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Old 09-20-2022, 12:51 PM
Sadie-f Sadie-f is offline
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Default Practice build woods

I determined a while back that my next nice guitar one I'll build from bearclaw > maple .. I know, not a small undertaking.

Following my wonderful visit with Richard Hoover at SCGC last month, I've decided rather than wait 5 years to start this project, the shortest route to the desired end wants to include building one or more practice instruments. The build plan is to learn by doing how Richard described the steps of tuning sound surfaces, before, during and after assembly.

My thought is to build the best instruments I can from inexpensive / easily available woods, my first thought was pine > oak or maple, cedar is also a wood that's available in pretty good quality, at decent prices.

I think what I'm aiming for is woods that ring rather than offering a damped tone. And that brings a possible counter-point to the whole idea - if a candidate board doesn't ring well (i.e. it doesn't lose energy to internal damping), I'm not going to learn very much toward the objective of eventually doing a premium tone wood properly.

I'm far from certain that I know how to find good quality tone woods among lumber .. well perhaps I can ring-test bulk boards .. I can't think why that wouldn't work? I know the guys at the lumber yard are gonna look that askance, that's OK too.

So, do y'all think this is a good approach?

Also, an idea I've been batting around for how to iterate, correct say the assembled body doesn't come together the way I'd expected:

I was thinking to do most of the assembly with Titebond, however also thinking that making the joints for soundboard, back and neck with hide glue to allow for disassembly, also let me take measurements of the frequency response of the assembled body when using different 'candidate' soundboards .. or for that matter try both cedar and pine against a given back & sides assembly.

Please thoughts welcome, thanks!
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Old 09-20-2022, 01:37 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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I'm not at all sure that your focus on low damping in the wood is all that important. There are lots of nice mahogany guitars out there, and mahogany tends to have damping that's higher than the rosewoods. In that regard it's in the same range as a lot of domestic woods, such as walnut and cherry. Walnut is very similar to soft maple in it's mechanical and acoustic properties, so if you're aim is to learn to make a good guitar out of maple walnut would be nice practice wood.

It's distressingly easy to make a bad guitar out of good wood. From what I can tell the material damping sets a limit for the structure: you'll probably never make a back that has lower overall damping than the wood that it's made from, but putting a brace in the 'wrong' place or trimming it to the 'wrong' shape, or using too much glue or the 'wrong' finish, can kill things in a hurry. A good luthier will make a far better guitar out of common wood than a poor luthier can do with the best wood.

If you insist on low damping wood, then redwood and Western red cedar are both woods with low damping that make good tops. Both are somewhat more prone to splitting than spruce, and cedar is a lot softer, so it dents easily. I've gotten good redwood at lumber places in the past, which is great if you have a way to re-saw it.

If you can find it, Black locust is a 'local' North American wood that is in the rosewood class: it has density and stiffness that are up there with Indian rosewood, but lower damping; more like Brazilian. It also works much like Indian rosewood. If you don't like the light color you can fume it with ammonia, and make it quite dark. Osage Orange is practically a drop-in replacement for BRW in terms of it's mechanical and acoustic properties, but it is fairly hard to work with hand tools.
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Old 09-20-2022, 02:30 PM
Sadie-f Sadie-f is offline
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Alan, well said on all that, it's exactly what I was hoping for in a response

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Originally Posted by Alan Carruth View Post
I'm not at all sure that your focus on low damping in the wood is all that important. There are lots of nice mahogany guitars out there, and mahogany tends to have damping that's higher than the rosewoods. In that regard it's in the same range as a lot of domestic woods, such as walnut and cherry. Walnut is very similar to soft maple in it's mechanical and acoustic properties, so if you're aim is to learn to make a good guitar out of maple walnut would be nice practice wood.
I didn't mention it, however, yes, walnut is one of the woods I was thinking of for B&S. Also, when and if I can succeed with the maple project, I've already got it in mind that the next would be mahogany. Also, one of the things I hope to learn to practice is how to get the top and back working together well. I rather think that's a different animal for cedar vs spruce or mahogany vs rosewood vs maple. I have so far thought that cedar > maple is probably not a good combination .. for the guitar I'm envisioning?

Quote:
It's distressingly easy to make a bad guitar out of good wood. From what I can tell the material damping sets a limit for the structure: you'll probably never make a back that has lower overall damping than the wood that it's made from, but putting a brace in the 'wrong' place or trimming it to the 'wrong' shape, or using too much glue or the 'wrong' finish, can kill things in a hurry.
Understood, this was kinda where I'm starting from, assuming that there are myriad ways to fail, and a limited number of workable paths to success.

