Step 2 - Rosette

For my first guitar I bought a ready made rosette, but this time am keen to try and make one. There are two obstacles to this - (1) thinking up a good design and (2) the time it will take to make it. I think I will set a time limit on the exercise and if it takes too long I will buy one and crack on. I don't want this guitar to take another 5 years!

Creating a Design

The veneer I have bought is .6mm which means I need to create a design based on tiles of 20 x 20 colour blocks. I have found a great little tool on the internet for designing rosettes, which can be found here.
The app runs on JRE and allows you to save the designs so perfect for whiling away hours each night.

Anyway, here is my first attempt at an 80's design - Rubick style:

Making the rosette

The main part of the rosette is created using the following steps:

1. Create the column planks

Create stacks of 20 veneer strips (each about 15cm long), glued into a plank, representing a single column of the final design. The design being 20 by 20, this requires the assembly and gluing of 20 such planks, unless any of the columns are repeated in the design.

Cutting up strips of .6mm veneer, about 15cm long

Gluing 20 strips into a plank, different colours arranged to represent one column of the final design

A strip cut out and planed flat

First couple of planks

This is where it goes wrong - the yellow veneer seemed to squash too much and the plank is about 2mm shorter than the others

UPDATE - have discovered the yellow is .1mm thinner than the rest, causing the above problem.  Lesson learned - check the thickness first! I am using extra strips to compensate. I have also built a simple gluing jig now (see picture) and am building up the planks from much thinner strips of veneer to avoid wastage.

Simple jig. The middle section is floating and wedges make for easy adjustment of pressure. In use, I add slips of paper to avoid gluing the plank to the jig

2. Slice the planks into column strips

The planks are sawn into thin strips, and then planed and scraped down to be .6mm thick. This is now one column in the design.

3. Assemble the column strips

Once all 20 columns are done, they are glued together to form a plank that has the final design running down its length like a stick of rock.

4. Angle the plank

The sides are lightly planed / scraped to create a slight angle so that the tiles fit together tightly when arranged in a circle

5. Slice the tiles

The plank is sliced into tiles which can then be layed into the soundboard.