Official Luthiers Forum!

What if archtop braces were carved directly in the top plate? Obviously they wouldn't be straight grained but would this seriously affect structure? Could it be somehow an advantage in sound? And what else do you think may happen? Has anybody ever tried?
Just trying to figure out something different from the worldwide known (and definitely appreciated) BB bible.
Thanks - Luigi ggdelazzer38863.3403703704

This was discussed somewhere, maybe in a flattop vein. The problem with carving a brace out of the top wood is that unless the brace is straight inline with the grain, it wil be for the most part useless - ie. a carved out X brace will have almost no strength for its added weight as it will have extreme runout in it across the width of the brace. Besides unless you have a CNC to carve it out, it would be a pain to do.

I believe it would split in about 2 minutes after you strung it up, likely less in fact.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Tony
thank you, this will save a nice top from an insane experiment
Luigi

I've often wondered about this idea and it definitely would seem to be going "against the grain". My guess is that it could be done but at the expense of more trouble than it's worth.
CNC "carving", which is normally done with a ball nose endmill, would leave a fillet where the plate meets the brace. This fillet should add some structural integrity to the "brace" and they could be capped with a strip of CF. The CF would be in tension when the plate is loaded and at the location where it might do some good. The spruce between there and the plate would be acting as a spacer for the most part as in an I-beam cross section.

Isn't this the way many a cheap import violin is made?

Good question Mattia!

Quite possibly MAttia .. but remember the tone bar in a violin is almost if not inline with the grain direction o fthe top itself - far easier to see how the brace would then have some strength to it - no so if it were in an X config.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I believe some archtop builders use twin braces parallel to the grain sort of like a pair of bass bars- one on each side. With this type of bracing it probably would work, but I wouldn't do it. Arch tops are just too much work to deviate too much from the "tried and proven" methods.

Al

They aren't arch-tops, but classical guitar makers Bert Kwakkel (Holland) and Dake Traphagen have made classicals
with carved-in braces, iirc. I think Kwakkel's was spruce
and Traphagen's was cedar. Carey

Thinking more about it, I believe Traphagen's was actually
an arch-top classical, probably w/ conventional braces,
while Kwakkel's was as stated. Carey