Brokeoff Mountain Luthierie

Inlaying a Guitar Rosette

2012-01-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

The world is made of stories. Good stories are hard to come by, and a good story that you can honestly call your own is an incredible gift. These stories are part of a bigger story that connects us all.

Gary Synder, Back on the Fire and Other Essays, 2007

Sorry to post again so soon, but I installed a rosette in a spruce top yesterday. Today, before I head down the hill to Home Depot for lumber to start framing the floor in the garage, I wanted to inlay a rosette on a redwood top. David Schramm has a great article on his website for inlaying a rosette, it's quite detailed and I highly recommend reading it.

Here I've finished routing out the channel, the scariest part is not making it too wide, at the inside and outside edge I'd take less than a 64th of an inch at a time. The rosette was purchased from Luthiers Mercantile International, Inc. (LMI), it was made in Russia and goes well with the redwood.

The channel is completed and the rosette fits well.

Yesterday, when I went to drill the hole for the pivot pin for the Dremel base, I had forgotten that my drill press is small enough that I can't get the drill bit exactly over the center hole for drilling. I had to find my father-in-law's old Reliance eggbeater drill. I did a good job on the spruce top drilling the center hole, but because redwood is softer then spruce I had a little trouble with getting the hole to center on the right spot. I had to enlarge it some and then put some double sided tape to hold the top down in the right spot. This is going to cause me some heartache when I go to cut out the soundhole. Oh, well.

This is how I glue down a rosette. I heated up a piece of pine board in the oven, drilled a hole for the center pin, slathered glue in the channel, installed the rosette and used almost every book I have on guitar making. Will post more photos of tops with rosettes later.

YouTube for the day: This kid (I call him a kid 'cause he is only 30!) is amazing! There are so many wonderful young guitarists today.

What I Forgot about Guitar Making

2012-01-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

Though he lived for years in a Farnham alley, he failed to pick up any of the manner even of a little country town. He was all rustic.

George Sturt, The Wheelwright's Shop, 1923

Yesterday's sunrise. I had to scramble to find the camera.

A friend of mine once told me that he didn't get up early enough to watch the sunrise until his daughter was born. Then he got up to feed her and realized what he had been missing by sleeping in past the sun's greeting to the day. Now he doesn't miss one.

What I forgot about guitar making. I made a beginner's mistake yesterday. I spent about an hour sanding in the profile on the fretboard of the spruce/walnut guitar, I like to sand all the way to 2000 grit so your fingers slip on the ebony. The profile was gorgeous, but I forgot to check across the fretboard for flatness. The mistake. I cut 2 pieces of fret wire and set them, then realized if the board was going to have an arch it needed to be uniform. I pulled the frets and, as you can see the ebony chipped, now I need to fix those chips. Stew-Mac sells sheets of Teflon to make "fret dams" while you fill in the chips with sawdust and super glue, one of today's chores is to call Stew-Mac and place an order for Teflon and pipettes.

What did I forget about guitar making? It is something that I need to do all the time, like anything else, to be good at it you must practice it well. It is something that I should do each day. I got out of practice because I got a full time job as a historic preservation carpenter at Yosemite National Park, I worked 10 hour days and had a hard time trying to make time for myself, to do this thing called guitar making. I forgot what it was like to shoot the joint for the top and back of a guitar, how to smooth the surface of the tonewood with a plane, how to re-saw a board for tonewood and I forgot what it was like to sit and carve the heel on a guitar neck. Those things are too important to be forgotten. Elegant woodworking should be akin to writing a short story or going into the field for plein air painting. Wood working is not dumb or brutish, nor is it something that we should strive to make money at. Yes, I speak as a heretic in this day of pop woodworking rags, but the act of creation is not an act to make something for sale. That is down the road, but it shouldn't be the sole outcome of the act. I want a guitar I make to be played and to make music.

YouTube for the Day: Here is another wonderful young guitarist, Tatyana Ryzhkova, playing the prelude from J.S. Bach's 'cello suite #1, BWV 1007

Cutting Slots in a Classical Guitar Bridge

2012-01-18T15:23:00.000-08:00

The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, 1976

More wind today, gusts up to 80mph, all of us who live here at the headwaters of St. Vrain Creek have been wondering when it was going to get breezy.

I don't know why I spend so much time on this blog, there is work to be done. Today was a day to make another bridge, this time for the Douglas Fir/Maple Martinez copy that I really need to finish and get out of the studio. Another piece of padauk, a small back saw, a clamp and a piece of Spanish cedar for a straight edge.

I am duplicating a modern style bridge that I had on the guitar, but the top was starting to cave-in, I had glued it on incorrectly the first time.

