A sustainable rock machine - second step

[Gitarren]

Last year I started my journey in hobbyist lutherie by modifying a kit guitar. You can read about it here: http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/49483-a-sustainable-rock-machine-first-step/

Now I figured it is time for me two step up and try to do the real deal, starting from pieces of lumber. Preferably, the lumber should be sourced locally here in Sweden. So far that part seems to be working out, scroll down to read a story including a chainsaw and a tree. 

I think making an instrument is sort of an iterative artsy-crafty process where it sort doesn't make sense to have too detailed plan from start. I however have some ideas for my end goal for this build. Let us see what of the below that holds up at the end:  

• It should hopefully look somewhat unique, or at least not like the most common commerical guitars. However I am a big fan of the SG body for several reasons and will take a lot of inpsiration from it. It should be around 35 m.m. thick and have a deep, smooth cutout for me reach all the way up the neck easily when playing
• A "natural" wood look. The wood should be beuatiful in itself, so no thich laquer. I will probably at most use some dye. 
• A Tune-o-Matic bridge. Robust and fairly easy to install and adjust. 
• A 25" inch 24 fret scale. A 24.75" scales makes the frets come a bit too close together for my fingers when using jumbo frets, and the 25.50" is just a bit too much. And a full last octave is easier to relate to when playing. 
• Jumbo frets, hopefully stainless. Probably some scalloping. 
• Probably many cheaper pickups to experiment with and some sort of system that makes them easy to replace.
• Probably just a single tone-knob and single volume-knob for the electronics. I went for series-parallell and four controls last time. It was a mess to wire it up, and I do not even use it that much. 
• Good tuners. There seems to be no cheap workaround get a set of these seemingly so simple constructions, that still work well. I decided to order some Planed Waves locking tuners for 100 euros the other day. 

I spent some time over christmas in the town where I grew up. It is the kind of good place where there are a lot of trees, tractors, chain saws, barns, saw mills and similar things that I usually don't find around my flat. You probably wonder why I didn't list pick up trucks, but that happens to not be such a big thing at the country side in Sweden. 

A neighbour was away and was kind enough to let me use his workshop and some wood he had drying in the barn. He gave my old man this cutting board the other year made out of elm he had cut. I thought that it looked really nice and I figured that elm could be great for a guitar body.

My plan was to use ash for the neck that I cut this summer (see below), but it was still far from dry. I had looked around for some time for ash, but no one seemed to have any. Then I saw some birch in the barn of my neighbour, and read that among others Hagström used it for necks. So I figured that should work. Below is a piece of birch (upper) and a piece of elm(lower) that I cut. The elm is mostly for fretboard material, but the plank is so thick that I will get a neck blank of it as well: 

It seemeed inevitable not to cut away quiet a bit of the birch to get a useful piece out of it. It didnt fit into the table saw feeder table as it was so I took off the edge a bit with a bandsaw first. 

Here I have cut them some more and planed them. I never used a planer before, and it was quiet an experience. It is just amazing how fast and easy it is to get plain and flat surface. Which shouldn't be a surprise as that is the whole idea with a planer, but still I am very fascinated. 

I think these woods have such an amazing potential. Look at the future fretboard coming out of the dark center piece of the elm (left). It looks like supernatural shockwaves that shot out from from the cold northern soil, aspiring for the warm sun. Then the birch (right) caught me off guard. I always though of birch in general to be quiet dull and way to bright. However, this one seem to have some burls in it, which is a great surprise. 

The piece of elm is heavy and hard as a rock. The ending words of the previous sentence will also describe the tunes that will propagate through its fibres if I can pull this build off. The birch is significantly softer and lighter. Pine and spruce are dirt cheap in Sweden and readily available everywhere. Most houses up to two floors are built of these woods still, and I have some experience from it from house renovations etc. Spruce and pine feels like cotton in comparison to this piece of elm! Now I get why pine and spruce are called softwood in English. 

Now lets rewind the tape a bit to august 2019. My old man needs to thin out some trees now and then at the farm. I got some help and fell an ash. First we strapped it up to be extra sure about where it would go: 

Down it went! I miscalculated my cut a bit, but heck, I am learning. 

 

It was a thin ash (too thin?) and neck blanks was the only thing it could be used for with regards to lutherie. Also, I had to drag it by hand from a valley so I cut it into smaller sections, trying to get sections of at least 700 m.m without any branches. 

The pieces were not larger than that I could cut them up on a larger sized tablesaw. There is no dust collector by that saw, which you probably can tell. By the way, the saw was mounted in a 1700's house but saw no ghosts this night at least. 

And there we go, quiet a collection of potential neck blanks as well as some firewood. Worst case all will be fire wood, due to among other things checking and warping that has occured since August. If anything, I can make use of all experience I got during the process. After some research, I think I will kiln dry the next batch to have better control over the process as well as as getting the moisture content lower.  

Making guitars is amazingly fun, because there are so many aspects to it. 

By the way, I am not the only one focusing on wood available in Scandinavia. I do not know more about these guys than I what I read on their website, but I think that is enough to give them some cred:

https://www.norwegianwoodseries.com/

 

[Bizman62]

10 hours ago, Gitarren said:

After some research, I think I will kiln dry the next batch to have better control over the process as well as as getting the moisture content lower. 

That's ok if you have a kiln and the knowledge of how to set it up properly for the wood you're going to dry. I once asked if they would put a few blanks of poplar, 10x30x100 cm, into their kiln with the next batch of pine or spruce. The answer was a definite no, the explanation being that the poplar would interact with the drying process and potentially spoil the entire batch!

Drying wood outside is no rocket science, it's been done for centuries and is still done both for the building woods you told about and premium quality tonewoods. Air dried wood has been said to have a more ringing tone compared to kiln dried. The trick is to store them on a level surface in a shady yet windy place loosely piled with slats between every layer. On top of the last layer they often lay heavier blanks on slats and big stones or other heavy stuff to keep the wood from warping. Redo the piling semi-annually during the next few years until the wood has stopped moving. Some sort of a roof is also recommendable to keep rain off. In the countryside the attic of a cattle shed often is both well ventilated and dry and has enough space for such small batches like yours.

You can then take the woods you need for the next project inside the house a few months before using to climatize them to normal playing temperature. That should give you dry enough lumber in a few years. The air dried tonewoods online seem to be at least a decade old so if you have access to a kiln you can use your own wood much sooner.

One potential source for air dried domestic wood might be old farm houses or rather their barns: In the old days the farmers used to build and fix their wooden sleighs and carts as well as furniture and other stuff and stored good quality wood for such purposes. Scavenging the neighbourhood of your childhood home might reveal treasures!

[Gitarren]

Yes, let's see what I will do. As I do not have a stock of wood yet, kiln drying seems to be the goto option so that I can build a buffer quicker.

I have spent some time on the build lately, but most has been on researching how to setup up the machines and then do it. I did setup the jointer and it works so much better, Here is the thread about setting up the jointer: https://groups.io/g/felderownersgroup/topic/70935120 

It took quiet some times, but I have learned tons about wood working machines. I am very happy about that. 

Then I got a wider blade for the bandsaw (25 m.m., I think 4T) and slices thick hardwood like butter in comparison to the 10 m.m. something contour blades. 

Below are two pieces of elm that I am considering for the body. I haven't yet decided how to do with the dark centerpiece. Something zebra-like could be cool. I could have a light strip around the pickups. Or, laminate lighter colored pieces to the edges of one piece and get a darker centerpiece. I thought the cracks in the leftmost piece would be cool but  think I will saw me another piece instead. 

Then you can see one piece after jointing. Compared to the previous picture, you can see that the quality of the surface is way better.