Gluing the Bridge Reinforcement Plate...or Anchors Away

I glued the bridge reinforcement plate today. Its the first step of bracing the sound board. The first picture here is of me cutting the bridge reinforcement blank to size. Do you want to know what I had to do to get to that point? No? I thought for sure one of you might be interested. Well I am going to tell you anyway. If you look at the second picture, you can see the X-brace which is only clamped in place. The bridge plate is the "anchor" for the X-brace, which is the anchor for most of the other braces. Thus the second title to this entry, "Anchor's away." See how witty I am? In order to locate the bridge plate, I have to tape the plate blank down in its location. My KMG kit has a line traced on the back of the sound board that corresponds to the front edge of the plate. I lined up the front of the plate with that line and taped it in place. Then, I clamped the X-brace in its proper location. KMG also has the brace locations marked in pencil on the back of the sound board. Some kits do not do this and you need to line up a set of blueprints on the sound board and trace your own lines. While it is possible to screw up the marking of the brace locations, its not the hardest thing in the world to do with blue prints and I don't think it means that I didn't build the guitar just because I didn't trace some lines. After dry fitting the X-brace and clamping it down, I drew the lines onto the bridge plate blank where the X- brace went over it. Then I had to cut the blank to size and sand it all nicey nice. I dry fitted the plate in its home one last time and then glued it in. Once again, I did not take a picture of the clamping process because I got ahead of myself and took all the clamps off without getting the camera. Its a pretty standard procedure but you need to use a "caul" which is another piece of wood shaped like the bridge plate that helps distribute the clamping pressure across the thin plate. It also keeps the clamps clear of the x-brace so they don't interfere with the clamping. Now I can move on to the meat and potatoes of the bracing process. Bracing the sound board is what makes the guitar sound the way it is going to sound for all of eternity. Unless you smash it over some smart asses head....but again, you should use a cheap Target or Walmart guitar for that. Never use your home built guitar!!

Early on in this process when I removed the rim from the mold for the first time, I said that the guitar had no soul yet but that would come later. Bracing the top is what gives the guitar its soul. Over bracing will cause it to sound dead and under bracing it by carving the sound board braces too much, will cause the guitar to eventually implode under the tension of the strings. A steel string acoustic guitar has somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 lbs of string tension pulling on it. If you under brace and carve away too much material from the braces, eventually the bridge of the guitar will start to pull up and make it difficult to play. If you really under braced it, that tension will cause the top to cave in. That is not a desired result after all of this work. The best sounding guitars have a delicate balance of bracing that is just shy of implosion.

Most mass produced guitars are over braced to cut down on warrantee repairs and because it makes them better able to stand up to abuse. The Martin company does not know who is going to buy one of their guitars or what they will do with it so they over brace to make it stronger. I know exactly who will be playing this guitar and I know I am going to treat it like a baby. Not like Michael Jackson's baby that he dangled over a railing, or that baby in the movie theater that wont shut up. Like a sleeping baby...all gentle like. Understand? I hope so.

I am off to brace the rest of the soundboard and add some soul to this baby!!