Official Luthiers Forum!

Hey - That sounds like a good idea! Below is a picture of one of my latest builds with ply sides. I epoxy veneer, in this case koa, to the sides with the grain running perpendicular. I don't believe these sides will split any time soon. The stiffness is vastly improved. This is part of my methodology of building thin tops - I want the sides to be very supportive.

_________________
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

I don't mean to resurrect this thread, but has anyone read the new acoustic guitar magazine?

there is a repair article on a 1941 d-18, the relevant bit was a crack, along the grain, that ran from the tail to head block (near enough), down the whole bass rib. the cloth and glue side reinforcement had done nothing, as they too had also cracked cleanly in exactly the same manner.

i realise that this guitar is the best part of 70 years old, and the cause of this trauma (and the age) was unknown (though there was quite a bit of cross grain damage by the tail block indicating that there was an impact there),

could wood fail like this? is there anything that one could do to help extend the durability of the reinforcements?

thanks

Jonny

_________________
"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening happens again, happens again. Though not necessarily in that order." Douglas Adams

Al Carruth braced up a bunch of sides with different supports, including wood and several different methods gluing different types of cloth supports. He then cracked them. His results showed the best crack stopping from cotton/poly biased tape from the fabric store glued on with hide glue and (I think) sealed with shellac. I've switched to doing this and find it easier to do than in letting wood into the linings.