Binding

I have made and fitted the bindings which I made out of an old 'orphan' guitar side (in Indian rosewood). The white section in the picture is bone, which the strings will wrap over.

I have also fitted the fretboard which is also Indian rosewood and tones in quite nicely. I was going to try and use authentic glues, but in the end there is a bit of everything in there: titebond, cascamite, araldite and superglue !

On with the soundboard

Here is the soundboard with the braces glued in position. I was guided by the positioning on a lute, but it's really just guesswork! I also had a go a some tap tuning (listening to the sound of the board when tapped with the end of a finger), and although the sound clearly changed as I removed wood from the braces, I was not not sure what I was aiming at...



Anyway, when I was happy with the tap-tone, I glued the soundboard onto the body.



I also tidied up the fretboard a bit, ready for gluing into place, and made some lengths of binding (rosewood) and bent them to shape on my bending iron.

The soundboard

Here is the soundboard with the rosette cut out. I followed the method in my lute book and I am reasonably satisfied with the outcome, although I think I might be needing some glasses soon!

I have made some tone bars from some nice quarter sawn Alaskan spruce (it's light as a feather) and glued the first three in place. I have put a very slight curve in the soundboard to help resist the downward pressure of the strings (although I think that this will be only modest with gut strings).

Finally, I have also started on the fretboard, by locating a lenght of rosewood in my 'woodpile'.

Rosette

Here is the design (I used a program called Kali to help make this).

I printed this out and stuck it on the reverse of the soundboard.I had thinned the wood to just over 1mm to make the cutting out easier.