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Perhaps an early entrant for the next "Doofus of the month" contest?

I'm thinning a really nice cedar top for my first guitar today. Grabbed one of the plates to flex it, and the whole thing splits down the length, right in half. Just my luck, of course.

Would it be possible to glue the plate back together and use it, or am I better off just chalking it up as a loss and getting another top? I'm tempted to try using it, but I'm not sure how the extra glue joint right down the centre of one of the plates would effect the vibration of the top once the thing is strung up and ready to play.

I guess worst case scenario is that I'll glue it back together and use it to practice making rosettes on. Still sucks, though.

Glue it.

If the split is right near the center, and you haven't cut it too close to final shape or installed the rosette, you could cut away the original glue line and re-joint it. But if you get a split lined up precisely, it should be invisible anyway. I've never heard of 3 and 4 piece tops having a bad effect on sound. And on a first guitar, there will probably be worse blunders down the road

I'm on #3, and my entry into Doofus of the Month is one of the most common places for blunders... fingerboard side dots. And knowing good and well that fact, I thought long and hard and checked repeatedly before drilling them. But I forgot that I hadn't radiused the fingerboard yet, and that doing so would reduce the binding height. Yep, I centered them for the full height binding, and radiusing will cut into the tops of the dots. I'd just call it a spontaneous feature if the dots were more precisely centered vertically, but as it is, some of them will wrap around the binding a bit, and some will only be visible from the side, and it will look horrible. I haven't decided what to do about it yet.

Right. Apologies for my linguistic error. Haha.

One of the halves was about 20% thinner than the other one, so what I was going to do was thin each side of the top down to about .150", then join them and thickness to the final measurements.

It felt like I barely applied any pressure at all, but it was probably more my fault than the wood's.

I think I will take your advice and glue it back up. Hopefully the repair won't be too noticeable, but it's good to know that even if it is, it's still not totally a lost cause.

Thanks, guys!

I'm only on my first but I had the same thing happen with my WRC top right after joining it and the break was clean enough to just glue it back together.

Dang you guys be careful flexing those plates