Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm going to have a rather delicate carving for the rosette in the instrument I'm working on and I'm thinking I'm going to need something to back the spruce to give it a bit more toughness. I seem to recall that perhaps lute makers hand carve something similar and I'm asking for some advice to select the backing.

This is cut on a CNC so I do have a depth limit on how thick the backing is. In my test run, I used manilla paper from the art store that's probably about .010 thick and I'm not happy with it. For this test run I just used titebond to adhere it and once on, you could peel it away leaving just a super thin layer.

Any thoughts on what I should use? I'm almost wondering if I should use some sort of thin linen or something.

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I've seen old instruments that used linen backing, but I've also seen backing made of parchment or slunk. Super thin skins like these are very strong in multiple directions and very thin--much thinner and probably stronger than linen.

Dave