where the leading edge of the guide is the leading edge of the saddle at the high E location. This guide makes it really easy to locate, center and square the hole guide.

The drilled holes are used to index the, in this case a hard maple, bridge plate also cut with the CNC. The bridge plate is 1.5 mm with a laminated CF weave between it and the top. While Gore's process is to put the CF tow for the primary falcate braces down at the same time as the bridge plate I have found it is too stressful to do the plate and the falcate braces at the same time. So I installed the plate by itself. When I epoxy the falcate braces down I will run the CF tow over the plate under the falcate brace.



Not to waste the epoxy I mixed I made a laminated bridge blank, from top: 3 mm Brz rosewood, CF weave, 8 mm Brz rosewood.





Bridge plate epoxied on top



While waiting for the epoxy to cure I carved a test bridge from a rosewood blank I had. I will use this for a non falcate guitar in the future.







Happy with the bridge I carved one with the laminated blank





Moving back to the top I put in the rebates for the bridge plate in the primary falcate braces. I used a razor saw for depth and just carefully used a chisel clear the rebate.







Finally today I epoxied on the falcate braces. Sorry no in process pictures as I always have epoxy on my fingers. So a picture getting ready. Mise en place!

July 18th 2024

Once the epoxy cured (the next day) I profiled the the primary and secondary falcate braces. I plan to leave the height of the braces around the bridge 7 mm, My guess is the resonant frequency of the top will end up around 180 Hz. I found the 00 ends up with a higher top resonance than than Gore medium steel string with the same brace heights as it is a smaller guitar. I then epoxied down the all but the upper transverse brace. One might notice that a sound hole top doubler patch showed from the last post. I noticed I forgot to install it before I put the falcate braces. No problem I cut one out and installed it.







While the epoxy was curing I spritz a set of reverse kerfed linings and while wet clamped them on the outside of the sides. This is sort of prebending them to avoid breaking them when I am installing them. It is amazing how well they take the shape after them dry.



I installed them one at a time.



I finished the day laying on carbon fiber tape on top of the braces.

July 24th 2024

I have a few more days into the project Finishing the top bracing I decided to spend a few hours making the upper transverse brace on the CNC instead of by hand. Still it was a CNC learning experience; also the radius is a bit complex 28' on the edges with a flat section in the middle. While it is easy to radius the brace and then flatten the center section (where the fretboard sits), I was able to build an exact reverse caul to help clamp.



I still needed to cut the rebates for the falcate braces and the sound hole braces by hand. I set the heights of the rebates to match the height of the braces, cut to the vice with a razor saw and clear the channels with a chisel.







Then using the CNC made caul I clamped the upper transverse brace onto the top.



With the top bracing finished I spent quite a bit of time setting the neck angle into the top. From my initial profile work early in the build I was close but the top had a bit too high of an angle.



I used a plane to fix the profile, A bit at a time I lower the sides around the waist and on the fretboard extension. I continued to work the extension of the fretboard until the extension was right on the bridge.



I cut and radiused all of the back braces from stock I made earlier in the build. Rather than using a my gobar deck, a real pain with the 10' radius and the gabled braces I glued them one at a time using a radiused board and cam clamps.









A little time with the chisel profiled the braces. I also spent some time with cleaning up the rims.



Just a little bit of work and I can close the box.