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2019-08-30

Making the rosette


20190502
I started designing and making the rosette while I was doing the neck and other things.
I wasn't quite sure how the rosette would turned out so experimented quite a fair bit in making the tiles for the rosette.
The motif I had in mind was based on the Romanillos arches but I wanted to simplified it a little.
No much photo was taken during the making as I was concentrating on the making instead.
In the end it turned out pretty well, I'd say.

The hard part is to form the arches.
This was achieve by having 2 blank with a triangular cross-section profile.
One blank was planed with a convex based plane while the other having a concave plane.
The final part was sanded using the blank itself to ensure the fitting.
Finally to glue up, a black veneer was sandwiched between the 2 blanks.
After that the blank was cut into tiles.


Arches tile - 2 tile form a arch

Next was to form the pillars which support the arches.
For this I use several blanks which include the red coloured bloodwood.
This part was relatively easier.
As the arches were formed using white as background the pillar section was similarly using white as background too.


Gluing the blank to form the tile for the pillar


Gluing the blank to form the tile


Cross section of the pillar tile


20190516
After the tile is cut they are temporarily laid out to see the effect of the rosette.


Pillar tile cut


All the cut tiles


Trying out the tile layout to form the rosette


20190527
Subsequently more tile variation were added to the rosette motif.
It has evolved to become like a train bridge of some sorts.
I jointed a centre piece for the embedding of the rosette tiles instead of embedding into the main top directly.
This gives me the option of trying out various designs before inlay into the top.


Create a channel for inlaying the rosette tiles


Testing out the rosette tiles motif


The base layer inlayed


20190603
The inlay tiles were planed down to level and I proceed to cut the channels for the other pillar motif section.



Plane the tiles to level


Scribing the 2nd channel for the pillar motif tiles


Route the 2nd channel using router plane


Channel cut


Layout the pillar motif tiles


20190606
After the 2nd channel is cut, I began to inlay the 2nd set of tiles with a pillar motif.
In between the pillars, I create a tile that sort of look liked water body with that green blue lines.
So together it looked like a sort of train bridge.



Inlay the 2nd set of tiles


Main motif done


20190626
After that I level down the main motif channel mostly by sanding.
All the tiles were essentially end grain and it doesnt take planing too well even with a sharped low angle block plane.
After that I also cut the channel for the surrounding purfling theme.



Central rosette theme level down


Another angle. After sanding the colour also looked better


Channel for the outer purfling is cut


20190711
The outer purfling is inlayed



Inlaying purfling


Inlaying purfling


20190726
After both purfling is inlayed the rosettte is cut to shape.



Inlaying both the purfling


Rosette cut out roughly


20190729
After that the rosette blank backing is thinned down almost to the rosette tiles itself.
This is to prepare for the inlay into the sound board.
Subsequently the channel is cut into the top and inlayed onto the top.



Thinning down the backing


Cut to rosette shape


Marking the rosettte location


Routing the channel


Inlay the rosette


20190806
Following that I added a tinge of red purfling to the rosette to make it more compatible with the back wood.
The final rosette looks good and it is the most complex rosette to date.



Inlay the red purfling


Tape it down


Scrape it to flush


Rosette done


Close up view of rosette


20190830
After that I added a patch to fill up the hollow which will be covered by the fingerboard.
Then the patch is leveled to flush.



Glue the patch


Patch leveled


Sound hole cut


Rosette done.