Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello,

I'm building my first kit and I just got the bracing done on the top. I took a look at it and it noticed that the marks for the upper bout brace, ie. the wide flat brace, may be too close to the other upper bout brace. There is only about 1/4 to 1/2 inch between the two. I placed the braces directly on top of the marks that Martin had placed on the top, but now when I dry fit the top, the extension on the neck block (L-shaped neck block) hits the wide flat brace. It looks like I should have moved that brace about another 1/4 towards the neck, but if I did that it would partially cover the neck block cut-out in the top.

What to do?

I could plane a portion of the L-shape section of the neck block, or I could carefully shave the center portion of the flat brace.

Any suggestions.

Thanks

Joe, the flat brace is not that important, and in fact, many good builders omit it entirely. You can sacrifice part of it without any real consequences.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

That popsicle brace is there to control the shear force from the neck and fretboard extension. You can pull this off easy with a cloths iron. I do agree you don't need as much as they put on . Allow the popsicle brace to extend about 1 inch per side or at least and cleats along the shear line . If you don't , you run the risk of this area collapsing and caving into the sound hole .
I know there are guys taking them out of Martins , and I have replace a few of them again this year that were removed. If you apply heat to the brace and use a flexible putty knife you can get this out in ablut 4 to 5 minutes and redo. I make my popsicle brace 3/4 by about 4 and be sure to radius them so there is no step on the edge to the top.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

If you're just starting at this IMO you will want to leave it alone. You could accidently or inadvertently harm your top. It's not gonna hurt to have it in there where you put it. I did the same thing when I built my first guitar: I followed the lines on the top, but then afterwards, looked more closely at pictures and noticed the differences. I even put the brace in, same as you, and I even put the thicker brace too close to the soundhole. I kicked myself a lot and would've done it differently, if I had looked at all the pictures first, but ... the guitar is done and it sounds great! I'll do it differently on the next one.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."

can you post a pic

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Thanks for the advice. I want to keep the brace, but I need to have the top st flush with the rim. As it is now, it will not due to no clearance for the L-shaped portion of the neck block.

Should I shave the neck block (just the L-portion) or should I shave down the thickness of the brace?

Thanks for your help.

BTW, good to know I'm not the 1st to make this mistake.

to be honest , you can actually remove the cantilever off the neck block. That was a new addition to the neck block. I build without that anyway. Yes you can trim the neck block to let things fit if you feel more comfortable with that .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Any clues to why they added the cantilever (so that's what its called ) to the neck block? In the few books I have none show this type of neck block.

I was out at Martin for training a few years ago and I was told it was for mostly a clamping cawl for the fretboard extension. I am not sure when the exact date they started using them but I know it was sometime in the late 80's or early 90's

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Here's my top bracing after it was all glued on. Yay!



Here's what I did to my popsicle brace after I realized the cantilever was going to be sitting on top of it.



And after the top was glued on. Yay again.



Today the guitar plays and sounds great.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."

Thanks for the advice. I decided to remove a portion of the cantilever on the neck block. I tried removing the popsicle brace with a hot iron, but after a few minutes I was hearing crackling but the brace would not lift. I got scared and decided to reclamp the popsicle brace and just modify the neck block.

Thanks again.