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I would like to make a snakewood rosette with possibly Abalone center. Now I have made a wooden rosette before by having a piece of wood that was wide enough to the circle cut the rosette out of it.

Wondering if there is some technique that would allow me to make a rosette from 1/4" wide binding materials? Or larger chunks from scrap? Pretty hard (and expensive) to find a piece of snakewood that is large enough to do a circle cut and hoping to capture uniform snakewood scales.

Thoughts??

cutting "tiles" doesn't look right (IMHO) for snakewood. I think you would want to go with a bookmatch piece. I am sure some of our sponsors have some.

I would check with BobC, Brad Goodman, or Steve @ Colonial. I am sure between them one of those guys can hook you up with something spectacular.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

When I make Wood Rossettes I mitre cut a bunch of pieces just like you would pearl and inlay it. It is a lot of work but the grain is then wraping the whole way around the circle. Here is a picture of one I did from Rosewood, Not sure if you can see the detail but this is made of around 50 or more little pieces of rosewood. A real pain to do and not worth the work but some people like it. With Snake wood you could really get a neat effect.

I hve to agree with Brock - cutting tiles out of snake wood wont look right, the figure will be too interupted.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I sometimes take four strips and cut a 45 degree miter on each end. Then glue the miters together on two strips, then the other two strips. Now, the edges of the remaining miters should be in a straight line with one another. Next sand each of the joined halves with a straightedge along the remaining miters. Then just glue the two halves together. This will make a blank you can cut a rosette from and you can use some fairly small pieces of wood to do it.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

I have pieces big enough to cut 1 piece or bokmatched 2 piece.
Email me if you are interested.

There are ways to minimize the broken figure in snakewood tiles. For one of the guitars I built with a snakewood rosette i cut the snakewood stick as if it were a stick I would use for traditional classical rosette. Another I emphasized the tiles.

I tapered the sides of the stick 7.5 degrees on each side so that the total angle would 15 degrees. I used 24 tiles per rosette (24 x 15=360). I then sliced the stick into .060 tiles. I use a slitter sawblade that is very thin. I bookmatched each two tiles so that the figure was mirrored. I ended up with 12 figure matched tiles which then had very similar figure, each with a total angle of 30 degrees.

The result was still somewhat broken but not glaring. Note that this was for a classical sized rosette where the tiles were big enough to show enough figure so that the eye would see the bookmatch of the paired tiles.

On another rosette I took an opposite approach by drawing attention to the tiles by sandwiching sterling silver flat stock (.08 x .08) in between the tile wedges ( 12 paired as above) with an inner line of 14k gold flat stock of similar dimensions. Outside the tile part of the rosette I had lines of curly maple, fine bwbw and 030 black.

All that being said, it is still not too hard to get snakewood slabs that will give you a good bookmatch to make a two piece blank as described...I often will find people selling small lots of eBay quite inexpensively that are the scraps from whatever project they used snakewood for, usually jewelry boxes and such.

I have to disagree with the group on this one, Snakewood is VERY expensive and so I'm really careful about how I cut it up. For rosettes I have found that doing pieces at 22.5 deg angles works really well, I make a circle using the pieces, glue them with CA and then mount that on a scrap piece of wood (usually a cutoff from a top). Then I take my circle cutting jig and cut out a ring to the size I want. When that's done I run it through the thickness sander until the ring releases from the base.

You can certainly cut a ring from a bookmatched pair, but you will lose about %80 of the wood and only a small ring will ever show. But if you cut it into strips and those into 22.5 deg tiles then you can get at least two maybe three rosettes out of that one piece.

One more thing is that Shawn is correct, if you cut your tiles from a single piece then the figure will look like it's almost bending around the rosette.

I'm just about to make some new rosettes and can document the process and the results if needed, it's worked very well for me so far.

Cheers

-Paul-Sprockett38623.5278240741

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Waste... there is no waste   

Two words....

"Heel Caps"

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Three words:

"truss rod covers"

I'm with Paul. Due to the price of snakewood I want to be very careful how I use it. I make my rosettes using 6 pieces cut at a 60 degree angle. If you use the same piece of wood for the whole rosette it usually comes out looking very good.

Here is one of mine. To be honest this one could have been matched a little better....but you get the idea.

Josh

Josh H38623.5616435185

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

One word

Frisby

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Now wait a minute gang...

I still get heel caps, truss covers AND florentine points out of mine, but I also get more rosettes to use I fact I never ever thow Snakewood away, I can always find a use for it, makes wonderful end grafts too...

It looks fine once it's glued up, I spend some time matching the pieces.

Before I found Brad I used to by boards locally from McBeath and re-saw them down and when you pay by the pound every cut matters. In fact I need to order some more from Mr Goodman here soon (we are kind of waiting to see if we have to move before I finish my wood orders). I have to get started on some new rosettes here shortly (unless I'm packing the shop again)...

Cheers

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

[QUOTE=Sprockett] I have to disagree with the group on this one, Snakewood is VERY expensive and so I'm really careful about how I cut it up. For rosettes I have found that doing pieces at 22.5 deg angles works really well, I make a circle using the pieces, glue them with CA and then mount that on a scrap piece of wood (usually a cutoff from a top). Then I take my circle cutting jig and cut out a ring to the size I want. When that's done I run it through the thickness sander until the ring releases from the base.

You can certainly cut a ring from a bookmatched pair, but you will lose about %80 of the wood and only a small ring will ever show. But if you cut it into strips and those into 22.5 deg tiles then you can get at least two maybe three rosettes out of that one piece.

One more thing is that Shawn is correct, if you cut your tiles from a single piece then the figure will look like it's almost bending around the rosette.

I'm just about to make some new rosettes and can document the process and the results if needed, it's worked very well for me so far.

Cheers

-Paul-[/QUOTE]

Would love to see the process Paul if you have time to document and take pics. Would be a big help

Rich here are a few pic's showing a segmented rosette I made. You could do the same thing with snakewood or any wood you like.

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That's kind of what I had in mind Bob. What angle did you cut the pieces at to get this diamater?? Looks like 22 but cant tell as part of the picture is cut off.

Rich it's 22.5

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The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Love that Rossette Bob.

Tell me something is Tonewood Supplying carried out by people who just got too good at making guitars.

You, Brad and all you tonewood guys make some beautiful guitars.

Thanks for the compliment,Russell.
Brad

[QUOTE=RussellR] Love that Rossette Bob.

Tell me something is Tonewood Supplying carried out by people who just got too good at making guitars.

You, Brad and all you tonewood guys make some beautiful guitars. [/QUOTE]

He's only after extra discount!

Colin

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Russell Thanks for the compliment. Actually I havn't had much time to build and I miss it. Your right on about Brad. He makes some beautiful guitars.Bobc38624.3980555556

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498