#16
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Chris
I got several planks from a little hardwood store near Nacogdoches Texas. Brother Steve knows the name, which I have forgotten. They had a fair amount of mesquite derivatives, including desert iron wood and Texas ebony.
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Kinnaird Guitars |
#17
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Very nice! I've been following this on Instagram and I was curious what you were using the fretboard and bridge. I'm sort of in the same boat as many (although as a mere amateur) in terms of sourcing domestic fingerboard options. I have some Rocklite on hand that I'll be trying on a build, but I've not been able to source ironwood/mesquite/etc.
Looking forward to seeing how this progresses. The colours of the back woods have me intrigued. |
#18
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Texas Ebony
Here is what Texas Ebony looks like. I got this plank in Texas of course.
Difficult to say for certain but it seems to be as hard as Indian ebony
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Kinnaird Guitars |
#19
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Since few of these woods are all that scarce, I suspect that once the demand picks up suppliers will start to hunt them up. I can get persimmon, locust, and Osage from a local supplier, and some other unusual woods too. Quartered oak is pretty easy to find, and makes great guitars. Most hardwood yards will have cherry, maple and walnut. Local yards also tend to have butternut, walnut's softer cousin, which is good for liners, blocks, and Classical necks, as it's very similar in it's properties to cedro. Other stuff can sometimes be gotten from fire wood piles, like soft shell almond (in California) and American hornbeam around here. If you keep your eyes open you can find some really nice 'local' wood pretty easily.
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#20
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Bending a new wood is always an adventure. Some respond well to the process and practically flop into the shape of a guitar. Others turn into a pile of toothpicks on the floor. Luckily osage orange falls closer to the former than the later. Not once during the process did I fear the wood was going to give up.
For the blocks and the liners (as well as a lot of the other internal components) I'm using cherry. I have a large slab of OLD cherry that is thick and will work great for what this guitar needs. I just have to do some milling. There's something about doing a domestic based build that makes the shop smell amazing. But for some reason (and it's been this way for years), every time I cut cherry wood, it makes me hungry- even if I've just eaten...
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Chris Ensor |
#21
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Chris,
You and I talked about a USA guitar a while back. I love the idea. Sometimes we focus on the exotic to a point where we fail to see the beauty right before us. I have a (similar white Oak and spruce SJ 12-fret) on the books with Steve and Ryan for sometime in '17. Good luck with the build! Chris
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The Electrics check The Acoustics Tom Doerr - Trinity. Flamed Maple under Swiss Tom Doerr - M/D. Braz under Red |
#22
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I usually use walnut for bridges on domestic wood guitars. It's not as dense or strong as a rosewood, but works out well. I make the bridges a little bigger than I would with rosewood, particularly leaving more material in front of the saddle slot to avoid any chance of breaking out. The lower density means that the bridge ends up at about the right weight, and you get more gluing surface so there's less chance of it pulling up. you could, of course, use Osage for that, and work it just like BRW. The Osage I have is ring porous, and you'll want to pay attention to the grain direction to minimize the chance of a split out in front. Not that it's too much of a worry; that stuff is awfully hard to split.
Cherry is a great substitute for the harder sorts of mahogany, in my experience. It's no accident that the Colonial furniture makers in Philadelphia and NYC used cherry when they wanted to copy the latest English mahogany furniture of Hepplewhite and Chippendale, which was made of Cuban mahogany. |
#23
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Chris,
Cool project! I love the look of the osage orange... |
#24
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The rosette on this guitar utilizes spalted oak from my client's firewood pile. I cut up the piece of firewood into thin slices. This will be incorporated in a few different places on the guitar.
Once I have some slices ready, I processed them into tiles and constructed the inner ring of the rosette in a radial pattern. This is one of my favorite looks. The ring is cut to shape and inlayed in to the top. I do my rosettes in multiple steps. It gives me great results, albeit a bit slow. Once the glue is dry, the purfling are carefully inlayed. I made the osage orange purfling from the same board that all the other osage in this project will come from- resulting in a perfect color match. Flushed up, just a splash of color: Have a very Merry and Musical Christmas everybody.
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Chris Ensor |
#25
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Great job on the rosette, Chris! I'm enjoying following along on this build...
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2013 Stehr Auditorium (Carpathian/Myrtle) 2015 Stehr Auditorium (Adi/BRW) 2020 Baranik Meridian (Blue Spruce/Manchinga) 2020 Wilborn Arum (Tunnel 14/Coco) 2021 Kinnaird Graybeard (BC Cedar/Bog Oak) 2022 Kinnaird CS Student Build (Adi/Padauk) 2023 Kinnaird FS (Italian/Koa) |
#26
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Awesome project! I've got 2 coming up this year which will have all local BC woods.
Love that rosette Chris! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Rod True, aspiring luthier My current project A guitar I built for my Father in Law The Celtic Beauty - The Epic Journey True SJ - #9 |
#27
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Always enjoy your work Chris, thanks for sharing your process as well...
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#28
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Nice! Very classy, & tastefully done!!
Steve
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"Naturally torrified, & unnaturally horrified, since 1954" |
#29
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Very class act indeed! Can't wait to see the finished guitar.
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Dump The Bucket On It! |
#30
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Quote:
Really looking forward to watching this build unfold and hearing samples when it's done. My late father-in-law was a bit of an Osage orange expert. I've heard OO is a lot like BRW, sonically, and an OO guitar would be both a nice tribute to the man and something I'd probably enjoy the tone of.
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Solo acoustic guitar videos: This Boy is Damaged - Little Watercolor Pictures of Locomotives - Ragamuffin |