The Craftsman's Path #33: Dreadnought Guitar - Adding the back braces

Looks like your making good progress on this – I’m going to have to get caught up on you guitar series soon!

-- Dorje (pronounced "door-jay"), Seattle, WA

Thanks Dorje. Yes…take a look at what I’ve been up to. It’s definitely a unique set of operations. It’s been fun so far!

-- Mark, Webster New York, Visit my website at http://thecraftsmanspath.com

I have used curved cauls and clamps to glue back braces. I am hoping to get to having a vacuum bag arrangement for backs and tops. Keep plugging. This is good.

Rikkor,

I considered going the caul route but I thought that ultimately the Go-Bar Deck would be a useful fixture in the long run. It was fairly simple to build and use. Though I found fiberglass bars to use now (re-purposed from another application) as you will see in my next post.

Now, getting the back and top attached to the sides should be interesting!

-- Mark, Webster New York, Visit my website at http://thecraftsmanspath.com

I bought a bunch of spool clamps from Stew-Mac for attaching tops and backs. Works great.

I just bought some supplies to make some. Hopefully they will work as good as the commercial versions once I make them. Good to know that they work well for attaching the back and top.

-- Mark, Webster New York, Visit my website at http://thecraftsmanspath.com

Go-bars have been used for hundreds of year. It’s one of my favorite methods.

You can see my post about them here:

http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/GaryK/blog/2554

-- Gary - Never pass up the opportunity to make a mistake look like you planned it that way - Tyler, TX