Here is a shot of the glued sides with front and back tail block and kerfing installed (with clothes pins as clamps!) Pretty cool no?



Now it’s time to work on the back and front of the guitar. For the front, gluing, clamping and scalloping the braces is the fun part. Other luthier web sites show really complicated ways to glue down all the braces at once. I just used a series of scrap 2x2's and the four clamps that I started off with. I glued them one at a time but really, why rush?
With the scalloping: (shaving off the sides of the braces to adjust the sound of the guitar) my instructional books talk about "tap tuning" the top of your guitar to adjust the sound. It probably takes a lot of guitar building to get something like scalloping down to where you can thunk the top of your guitar and get a feeling of what the finished product may sound like. I just made it look pretty and called it day.
This is my clamping pattern for gluing the back. The small whiteish strips of wood that are by the rear clamps will go under the rose wood and under the those clamps to help maintain the curve on the guitar back.