Quote:
A good luthier will make a far better guitar out of common wood than a poor luthier can do with the best wood.
Again, I had anticipated what you're saying. and working to optimize 'regular' wood is plan A (doesn't mean that I don't want to find better examples for my starting point).

Quote:
If you insist on low damping wood, then redwood and Western red cedar are both woods with low damping that make good tops. Both are somewhat more prone to splitting than spruce, and cedar is a lot softer, so it dents easily. I've gotten good redwood at lumber places in the past, which is great if you have a way to re-saw it.
Not fixed on it, and I'll have to spend some time on thinking through the concept of dampening as a positive in guitars, on the other hand we also think of 'friction' as a negative in life generally, yet we wouldn't want to live in a world without it, it's hard to get around in a world where everything is slippery :-).

Redwood had also been in the back of my mind, however, I'm still more likely to be having a go with cedar ... thinking and planning here. I do have access to pretty good tools for re-sawing, also, if at all possible, I'm going to try to do these with discarded / reused woods.

Quote:
If you can find it, Black locust is a 'local' North American wood that is in the rosewood class: it has density and stiffness that are up there with Indian rosewood, but lower damping; more like Brazilian. It also works much like Indian rosewood. If you don't like the light color you can fume it with ammonia, and make it quite dark. Osage Orange is practically a drop-in replacement for BRW in terms of it's mechanical and acoustic properties, but it is fairly hard to work with hand tools.
As I understand it BRW is pretty hard to work also, perhaps Osage is even more so, I'll look at black locust also.

Sincere thanks! again, this is the feedback I was seeking.
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Old 09-20-2022, 06:20 PM
Howard Klepper Howard Klepper is offline
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You don't need to tap test boards at the lumber yard (you are planning to resaw the body wood?) to get low damping. It's not like going though a stack of tops to find the best; you will be close enough just by choosing the species for the damping you want. I'd recommend you stick with spruce for the top. For back and sides, there are a bunch of inexpensive, low damping woods available in straight-grained, close enough to quartersawn sets: East Indian Rosewood, granadillo, macacauba, chechen, Bolivian rosewood/pau ferro (not a true rosewood), and machiche come to mind. Maple is pretty high damping.

The other thing I strongly recommend is that you not look at your first guitars as "practice," or use low quality wood in anticipation of doing a poor job (as some people recommend). Many people, especially if they have woodworking experience, build quite good first guitars. Set out to do that from the start.
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Old 09-20-2022, 07:34 PM
Sadie-f Sadie-f is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Howard Klepper View Post
You don't need to tap test boards at the lumber yard (you are planning to resaw the body wood?) to get low damping. It's not like going though a stack of tops to find the best; you will be close enough just by choosing the species for the damping you want. I'd recommend you stick with spruce for the top. For back and sides, there are a bunch of inexpensive, low damping woods available in straight-grained, close enough to quartersawn sets: East Indian Rosewood, granadillo, macacauba, chechen, Bolivian rosewood/pau ferro (not a true rosewood), and machiche come to mind. Maple is pretty high damping.

The other thing I strongly recommend is that you not look at your first guitars as "practice," or use low quality wood in anticipation of doing a poor job (as some people recommend). Many people, especially if they have woodworking experience, build quite good first guitars. Set out to do that from the start.
Thanks so much Howard, good to hear more thoughts. Now I would absolutely not have thought of maple as high damping, however I am aware, there's more than meets the eye to sonic properties, and I'm a materials science specialist without deep knowledge of acoustics .. well, I know a little about bell bronze, and leaded vs soda-lime glass vs quartz for acoustic properties.

I don't think I am so much aiming to build a "poor job", rather I had in mind to not overspend on materials, while choosing ones will be fit for purpose. Since you say "lumber yard", I'm thinking we're on the same page. Anyway, I expect it to be a journey first, will see if the destination I'd like to hit is feasible.

I'm also not locked into a specific plan, if my initial thoughts are 180 degrees off of what works best, I can turn 180 .. hence asking experienced builders for feedback.

And while I'm trying keep cash outlay budget in reason, that's mostly not wanting to sacrifice best quality materials if I don't get it right.

Finally, there's where the "practice" work will go. I envision giving these away, with finish work commensurate to the success of the builds.
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Old 09-21-2022, 08:27 AM
printer2 printer2 is offline
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Other than acquiring wood, do you have a plan for building, what tools you have, what tools you want to use in building? How much you want to spend on this endeavour?
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Old 09-21-2022, 01:06 PM
Sadie-f Sadie-f is offline
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Other than acquiring wood, do you have a plan for building, what tools you have, what tools you want to use in building? How much you want to spend on this endeavour?
I have access to a very complete wood shop for now, by the time I get to more experience / better instruments, I will likely need to have my own tools.

