The two struts that will make up the cross are cut with some over length. With a special fret ruler I measured where the bridge going to be placed on the top. A fret ruler does not give you direct measurements but shows fret placing. I will have the 14th fret at the body. To find out where the bridge will end up you have to measure the length from the first fret to the 12th, double that and that is where the bridge will come. Now the cross has to be positioned in such a way that the long legs of the cross will support the bridge. I did this by shifting the two pieces along the body until they where symmetrical:
Now both pieces have to cut half way through so they can slide into each other and after that they were glued and clamped:
I left the cross drying and started on the back bracings. At the belly (the wide portion) of the body there will be two double struts. So I cut all the bracings to length and glued two pairs together to form the double struts:
While those were also drying the two single struts had their share. The ends are curved down. Fist roughly with an electric sander and after that fine tuned with a chisel:
Since I am building an archtop the bracings also need to be arched. With a small hand plane I brought in the first arch which still needs some fine tuning with sanding paper. The result is also shown below (and as you can see also the double struts already lost some weight):
When the cross was dry I glued it into the body. First I had to remove some small portions of the kerflings with a chisel and after that the cross was calmped in:
Some end result pictures:
