Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm a newbie at the guitar building, but I have been a machinist, toolmaker, mechanic and a few other things in the past that help somewhat with things like working from blueprints. I find this forum and community to be a priceless resource for us new guys, and really appreciate all the advice and help. I spend a lot of time reading here, even when I'm not posting.

I'm wondering about laminating bracing with graphite composite sheet stock. Right now I'm thinking about building from the Scott Antes OM plan from LMI and I know that it is thought to be overbraced.

If I laminated my braces with the graphite composite, how far do you think I could pare them down, and is this a good solution to avoiding the overbracing in the plan? Thanks!

Rick

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Rick

Personally my opinion is that if you plan to continue building you will gain more from sticking to solid braces and well proven plans and bracing patterns till you have a good handle on tap tuning, brace shaping and the ins and outs of various bracing patterns.

Do the baby steps now and you will intuitively know how thin you can make laminated braces later. Miss the baby step and run the risk of not learning step 1 before step 99. There is a lot to learn between here and there.

Oh and there is no one answer. Each top and bracing scheme is different. Paring down is part of the tap tuning process. Rough brace stock thickness is dependent on brace stock height, and so on and so on.

Michael is right on this. Listen to his wise words.

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

That is very good advice, actually. I tend to get way out ahead of myself, as I seem to have an inate tendency to look at EVERYTHING and then start thinking, "How can I make that better?" I guess it's a bit of runaway enthusiasm. I catch myself re-engineering things in my mind all the time. I guess I'm an inveterate tinkerer.

There's another thread that discusses the braces with that particular plan, and I'll probably follow some of the advice given there and do regular braces. But someday, I'll reach a point where I'll mess around with laminating, once I've done the foundation learning.

I'm hoping that I can grab the OLF OM plan from StewMac next month, but I read in the other thread that they may not be available after some point later this month. Anyone know about this? Will there still be someplace to buy the OLF plans?

Thanks for the advice!

Rick

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Rick

Rick, the plans will still be available. They have been online only till now, but I just received my new StewMac catalog and they are now in it. I ordered the SJ and the Om plans the day they became available and must say they are first rate and well done....nicely done Michael.

Paul

No, No, No, they are a long term Item at stewmac. They were only available online until this week when the new cataloge came out. they are now and will be available online or via the January catalog hopefully for years to come

Thanks for the answers! I'm glad they'll be available! Guess I misunderstood. I need more sleep.

I'm hoping to collect all the OLF plans first, and then as many other plans as I can locate.

My eventual hope is to perhaps try my own hand at drawing plans, once I've spent a long time learning what the heck I'm doing to begin with. And provided I can still remember what they said in those drafting classes...

Rick

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Rick