A few licks with the saw and a chisel or two and the slots are done. Yesterday, I cut the slots with a table saw, which always bothers me because of the noise and the chance of a digit engaging the saw blade. I decided that I would make this bridge the old fashioned way, entirely with hand tools.

After using a huge new and wonderful SawStop cabinet table saw I don't like using any other table saws. I've seen how quickly the blade is stopped by the brake on the SawStop, a $5,000 saw is cheaper than $250,000 plus in hospital and therapy bills.

A few more hits with a file, this bridge will be done, except for gluing on the piece of bone that tops the tie block.

3 bridges-ebony for the blond guitar, the padauk bridge that I made yesterday, the one made today and the one that is being replaced. To shape the bridge wings I use a variety of files, such as an old hoof rasp left over from my days as a horseshoer, a chainsaw raker file (the best file for this job) and a file used to sharpen auger bits.

Presents in the mail today, this book on Andres Segovia, which was outrageously priced at $55, I bought it because Volume 1 is out of print and sells used for almost $300! And I got fretwire for the blond guitar and the spruce/walnut guitar. No more excuses, I have to get to work.

And then I need to sharpen my tools.

YouTube for the day, here is an amazing young guitarist, Asya Selyutina.

Drilling String Holes in a Classical Guitar Bridge

2012-01-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

It would be possible for an expert joiner to purchase the steel blades and make his own wooden planes; but I feel that it is due to what may be termed "Craft Masonry"-the recognition and respect for skilled workmanship-that makes him reluctant to do so and, instead, to purchase the tools that an unknown fellow-worker has prepared for him with such infinite care.

Walter Rose, The Village Carpenter, 1937

I'm making a bridge for the spruce/walnut guitar out of paduak, it's nice and light and stiff, I read somewhere that luthiers Jeff Redgate and Greg Smallman use padauk for the bridges on their guitars. I would have posted more photos of actually drilling the holes, but it is 12 degrees outside with wind gusts up to 34mph making the wind chill down to minus 10 degrees. My hands were getting chilblained from touching the metal of the drill press, I need to find my gloves!

I made a little block that I attach the bridge to with double sided tape that keeps the bridge at the proper angle for the string holes. It works. I don't own a drill press vise, this is my best solution.

Now I need to go out and set up my table saw to make the longitudinal cuts for the saddle and the tie block. If I could only find my gloves! It's cold out there! My other shop isn't insulated!

For your enjoyment here's a YouTube of Chris Parkening, his playing still inspires me to go and practice for an hour.

In response to Tico's comment here's a link to Dampits, the original string instrument humidifier. If any other guitar players want to suggest other humidifiers please let me know!

The 10 String Classical Guitar-My Latest Obsesssion

2012-01-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

In the works of the Cubists the stringed instrument-notably the guitar-quickly became a popular motif. Why? Because it was there.

Gregory d'Alessio, Pablo Picasso, Monument or Mountebank, Guitar Review 46, 1979

Snow today, I just heard that the visibility at Denver International Airport is only 1 mile, the snow here is coming down sideways. Today is a good day to work on guitars.

Speaking of guitars, here's my latest obsession, the 10 string classical guitar.

Standard Tuning for a 10 string classic guitar.

The great guitar maker Jose Ramirez was always searching to make a better guitar. In Things About the Guitar he wrote

An obsession with achieving an enriched sound in the guitar led me to study an old, obsolete instrument: the viola d'amore, which has a very interesting feature. There are as many strings on the inside of this viola as there are on the outside, which are the ones that are played. The inner strings vibrate sympathetically and, together with the outer ones, produce a loud harmonious sound.

Jose Ramirez III

He set to work on this problem and created a guitar with two sets of strings.

The result of this whole contrivance was a powerful, beautiful sound. I immediately presented it to Maestro Segovia who was in Madrid at the time. He was very enthusiastic about the sound but at the same time he pointed out to me the invention's main failing: the inner strings kept on sounding and muddling the continuation of the musical piece being interpreted. It was necessary to cut off the sound of these strings just as in the pedals of a piano. But how? Segovia urged me to find a solution to this drawback, but he never offered opinions or solutions on technical matters that as far as he was concerned belonged to another world.

Narciso Yepes

Ramirez continued to work on the guitar's problems.

All the solutions that occurred to me were totally anti-guitar, until I showed the thing to Narcisco Yepes who was also enthusiastic, but as he has a very analytic personality and an untiring investigative spirit, he rose to the challenge to try to help me solve the problem.

...then Yepes telephoned me from somewhere that he had gone to give a concert, and told me: "Forget the inner strings. If you add four strings to the normal six strings all on the outside and these strings are tuned in a certain way for which I have made a study, we will have the same resonant and harmonic supports as with the inner strings, but with the advantage that by using a special technique, they can be easily muffled with the right hand whenever necessary." In fact, this was a ten-string guitar. I easily designed this special guitar and built it with no trouble.

