The rosette serves both an aesthetic purpose as well as a structural purpose for reinforcing the soundhole.
The procedure to make a rosette starts with the sticks.
Then the sticks are arranged into a pattern that is glued together to become a board.
Then they are glued into a set of boards that will combine into some pattern.
The boards are then glued together into a log that will have the desirde pattern as the cross section.
The cross section is sliced out of the log in the following manner:
Then the rosette channell is excavated by first cutting out the inner and outer perimeters of the hole.
Then a chisel is used to remove material between the lines that were cut at the precise depth of 1/16 inches.
After a few hours the channel is cleared.
Where the tiles shall go...
A test fit of the tiles with the outer and inner design patterns.
The rosette being glued into place by doing a small section at a time.
After the glue dries, the rosette is planed down level to the soundboard surface.
The last few thousandths of an inch are scraped away with a razor.
This is what the almost finished rosette looks like. This gap will be covered by the fingerboard- no need for rosette where the sun don't shine.
This is the finished rosette, with a piece of mahagony inlaid where the gap existed.
Finally the soundhole is cut out.
Next: Soundboard