From past reading, I understand that guitar components are too thin to run though a planer, and that the preferred way to rough size top, bottom, sides is a specialized belt sander. That I don't have access to, and I figure there are solutions that are less efficient, and still workable.
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Old 09-21-2022, 01:43 PM
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Bruce Sexauer Bruce Sexauer is offline
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I built my first 50 guitars using a record 9 1/2 plane and a typical cabinet scraper. If you have chosen your materials according to traditional grading standards at AA or higher and your work surface is dead flat, it isn't actually very hard work to get great results, and you will learn a great deal about your wood that you'll miss using a thickness sander.
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Old 09-21-2022, 01:56 PM
redir redir is offline
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Two of the best sounding guitars I built were made from white oak back and sides with pine tops. Cheap wood doesn't mean you won't build a nice guitar but it does mean that if you don't you didn't risk much money either. It took me ten guitars before I was finally able to sell them but I had literally zero experience in anything like that. The first guitar I built in 1992 which I still have and still play actually sounded pretty good but it just looks horrible. But I love the ugly duckling nonetheless.

You could also just practice using cheap wood doing side bending. That's the thing that most have a difficult time with and might end up cracking wood. Practice on that before using the more expensive stuff.
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Old 09-21-2022, 03:15 PM
Sadie-f Sadie-f is offline
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I built my first 50 guitars using a record 9 1/2 plane and a typical cabinet scraper. If you have chosen your materials according to traditional grading standards at AA or higher and your work surface is dead flat, it isn't actually very hard work to get great results, and you will learn a great deal about your wood that you'll miss using a thickness sander.
Well said! A cabinet scraper is something of a favorite tool. I hadn't actually thought of that -- it's been a lot of years since I've had occasion to use one :-).

Thanks for the reminder, I hadn't thought that through, and those will be the right tools for me.
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Old 09-21-2022, 03:19 PM
Sadie-f Sadie-f is offline
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Originally Posted by redir View Post
Two of the best sounding guitars I built were made from white oak back and sides with pine tops. Cheap wood doesn't mean you won't build a nice guitar but it does mean that if you don't you didn't risk much money either. It took me ten guitars before I was finally able to sell them but I had literally zero experience in anything like that. The first guitar I built in 1992 which I still have and still play actually sounded pretty good but it just looks horrible. But I love the ugly duckling nonetheless.

You could also just practice using cheap wood doing side bending. That's the thing that most have a difficult time with and might end up cracking wood. Practice on that before using the more expensive stuff.
I've read of oak and pine guitars, so thanks for the feedback!

Yes on bending! I've bent wood for making ribs for boat repair - used steam from a home furnace for that, however that's a pretty different task, so I'm expecting to need plenty of practice.
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Old 09-21-2022, 04:35 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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Good BRW is a real pleasure to work with hand tools compared with Osage. OTOH, I don't see much good BRW on the market any more, and certainly not at any price I'd consider. But then, I stocked up a long time ago.

Quartered oak is becoming one of my favorite woods for the B&S: don't bother with flat cut.

My first foray into making pairs of guitars was two Classicals, one in old growth Brazilian and the other in curly white oak. They were quite similar in stiffness, but the oak had higher damping and was somewhat denser. At the time I thought the materials contributed a lot to a difference in sound: the oak one had a bit less treble and not quite as much power. My experience since then making really 'matched' instruments leads me to be less certain about that. Even ones made of flitch matched wood end up sounding noticeably different, and those two could well have been with the normal range of variation even for 'identical' wood. I wrote that experiment up in the Journal of the Catgut Acoustical Society in May of '98.

Oak, of course, bends well, and when quartered is reasonably stable. Some folks don't like the look of the prominent ray pattern; I do. The main issue with it is that it's hard to sell oak guitars, but when you're making one for yourself that doesn't matter.

Using some nice wood on the first one does seem to help keep the workmanship standards up; you hate to mess up a nice looking piece, even if you didn't pay a lot for it. Really high class expensive wood seems to be magnet for disaster, especially in the hands of beginners. I used to tell my students to use a good set of spruce and Indian rosewood, and these days I often start them out with oak.

Spruce is generally more 'forgiving' than many of the other top woods. So far as I can tell, spruce is spruce: don't obsess about the variety. I've gotten good brace stock at the lumber yard.

I've used a Wagner 'Safety Planer' in the drill press to thickness wood for almost fifty years. Of course, the use of the word 'safety' to refer to any power tool is wishful thinking, but with care this one's not too voracious. Painful, though...I've been nicked lightly a couple of times, and I do have students who simply can't seem to 'get' it. That particular tool is no longer made, but there are replacements that are OK. I use mine to get the wood within about .008" of final dimension, and then scrape to get the final thickness and surface.

