Double Top Building

In addition to the following information you can also

watch my Double To Construction YouTube Video
with Robbie O'Brien of Red Rocks Community College.
Part I - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIq-ExdmG5I

Part II - http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=hcXZRhJFu1M
The concept of so-called double top instruments is not
new and has been used in classical instruments for over
ten years. Its application to steel string flattop guitars is
relatively a recent thing. I and several other steel string
builders are now applying this type of construction.
You can always tell my double tops from solid by my
interlocking ring rosette which I use only on the double
tops, see an image near the bottom of this discussion. I
first designed this rosette in 2003 and first showed it at
the Colorado Custom Guitar Festival in 2004. Since then
I have noticed that some other builders are using this
design and although I didn't register or copyright it, I'd
rather they did not. If someone can show prior design I
will change mine. This is not a big issue but I'd like to
keep using it as my double top logo.
First needed is a discussion of what constitutes a double
top. The general idea is to make a composite sandwich
usually involving standard top woods such as spruce or
cedar and an aerospace composite called Nomex®. This
is a honeycomb structured material made by Dupont
(http://www.dupont.com/nomex/) and is primarily known
for its use in fireproof clothing and has been used to
make composites in spacecraft and aircraft construction.
In instrument building it is used to reduce the weight of
the top and/or back plates while keeping or increasing
the stiffness of the resulting plate. Since the structure
used is a honeycomb it results in open space in the top
where material is removed resulting in a reduction of
weight. Each little vertical piece of the honeycomb is
bound to the inside and outside wood "skins" with slow
cure high strength glue resulting in miniature I-beams.
The plate retains an along-grain/cross-grain stiffness
difference and the sound is very much a wood top. The
advantages that are noticed are a clarity of the individual
notes, much more sustain, better balance, and an
improved projection in front of the instrument. Even
small bodied instruments can fill a room with ease.
So let's go through the process of making a double top.
Used here for example is the construction of a top for my
Serenade style. Measurements used are in English
inches. To see larger images of any photo, just double
click on the photo.
The top pieces start out in the usual way being around
1/4" in thickness and are glued up as usual. I have to
make three of these tops but I'll be showing just the one
for the process photos. So you can see where we are
going I've included the layout design for the cutting
template in MDF. Using my pattern I trace the outside
profile and cut out the three tops. So far, these are just a
regular tops. At this point they are then thinned in my
drum sander. Two are reduced to 0.040" or 40
thousandths of an inch, and one to 0.060", the same
thickness of the Nomex® that I use.
What I end up with is two skins and and one center
piece.

Notice that although it is necessary to make three tops

that get combined into one, the cosmetic quality of the
inside skin and the center piece can be pretty low. As
long as they are sound acoustically they are fine, only the
face skin needs to be visually pretty. This helps keep the
cost down.
Now it is necessary to make space in the center piece for
the Nomex®. First I take the 0.060" thick center piece
and trace the profile of where it will be cut out.
This isn't strictly necessary but I do it to make sure I am
located correctly should I need to remove and replace the
center from the form.
Then I use a 1/8" milling bit in a Dremel tool to follow
the sides of the form. The sides of the bit are smooth so it
can be brought right up to the MDF form without
damage. The result is a "rim" that it 1/2" wide around the
edges and a center hard-part core that supports the bridge
and sound hole area.
I need to also describe here an alternate method that uses
only two tops rather than three. As before there is an
interior skin of 0.040" thick, but then there is a combined
center and face skin that is 0.100" thick. Instead of
cutting out the center piece as we did above, instead the
0.100" piece is placed in the form and then fly cut with a
larger diameter router bit using a laminate trimmer. This
routs away a cavity that is 0.060" deep.

Initially this seems like a good way to go, but it is tricky.

