Day 4

The first work today is to draw the braces position on the top. The plan of the Manuel Ramirez guitar show 7 fane braces, the two longers on each side going under a bridge made into the harmonic bar. We have 2 closing bars, a cross bracing above the sound hole and a small one under the fingerboard. Two others small braces on each side of the rosette patch go under the harmonic bar bridges.

We saw the braces to the right lenght and plane them all together. The fane braces are 7 mm wide. The high will be determined according to the stifness of the top once they will be glued and shaped.

The rosette patch is cut from the off cut of the top with a knife and glued. A sheet of plastic is placed under the top to do not glue it on the support.

While the glue dry, we carve the back braces. The braces are slightly scalloped on the edges with a chisel and rounded with a plane and sand paper. To spare some time, we have glued the braces with the same grain direction.

We now bend the ribs using water applied with a sponge and clamp them in the mold. For that job, Lorenzo uses a large bending iron he also uses for cellos or double basses.

We finally cut the sound hole again with a copying saw and finish it with a knife. The rosette patch is carved with chisel, rasp, file and sand paper to a nice round shape.