Saturday 21 May 2011

Brace yourself!

So, with the old warped braces removed, I make another set of braces, but my days of glueing flat braces to a flat soundboard are over! I'm making a jig with three shaped cauls on it (a caul is a dished support) this means the back and soundboard braces are glued on with a slight radius applied during the glueing period, this means that when the soundboard is removed from the glue clamps, it retains the shape of the cauls.  Now for some pics ...









So here is the board with the 'cauls' fixed to it, they roughly correspond to a 22ft radius circle.






Here I am testing the soundboard. I've made new braces AND shaped the bottom of them to match the curve of the cauls.  The bent stick is called a go-bar, which is just a rod under pressure to be used for holding things whilst glueing up.  Note the gap under the ruler, a nice little curve that will hopefully hold after the glue goes off.





And last pic is of the back of the instrument in the new jig, clamped to death ... I have everything crossed!!


1 comment:

  1. Wow Ok that's some serious clamping! Looks like you did a very good job getting the old braces off. One complication to having the arched top is installing the bridge onto a curved surface. I just went through that with my carved archtop and it took quite a bit of fitting time.

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