Very pretty! You might request that Lance move this thread to the Guitar Building Forum.

Lovely rosette! I can still remember the pain I felt for you when your last one met its end. Glad to see you back on the horse!!!

Just in the process of finishing my take on a 1936 L-OO

That is awesome, great taste. Thanks for posting, these threads always get me motivated to produce the best work that I can because of work like yours.

Admittedly I don't do well with failure.

That was a painful loss of a year's worth of work! Hopefully I've learned from my failures.

Just in the process of finishing my take on a 1936 L-OO

Last year I had a real setback on the bass viol that I'm building. An extreme humidity even effected the fish glue, and after a few days, I had too many spots failing. There was not finish on the instrument yet, so I decided to remove the plates and get it re-mediated. In the end, I decided to make an entire new back, which meant that I had to redo all of the inlay. This work has to be fitted in-between other work so its taken a long while. I am just finishing the inlay now.

I also have a few Tele thinline bodies underway using figured and spalted maple drop tops on walnut bodies. They'll have walnut necks as well, with Ziricote fingerboards.

Finally, I am working on some cigar box inspired guitars, just for fun.

Seriously!!! Doug that must have been a tough one to swallow. That was some incredible inlay. But what about the glue failure? I've done probably 15 guitars and all the glue used on the top work was fish glue. Was the humidity combined with really high heat. Hearing that and seeing another humidity fish glue failure thread is making me think again about fish glue.

This morning I finally glued in the last of the back inlay piece! Photos to follow.

Yes, seriously. Second time around on this one.

I'm not blaming the glue, but some of the circumstances and my failure to recognize their significance.

My shop is not humidity controlled. I do the best that I can by working when the humidity is in the right range.

However, last summer...

The viol was hanging near an open window of the shop. I had been leaving it open 24/7 for the fresh air and breeze while working. The problems happened in July, the instrument was in the white, there was high humidity, and during the night the humidity would spike as the evening cooled off.

So, the net effect was like the instrument hanging for prolonged hours in a cool steam. The glue was softening over several days, and then one day it just couldn't take it anymore and it let goo too much to leave alone. I decided that it would be easier to remediate by taking the plates off while the glue was soft rather than leave it and let the glue harden up again.

By the time that all the scraping and sanding had been done cleaning the inlay for finish, the inlay lines were quite thin. Some of them were now coming loose in wonky ways. The back wood wasn't very well quartered, so I figured that it would be better to make a new (and better!) back.

The new back wood is better, thicknessed better, and the inlay is better executed.

Sometimes you just gotta suck it up and move forwards.