I will join in here, what a heavy and heartbreaking blow to hear about this. My prayers are also with the many who have lost their lives in this one. Thanks for posting this Bruce. Words do not suffice.

So very sorry to learn of this news. Thank you for the update....just awful........

Well they certainly have that, that is a no brainer....contact me if you think of anything else please.

Howard
 

Our thoughts here are with them there. I hope a silver lining will appear for them once the clouds clear away.

Howard's loss is just heartbreaking ... if there are any fundraising endeavors ( such as benefit concerts) planned in the future, hopefully they will be able to be publicized on the AGF without contravening any rules.

I really hope that Howard does re-establish himself as a builder, and resumes his posting on the AGF in the fullness of time. I always look forward to reading every post he makes on here ... invariably accurate, succinct, and well written.

Just so folks know, there is a separate thread open in the "Open Mic" forum specifically relating to Howard's situation...

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=485644

I'm so very sorry to hear this but trust and hope Howard will rebound!

Positive thoughts gong out to all who are suffering during this fire. Luckily my area dodged a bullet with fires close, but doing no significant damage.

thanks - I didn't catch that yesterday.

Best,
Jayne

Robert Lee, an electric luthier who is also well known as he worked at LMI for many years is also now reported to have lost his home and shop in Napa. I have not yet heard about Dimitri Tenev in Potter Valley.

I just learned of evacuation on Cavedale Road in Valley of the Moon which almost certainly includes Tom Peterson. Also known as "Kerfing Tom", his rural shop is responsible for the kerfed linings many of us, including myself, use in our work. Tom was an original partner with Todd Taggart when they acquired LMI from Bill Lewis Music Supply. Or maybe he's moved, as I haven't heard from him in a couple of years; one can hope.

Keep your eyes and ears open and stay safe .
Just in case you might be wondering , I could be convinced to store your wood safely for you should the need arise . ;)

It would be a happy miracle if Tom Peterson's place survived. The Tubbs fire engulfed nearly the length of his road.

A bit of positive: Dimitri Tenev evac'd successfully and his property including horses has survived. On a more self centered note, the wind did not come up last night and real progress has reportedly been made on controlling the most nearby fire, called the Nuns until it merged with another and now has a more technical name that I have not learned. Anyway, Linda and I are feeling more relaxed. Others are still in serious straights and the trouble has not yet passed.

Thanks for the news on Dinitri, Bruce. I have met Tom several times as we have a mutual friend so I will check in and see what his situation is.

It has been quite a week of living on the edge and it will continue here. Yesterday, as a precaution, I took my two favorite custom guitars over to a friend's house in Marin - 20 miles to the south. If we do have to evacuate here on the east side, I know that those will already be taken care of. Obviously guitars can be replaced, but with some advanced notice, no reason not to get them to a safe location ahead of time.

Best,
Jayne

We are letting our guard down some more, hopefully we will not be blind sided in the night. The air is just terrible, and I went to my Dr for inhalers as, like many luthiers, I have bronchial issues from 50 years of dust.

Today I put the first coat of varnish on Vic's 000. Hopefully it will dry properly and I will have pics tomorrow. The color is really nice IMO.

Then I joined the plates for Bob Berger's 4th Sexauer. I imagine he will start a thread for it if he hasn't already. It will be J 185 like. The woods are Journeyman grade Adirondack over Australian Blackwood. Unless Bob get excited (again) it will be trimmed out with Amazon Rosewood in pretty much my standard format. We are talking about an interesting 12th fret inlay, and that's about it for bells and whistles.

Hope you stay safe, Bruce.

The Mahogany I used on Vic's guitar turns out to have a great color. I used no stain though it is darkened a bit by the porefiller used after sealing. Here it is with the first of a probably 7 coats of oil varnish:

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Vic/1stcoatback.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Vic/1stcoattop.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Vic/1stcoatgraft.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/Vic/1stcoatheadb.jpg

I made a reference to my top bracing pattern in a thread in "Build and Repair", and am putting this picture of Bob's SJ bracing here to illustrate my point:

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/SJ/2ndtier1.jpg

Thought this thread would be as good of place as any to post this, I wrote a little about it in the Woodstock thread....

