Official Luthiers Forum!

My father and I, when we first began our lutherie journey, used to carve and scallop our braces with a chisel. However, this took a considerable amount of time, and as we completed a few instruments, we found it hard to keep bracing scallops consistent from instrument. My father designed a jig that allows blanks to be clamped between two oak "bushings" that allow the user to quickly bandsaw out the rough shape of the soundboard braces. Once the cutting is complete, the user then marks the excess material and then uses a drum sander to clean up the edges and remove the excess. I realize it is an untraditional method, but it is a major timesaver, and we love the consistency from guitar to guitar. As of right now, I have no pictures of the said jig, but I hope too very soon. I was curious as to whether or not anyone had a special way of doing thier bracing, or had any comments on brace shaping methods. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

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Jake Archer
~~Make a joyful noise unto the Lord~~

I thought about a jig for the brace scallops and tapers when I was starting out, but found shaping the soundboard braces with a sharp chisel and finger planes to be one of the most enjoyable and satisfying parts of the build. It's easier to glue them up in a go bar deck unshaped as well.
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Pre-shaped braces are much, much easier to glue on with a vacuum rig.
Like Terry, I glue my braces on a go-bar deck, square and radiused on the bottom, and shape them on the top.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Exactly! In fact if I could have my way I would not even build guitars I would just brace and voice tops. I love it but have not gotten to the point, yet....., where I am putting on soft music and lighting candles and then getting out the finger planes and paring chisel........

Ahhh, the intimate moments of brace carving and top tuning!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

When I first up and running good I had this idea to build a brace pre scallop shaping jig, and did so. I pre shaped a standard rough-in scallop into my X braces and shaped the radius into the bottom of all braces. The idea was to save time carving most of the scalloping into the brace. This left the profile or cross section rectangular but profiled the rough long axis shape. These shapes had room for some voicing but after a year or so to doing this I found that the voicing requirements from set to set were to varied for a pre shaped brace and I abandoned the fixture for anything other than shaping the radius.