Guitar 2, a.k.a. I hate polyurethane glue

Guitar 2 was quite a bit more adventurous than guitar 1. This one has a western red cedar top, a "scarf joint" style maple neck, "hand made" ambrosia maple laminte back & sides, and a douglas fur "frame" that the back is screwed to (see photos below). The bolt-on-back is very, very handy for working on the guitar - it takes just a couple of minutes to have full access to the sound board bracing and the neck block.

I picked up some very pretty sequenced matched ambrosia maple laminate. I believe it was about $30 for enough to make the sides and back. The sides are all maple, the laminate strips were 3 1/2 inches wide & about 36 inches long, perfect for making guitar sides. For the back, I carefully aligned several pieces of laminate so that the grain lined up, and glued them onto both sides of a thin piece of birch plywood.

To make the sides, glueing together several pieces of laminate is much easier than bending a solid piece of wood (or plywood, for that matter). The only problem is that I used a polyurethane glue, as had read on the internet that would be better than using aliphatic resins (a.k.a. Tite Bond). Lets just say I was not happy with the results. I ended up making several cuts into the laminate with a razor blade and squeezing in aliphatic resin. I'm still not thrilled with the results, but it is tolerable. I don't expect this guitar to out live me.

Still, it is a pretty guitar. As I'm dialing in the action, I'm more and more pleased with the tone and volume as well. It is much warmer than guitar 1, but that is expected using cedar vs spruce for the sound board.