This morning I finished fitting the last 2 back braces into the center strip. All ready to start gluing the braces into place now! This is where all the card stock I cut up comes into play.
The back of an acoustic is domed, and the radius depends on the model. I believe (although I may be incorrect) that Martin uses a 15 foot radius on the back of their guitars. Ordinarily, the braces would be glued to the back in a radius dish to keep the proper shape. Since I don't have this tool, I'm going to use a method I read on the website of Kenneth Michael Guitars.
The back of an acoustic is domed, and the radius depends on the model. I believe (although I may be incorrect) that Martin uses a 15 foot radius on the back of their guitars. Ordinarily, the braces would be glued to the back in a radius dish to keep the proper shape. Since I don't have this tool, I'm going to use a method I read on the website of Kenneth Michael Guitars.
Holding the brace at its center on a flat surface, place pieces of card stock under the brace one by one. Basically, you want to make a shim out of several pieces of card stock so that it matches the radius of the brace. When I had a good fitting "shim" I taped the pieces together so they wouldn't move around. Now I repeated this for the other half of the brace.
Next I put my guitar back on a flat surface and put the brace in place. Then I put my "shims" under the back such that they were centered to the brace. These shims force the guitar back to conform to the exact radius of the brace when clamped!
Next, I needed a method of clamping the brace. 8 clamps and several pieces of wood gave me a clamping method that looked like it would work. The picture shows my method without any glue. Then I unclamped everything, hoping to remember exactly how I had everything clamped (another reason for taking lots of pics while building). I applied a generous amount of glue to the brace, and clamped everything and to my delight my clamping method worked great! Even glue squeeze out all around the brace is a good sign! The only problem with my method of clamping, is cleaning up the glue sqeeze out is tricky with so many clamps and stuff in the way! I tried to clean up everything best I could. Now I wait for a few hours for the glue to dry, and I will repeat these steps to glue the remaining 3 braces