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Scalloped Adirondack Braces to love. Just wanted to share a picture of 17 of 20 made last week. Have a great day, It's Spring down here!

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25' Radius, perfect quarter, stress tested, super-glued joint, and gets a top cap at glue-up and tapering sides toward the peaks. Dickey38418.4200462963

Lovely! Only a bunch of geeky Luthiers would lust over a pile of STICKS!   

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Love the storage system!

Yup. A 5/16th " dowel rod glued in the upright.

Okay, I got a question for you. Why do many makers fail to cap the notch of the xbrace? I just don't understand that. Looking in my Taylor Dred it has nothing. And apparently no super glue on the joint either.?????

Don't know Bruce. I've owned Martin, Tacoma, Guild, Taylor, Takamine, Gibson, and Alvarez-Yari. None of them had a cap. The first I had ever heard of it was on this forum.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

The cap looks to me like a major structural component in "closing the loop".
Maybe the rest of the world will catch on someday.
Nelson

It's just one of the many details that separates the factories from the hand builts.

Martin puts a piece of glue soaked linen to reinforce that joint. Seems pretty useless to me. I'm like you Bruce. There is no good reason not to close that gap with a glued on piece of wood of some sort.

Okay, I can sleep well tonight.

I ALWAYS close that gap, I can't imagine putting a guitar out there and not doing that. But Mario's right, it's one of the differences between hand and factory built instruments...

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Here's a potentially dumb question for you guys. Is it common practice to use CA to glue the x-brace? I've just been using Titebond.

I do glue on a cap piece on top of the joint.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

I use thin CA. The reason, I align the braces first, and it just makes sense to wick CA into the joint. Then of course I Titebond on the cap and Titebond it to the top, others use hide glue there.

I just want my braces to slip together flush, then without moving them, CA is wicked in.... from all four sides wiping each of four intersections before moving on. There just doesn't seem to be room for glue otherwise it's a tight fit.

Matter of fact, my braces are .315 which is 5/16" thick. I found that the notch cut with a 5/16 inch single edge carbide router bit, needed adjustment to about .308" to slide together without forcing, but was not loose at all. Could be that the router bit is just cutting it .006" too small, or that the fiber in the cut takes up room?

Thanks for the clarification Bruce!

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

[QUOTE=Dickey] Okay, I got a question for you. Why do many makers fail to cap the notch of the xbrace? I just don't understand that. Looking in my Taylor Dred it has nothing. And apparently no super glue on the joint either.?????[/QUOTE]

Why superglue, per se? Don't really see any advantage to it per se, other than the fact you can 'shoot' it in with the joint assembled; CA glue's got really lousy shock resistance, after all. I just use titebond on a snug-fitting lap joint and on the little 'cap' closing the notch as well. I'd be tempted to try hot hide when I start playing around with it (have a package from Mark Kett coming, so the next few will be at least partially built with hot hide...)

I make my joints snug, no movement, but not really, really tight. It's a cross-grain connection, and one piece will change dimensions slightly, while the other (lengthwise direction) won't much. Enough room for just a touch of titebond in there, anyway.Mattia Valente38418.6961805556

Mattia and others. If you've notched xbraces and not paid attention when putting them together, they can go together wrong. Murphy's law comes into play at that point.

A few sessions back, 'bout a year ago, I slapped these xbraces together CA'ing all the way. Then on the last one, I walked across the shop to my plexiglas template and held up the x, YIKES! It was wrong, matter of fact all seven I'd just glued were also wrong. Five out of seven sets broke trying to get them apart..... grin.

Moral of the story: "Know your angle, before you glue." The only purpose for the CA is to hold it steady for final radiusing in the sanding dish, 25' for me.

I learned a little trick that works to get the angle right. Hold both notches up and to the left, short end up. Bring the left brace over the right brace and slide together. I can't explain why, but it works every time. No more wrong angle braces.

You'd think it would only go together one way but it will go together two ways: right and wrong....