Starting on the Top - Install the Rosette

One of the decorative elements to an acoustic guitar is the trim installed around the sound hole called the rosette. Rosettes can come in all sorts of materials, colors and patterns. Some incredibly intricate and some fairly basic. Some are three dimensional and need to be let into the wood and some are stickers that are just applied. I think professional luthiers take great pride in the rosette and really add their personal touch to this element. The KMG kit includes a pre-made rosette and the soundboard has already had the routing completed around the sound hole.

First things first. Make sure you have the right helper:

Just kidding, the cat really likes to sit in cardboard boxes and eat the build instructions. But its nice to have someone to listen when I'm muttering to myself about the work.

Once the rosette is glued to the sound board clamping can be somewhat ackward. Some recommend simply weighing it down - I saw a concrete block used in one example. Ken suggests and I agree that there is a more elegant solution for this.

Start with two pieces of MDF, three carriage bolts and three corresponding wing nuts. The idea is to sandwich the sound board / rosette between the MDF pieces, bolt the MDF together and tighten the bolts to compress the rosette to the wood. I have MDF laying all over the place but no carraige bolts and wing nuts. There was no way I was making a trip to Agent Orange just for this. But I do tend to save everything and this time it paid off. I snooped around my shop area and found some bolts, washers and nuts on an old ski rack I had made to fit in the back of my pick up (back in the day when I owned a truck and skiied, niether of which I do anymore) that would work perfectly. So I pre-drilled the MDF, countersunk one side for the screw heads so it would lie flat and was all set.

I gathered all the usual suspects:

Installing the rosette could not have been simpler. I was anticipating something much more complicated but I had to do very little sanding before I had a nice snug fit. I had a tube of Duco glue which is the preferred glue for wood rosettes - I believe because it holds well and dries clear. I squeezed a few drops, spread it out with a little popsicle stick, dropped in the rosette and clamped it up. I did put a layer of saran wrap between the rosette and the top layer of MDF to make sure any glue squeeze out would not stick to it.

and the finished product:. The gap is ok - it will be covered by the fret board when the neck is installed.