I took the wood to the woodworking shop to get the tops thickness sanded.

Here's the sander. It's a production size machine, so I'm sure Ovation used something similar.

The practice top is leaving the sander.

The final top is leaving the sander.

Although the platter did put a taper into the wood, the taper wasn't as sharp as I'd hoped. The belt that carries the parts through the sander is rubber. I figure that the pressure rollers were compressing the belt causing the angled platter to more or less level itself out. The wood still has a taper, but instead of it being a .030" taper, it's more like .020". In any event, the wood is sanded down and progress continues.

The body outline has been transferred to the wood.

And, cut out.

Looking good.

Bridge alignment holes have been measured, marked and drilled.

And, the positioning and alignment have been verified.

Tonight, I'll mark the position of the braces and the fiberglass reinforcement strip and get the strip laid down so that I can start laying down the braces tomorrow.

"Looking good"

Totally an understatement...That top freakin awesome. This is very cool, watching it all come together on the bowl. Thanks again Dan.

So, progress continues...

Brace locations marked.



Braces in place.



Old vs. New...



Fiberglass strip masked.



Fiberglass strip applied.

Next update: braces!

Pretty amazing how the warmth in color of both tops is so close. 

Dan, do you think that all the additional bracing they threw on it, to address the cracking, had an adverse affect on the resonance?

Finally, the torrefied top. Completely opaque.

What this means is that torrefied wood is the holy grail of counterfeit musical instruments. One of the ways that they check for counterfeit violins is to shine a light through the top and if they can see it, then they know that it's a fake. Well, that is, until torrefied tone wood became available. You can fake the look of old wood, but you can't fake the opacity. That's my useless bit of trivia for today.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.

I got the braces laid down today. Y`all should know the drill by now. Visqueen taped to the go-bar deck, apply glue to the braces, then use the go-bars to clamp them into place.



Next step is to patch the hole in the lower bout where the old strap button pick-up was, then get ready to glue the top into place.

The top is done and ready for gluing to the body. I decided to use the Old Brown Glue on the braces to maximize the acoustic resonance. The top has a real nice tap tone. It's deeper and more resonant than the top made with new spruce.

But, before I can do that I needed to plug the hole in the bowl. Here is the inside and the outside of the bowl after removing the visqueen.

And, after sanding.

I made sure to add a couple of reinforcement patches so that if Jay ever decides to add a strap button, he can do so without fear of the plug popping out.

Here's a molly I got from JB at the MS. This is what's used to mount virtually all strap buttons on Ovation guitars, and it would be my first choice if I were to add a strap button to the bottom of 485.

Next job is to honor Jay's request to add a (self-aggrandizement) label to the inside commemorating my rebuilding of this guitar. Once the sticker is added, I'll glue the top down.

What a journey! Every post is like Christmas. I should have gotten you to agree that "aggrandizement" would be on the label.

sooooo Dan, how's that eh-hem, $tradivarius comin' along?!      nudge  nudge

I finished designing the label going inside.

Here's the artwork. The black, is well, black. The gold is gold foil.

The typeface is Arabian Normal, which is the same typeface used by Ovation.

And, here's the finished label inside the guitar.

Here's what it'll look like through the sound hole.

Of course, now Jay needs to make a couple of decisions before I glue it into place.

1) Is this where you want it?

If not, let me know where you'd like to see it.

2) The existing Balladeer label is crooked, meaning it wasn't square when it was stuck down.

I can do one of two things: make the new label match the crookedness of the existing label or I can stick the new label down so it's square, which will highlight the crookedness of the existing label.

My inclination is to stick it down so it's even with the existing label. Otherwise it will look funny, and I don't mean in a humorous way.

Hey Dan, 

I think that looks excellent. Thank you for doing that. Very classy!

Easy call. Whomever stuck that label down in 67, needs to remain that guy. We're not going to take that away from him.  

"stick it down so it's even with the existing label"