I got to meet the one and only Bruce Sexauer at Woodstock...wasn't really sure what to expect as how does one really know someone based on online interactions? At one point, I thought business was going to take me to California close to Bruce and was going to visit, but this fell through so I was looking forward to this opportunity.

Bruce is just a great, funny, sarcastic, wonderful guy! I had a great time meeting him and talking everything from guitars, to cars, to fires, and speculating on how long Cigarfan was going to around hahaha! I thoroughly enjoyed the time!

Now his guitars... well first of all, they are all feather light, I mean he almost had to tie them down so they would not float off the stands. Bob, (iim7V7IM7) had one of his Sexauers there that I took into a quiet room and HOLY COW, this guy really does know how to build a guitar. This was a BRW with I think an Italian Spruce top, but after a weekend of guitars, I may be wrong on the top. It was a small body with a HUGE sound. So responsive as I carried it to the quiet room the voices in the building were causing the guitar to vibrate like it was alive! The bass, trebles, sustain, nice overtones, it was as close to a perfect instrument as I think can be made within the natural variances of working with an organic material.

So the take away: Bruce is a heck of a nice guy and builds one heck of a guitar....If you get a chance, add one to your stable, and here's a toast to Bruce building these wonderful guitars for many many more years!!!

Tom

I once asked my relatively educated and socially savvy friend Eric Schoenberg what the appropriate response is when someone simply gushes in their enthusiasm for his guitars, and he did give me some advice, which I will put to use right here.

Thank you, Tom.

While I have yet to meet Bruce I have seen a number of video clips about him. It gave me a little fuller perspective of him than I got from his posts. Yeah, Bruce is alright. Hey that reminds me, was there another clip of your local meetings? I remember watching the one a couple of times to make sure not I didn't miss anything.

I do have some raw video made by Tad, but it wil have to be edited to remove audacious spontaneous audio. I find myself with a rather full plate lately. Thank you for the nudge.

The recent (got home at 2 am this morning) WILS was, as always, a great event for all of us, but this one had a difference, I believe. I have never before seen so many guitars change hands at a show. It may be that last years was as good, but I wasn't there.

Thank you to all who attended, but none more so than Baker Rorick. Here Here!!!

sales
 

That was the same conclusion I came to as well - lots more sales than I have noticed in the past.

I am back to work the last couple of days, as you are likely aware since Bob, for whom I am currently working, is putting in the time when it comes to keeping his nearby thread current. Today I bent and installed the sides in his Oz B'wood J-185 inspired Small Jumbo. I have some trepidation about hand bending the rather tight cutaway as I have had more than a little trouble with scorching this particular wood in the past. I allowed a little more heat on the inside than on the outside to get a sense of what would work. I think the outside is scorch free, and the worst on the inside is in the picture following. I am feeling pretty good about it.

http://mojoluthier.com/LP17/SJ/scortch1.jpg

Sometime in the next few builds I am going to make a Pernambuco OM. Itll be very straight forward, no bells and whistles, a regular guitar except the Pernambuco. I mention this because this leaves me just 3 sets of the quartersawn P unspoken for of the 17 I had at one point. I do have a few flat sawn sets, and while they do make just as good sounding a guitar IMO, they also have a tendency to crack, though some of my customers don't mind this. They are considerably less expensive. When the good P is gone I have no expectation of being able to get any more.

Would it be worth a shot laminating a thin sheet of some other wood on the inside to mitigate the cracking? Might not dampen the sound too much, might change the stiffness though.


Oh wait, a thin sheet relative to your regular thicknesses is a piece of paper.

The best fix for the problem is to realize that the cracks really don't make a meaningful difference in the instrument. Not to the playability, certainly, but also not to the sound as far as I can tell, and not to the longevity either. Since I sold my personal guitar of the last ten years a month ago, I am happily settling into P L00 I made for the Memphis show that I took camping in the desert along the way. You remember? It is a simply fantastically beautiful sounding guitar IMO. One of my best. Maybe a dozen cracks, but no more than it had after I got home from the trip.

A P OM, eh? I may have to talk to you about that -

Ah, the “good stuff”...Just a touch of rift in the outer wings of the lower bout..:up:

http://i1238.photobucket.com/albums/...psqnltbgeo.jpg