Notice in the second photo that there is a screw with a
ball end in the center of the Plexiglas that is holding
down the spruce. The fly cutter tends to create a vacuum
that wants to suck the top up and let the milling bit cut
right through the top. In addition, not seen in the photo,
is a baseboard with slots in it that acts as a vacuum
clamping jig on the whole spruce piece to hold it down.
Now that I have the process worked out, the two piece
method is what I use by default. I also tend to rout it as
the inside/middle piece combo rather than
outside/middle. That also allows me to make the top skin
to about 0.050" to allow for some final sanding of dings
and such at final finishing time.
Great, now what? The next step is to make a piece of
Nomex® to fit into the cavity. I use the same form but
lay it over the Nomex® as a pattern for the cutting. One
can cut it with an Exacto knife but it tends to tear
sometimes so I just used a sharp chisel and walked it
around the edges. Out comes our insert piece.
At this point we have all the pieces, now they just need
to be combined. I am using an epoxy from System Three
that was recommended to me by a classical builder but
polyurethane glues are also used for double tops. Since
we have gone to all this trouble to remove weight in the
top we don't want to now goober great globs of glue on.
All that is needed is just enough to glue the small vertical
pieces of the Nomex® to the skins and enough left over
to form small fillets along the joint. The small fillet adds
great strength to the bond in the same way it does on a
weld joint in metals. Through trial and error and
communication with other builders the right amount of
glue is determined for a given body size. I do this by
weight. However epoxies are mixed by volume, so I have
to mix some up, dump it in the cup and weigh it, mix
more, etc. After a few tries you get a good feel for how
much is about enough.

The glue up is done on a flat surface. One could do it in a

hollow form to pre-stress the top, but I have been trying
to treat it in the same way as a regular top until I have
further data. We don't want to coat the face skin because
we don't need any glue in the open spaces, just on the
bond joint areas. So first some glue is applied with a
rubber brayer to the center piece and rolled out evenly.
This is then placed glue-down onto the face skin.

Hmmm, how do we get just a little glue onto the

Nomex®? We use the brayer again and roll out the rest of
the glue onto a Plexiglas palette that has the outline of
the body style. If one uses sheets of self-adhesive
protective plastic over the Plexiglas first, clean up is a
non-issue. Then the piece of Nomex® is pressed down
onto this glue surface and let stand for about 30 seconds.
It is very tempting to want to wiggle it around or scoot it
to make it pick up the glue, but that will make it end up
with too much glue.

This is then lifted up and placed into the cavity formed

by the center piece with the glue side down to the face
skin. Notice that the base piece of Plexiglas is covered in
waxed paper so it won't get glued down.
This all gets topped by more waxed paper and slipped
into a vacuum clamping bag. Vacuum is applied, and
since the shop was cool I also used an overhead heat
lamp for the first hour. The whole mess is left overnight
or at least for eight hours which is the cure time for this
particular glue. Here is a long shot of my OSHA
approved vacuum clamping system. It is just a
compressor from the cooling system from an old water
fountain and pulls about 23 inches of mercury for
vacuum at our elevation of 8200 feet. It worked quite
well, but I have gone to a larger whole-shop system with
a Gast vane type pump to use for other vacuum clamping
applications as well.

A similar process is used to glue the resultant

spruce/Nomex® combo to the the inside skin. First it is
passed through the drum sander to get it completely even
and re-thickness if necessary. The Nomex® sands very
nicely and one can even perimeter sand the top at this
stage if desired to make it thinner at the edges. In
addition, experiments with samples indicate that if you
have an area that is not glued well enough you find out
right away on the first pass through the sander! Not only
does the Nomex® detach, it also tends to wrap around
the sanding drum and pull the top with it. Needless to say
this can ruin your day, or at least that top. Then glue is
once again measured out and rolled out on the palette and
the combo piece is pressed down onto the glue. This is
then pried off and set on top of the inside skin and
vacuum clamped as we did before.
The tops when done are very strong and some builders
do not use any bracing at all. I use symmetrical scalloped
bracing which is quite light and tuned to the top with tap
tuning and Chladni modes.
In the bracing photo it shows only one tone bar. I later
added a second bar just below the bridge plate which
improved the balance and the Chladni modes. The sound
hole cutout shows the three (or two) layers, so I add in a
piece of purfling strip as a decoration to cover up that
end grain. Others make a full insert that is put in from the
back and is part of the sound hole reinforcement. You can
always tell my double tops from solid by my interlocking
ring rosette which I use only on the double tops.