I learned about heavy scrapers from Carleen Hutchins, who got the idea from Simone Saconni, who said it came from Strad. One of my students started making them and we introduced them to Stew-Mac, so you can get one easily. It's basically like scraping with a piece of broken glass or a microscope slide, but you can sharpen the steel ones. They're thick, and don't heat up as fast as card scrapers do. Being made of hardened tool steel they also hold an edge longer. You can use them one-handed.

Bruce was right; you learn a lot about the wood you're working using hand tools. If they're sharp and properly set up they're a pleasure, and if not, you need to learn how to sharpen and set up anyway...
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Old 09-21-2022, 06:43 PM
redir redir is offline
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Quartered oak is becoming one of my favorite woods for the B&S: don't bother with flat cut.
I'm out of my QS barn wood white oak that I was making folk art parlor guitars out of but have plenty of off quarter and flat sawn. I have QS oak that I got from a hardwood dealer but it doesn't have the patina that the 100 year old oak does and that is what people like. I know that oak has a much more dramatic expansion rate when flat sawn but is that why you are suggesting to not use anything but QS? BTW these little parlor guitars are only 13in wide.

---

Sadie-F it sounds like you have some experience working with wood so you will probably do well, I forgot to mention, Titebond is a perfectly acceptable time tested and proven wood glue for guitars. Guitars are generally not made to be disassembled like violins are. There is a concern for serviceability in the future however and that is why many luthiers like to use HHG on joints that might need to be serviced like the bridge or neck joint for example. HHG is of course a fantastic glue as it doesn't creep and so on. But some of the greatest guitars out there are glued together with Titebond Original. It's easy to use, cleans up well and makes a fully functional joint while being more forgiving then HHG.
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Old 09-21-2022, 08:08 PM
Fathand Fathand is offline
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I haven't built a lot of acoustic guitars but people have been very impressed by the sound of the ones I have. I am a hobbyist so am on a budget. I have resawn all my back and side sets from rough sawn lumber except one of my current builds of an EIR set that was left in my basement 40 years ago.

I do not do anything like tuning sound surfaces, yet. I am very happy wiith my tone and volume so far. I do not know about damping woods. I thin backs and sides to typical dimensions and use the wobble test on tops. I have used A grade tops or less to date, typically $20 or less.

In a way, I am in the "practice" mode like you are thinking of. I do not build with the intention of selling but have.

As far as economical woods go, Sapele, Black Walnut and Cherry are readily available , quarter sawn, in good wood stores with black walnut typically the highest price of those 3. African mahogany is cheaper but not usually marketed as quarters sawn. Padauk is also economical. In Canada, all these woods are typically less than $10 per board foot, except the walnut. A 5 ft. X 8" x 1.5" = 5 board ft. and will yield 3 back side sets plus 1 or 2 neck blanks and some extra bits for end blocks, etc. So $50 gets you a lot of "practice" building.

The black walnut is probably the easiest to work and bend, to my ear sounds better than maple and may be the best looking. The cherry may be the easiest to finish as it is closed grain.

I did purchase some Osage Orange very economically locally and built my best sounding guitar https://www.flickr.com/photos/194462...77720296630125 with it but other posters are correct when they tell you it is not easy to work with, I may not use it again.

If we are discussing builds to gain experience, I suggest you go easy on the ornamentation, simple inlay, rosettes, binding and purfling. Trying to build a "pre war" or other replica can chase you down an expensive rabbit hole finding the exact materials rather than what is readily available. I recently ordered a pre war style back strip at $30 with shipping from Australia for example.

Another suggestion is to build smaller instruments, flat top mandolins, ukuleles or smaller than dreadnought guitars. 5 or 7 inch wide wood is easier to find than 8" and parlor size tops are often less money or better quality for the same. You will learn the same skills and do less sanding.

Titebond Original all the way ++

Sorry for the long winded post, Good luck with your journey.
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Old 09-22-2022, 06:14 AM
redir redir is offline
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I thin backs and sides to typical dimensions and use the wobble test on tops..
I started doing the sheet metal wobble test many years ago. As I wanted to try and improve I got the Gore/Gillet books and started using their method of finding the optimal top thickness and much to my surprise it coincided perfectly with the wobble test. I did this by first taking all the measurements of one of the halves of the top. Then joined the top and thinned it out to the wobble point then I ran the numbers through the spread sheet and I was only very slightly off, well within error.

Anyway my point being, the wobble test does indeed work well
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