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Old 02-11-2018, 03:47 AM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Orange County California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenzin View Post
Absolutely a work of art. How hours does it take? How do you choose the type of wood and then choose the specific piece of wood that will become a Brown? (I'm not very smartly with these things... can you tell by the looking at the grain? Do you use any high tech equipment?

I'm sorry if I'm a pain. It's just so beautiful
No problem, I like highly figured woods, dry, seasoned, well quartered with minimal runout.

Luckily maple is still readily available, unlike many of the exotic woods.

European is nice to carve, bigleaf can be challenging, but spectacularly flamey. They all sound good when carved light enough.

Adirondack spruce is particularly stiff and can be thinned way down, super light weight and strong, responsive like a canon.

I try to strip away any unnecessary mass in the top, back, heel, and especially bridge, which is brazilian rosewood, for the best tone transfer imo.

There are a lot of possible wood choice combos, which can all work, with thoughtful consideration.

Yeah handling the wood, flexing, tapping, looking at the end grain, can give you a pretty good idea.

As far as hours go, archtops are really intensive. For awhile I was chainsaw carving tops and backs, but have since switched to roughing by cnc.

There's still a ton of handwork though, carefully working the plates down to final dimension by hand with a plane and scraper. Usually about 6-8 weeks start to finish.

Thanks,

Tad
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