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Searched high and low but haven't been able to come up with any tutorials or how to's. Does anyone know how to cut, bind or build rosette for an eliptical sound hole?

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But of course - should have searched for elipsograph. Thanks Filippo and that's an amazing bit of guitar jiggery if I ever saw it. Here's a but...but oval sound holes have been made for years - how's it done? By hand? Very curious now. Hmmm...first time the term 'oval' popped into my head I'll search for that.

EDIT: Here's a tutorial I found under oval sound hole http://koentoppguitars.com/blog/constru ... chicagoan/ In this case it is done by hand. Hope that helps someone else.

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For a flat top Martin "A" style mandolin I built I cut out and sanded an oval shape out of 3/4 inch material then used it as a router template to cut out the soundhole and purfling channel. I used different sized collars to offset for the purfing channel. I started my rout where the fingerboard would cover any slight screw ups and routed in a direction that "pushed" the bit toward the template (normal, not climb cutting). This seemed to work O.K.. There must be better ways to do it though.

I did it similarly to Clay. I just used the Paint program in windows to make an ellipse shape from the menu, then pasted that onto wood and used a router. The first one I did, I just marked the oval onto the top and cut it out by hand with a fret saw.

There was an article in GAL a few years back showing how Dan MaCrostie (sp?) did one, including rosette, on a mandolin.

I did same as Clay. Besides "Paint" also "Word" can easily be used to draw the ellips to be glued onto the template material :
Insert -> shapes -> basic shapes -> choose the oval -> put oval on screen (left-click, starts as a circle) -> right-click format autoshape -> input required dimensions -> print
The ellips drawn is surprisingly accurate. Check wether your routerbit and collar are concentric. If not (which is often the case) keep the router aligned with the template centerline while cutting.

I used a similiar technique when I built a Selmer guitar written up in Michael Collins book. Trace out the oval on some MDF for the rosette and then make an inner doughnut ring to place inside the oval when it's time to rout out the sound hole. Worked like a charm.

Thank you very much for all the replies. I cut this first one out by hand using a drawing from my architectural software and will bind it fairly simply to match the binding/purfling on the guitar.

I'll set up a jig with an inner liner and do a rosette for the next one.

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