At a private meeting, I turned this guitar over to Yepes, who began to try it out by playing a piece. He resembled a first year student or even worse. After some time, he looked skyward. I feared he was going to release a string of insults, but he didn't. What he said was this: "What a marvelous mess I have gotten myself into."

When I was a young guitar student in the late 1970's, most guitar teachers at the time had a bit of a prejudice against any guitar that had more than six strings, this came from Andres Segovia, to him there was only one plucked string instrument worthy to study and perform on. I never thought much about a ten string guitar, I knew that it could be used to play Renaissance and Baroque lute music on it, I thought that was the only reason for the extra strings.

Then I saw this video and my eyes were opened. As a classic guitar player this guitar makes so much sense, you can hear how the guitar is more resonant, I can only imagine the sound that surrounds a player when they perform on a 10 string. In my web research on this beast of a guitar, I did come across a quote from a well known concert classic guitarist who said that a player would spend more time dampening the resonant strings then actually playing.

Now I get to the reason why I build guitars-I get to make a 10 string guitar so I can play it! Every guitar I have made I made so I could play it. Pretty cool, don't you think!

This morning, instead of doing real work like carving a neck, I asked myself "what if Manuel Hernandez y Victoriano Aguado had made a 10 string guitar?" What would it look like. I pulled out some brown wrapping paper, enlarged the H y A plantilla by 6mm to make its overall length 496mm and with the help of William Cumpiano's book I drew a full size plan. I increased the string length from 650mm to 660mm which is a little closer to the 664mm string length that Ramirez used. My first guitar, which I still play, is a Hernandis which was built in Japan for Sherry-Brener Ltd. in Chicago, it's basically a copy of a Ramirez and it has a string length of 664mm. I played the thing for years and never thought about the string length until I played a guitar the was 650mm, I found that more comfortable. After playing the shorter scale 19th century Romantic guitars, I was surprised to find that it was easier to play the 664mm length. I had to stretch my fingers further and there was more room to hit the strings and the frets, I wish I could explain it better. Long story short, when I make a 10 string guitar it will have the longer scale.

It looks good, though I think that I will buy Roy Courtnall's plans for a 10 string guitar to make sure that I get the peg head dimensions correct, along with Scot Antes plans for a 1966 Ramirez. I'm trying to be a copyist, you learn good skills that way.

All I have to do now is to find an ebony fingerboard that is over four inches wide and some really nice Spanish cedar for a neck. I have a really nice piece of Sitka spruce for a top and my last set of Indian rosewood for back and sides, I could re-saw some bubinga too for this project.

Here's a video of Narciso Yepes playing several pieces from J.S. Bach's Lute Suite in e minor, BWV 996. Enjoy!

Janet Marlow is a wonderful performer and composer, here she is playing one of her pieces on a 10 string guitar.

A "Mae West" Style Lacote Guitar, Part 3

2012-01-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

I have had three wives and three legitimate guitars, flirting, however, with many others.

Andres Segovia, "A Conversation", Guitar Review 43, 1978

Work goes slowly on the Mae West Lacote. I decided to install the bridge before I complete the french polish, before that I needed to see what thickness to make the bridge. I put a straight edge on the fingerboard and discovered there was a huge back bow. I spent about 40 minutes sharpening the irons for a block plane and a No.3 smoothing plane and then got to work.

You can see how much wood I had to remove to make the fingerboard straight, well, I did put a little dip in it between frets #7-#12. After I install the bridge, I will sand it smooth and then install the frets. As I was planing the fingerboard I discovered that I had failed to orient the grain direction of the ebony so I could plane from sound hole to peg head. The way that it was probably was the best, I butted the box of the guitar up to the stop and planed away. Ebony is quite the wood to hand plane!

I am so far behind on all of my work. Today, I need to drive down to the lumber yard and pick up material to frame in a floor over the dirt floor of the garage. We have 2 cars and a one car garage won't take 2, I'm slowly converting it into a wood shed and shop/storage space. Then there are guitars and guitars and guitars to finish, make bridges for, necks to carve, back and sides to thin, rosettes to install.

By the way, are there any other classical guitar players out there in blogger land? I know of John Dimick and Christopher Davis, please check out their blogs.

A video of Izhar Elias playing what appears to be a copy of a guitar made by Johann Stauffer, who taught C.F. Martin how to make guitars.

End of Year Thoughts on Woodworking and Other Ramblings

2011-12-31T13:02:00.000-08:00

We are not in an age of folklore, but be it superstition or science, the results have certainly been interesting: the New England Farmer says, "The moon has potential influence in the various parts of her orbits, that by cutting one tree three hours before the new moon and another of the same kind of tree six hours afterwards, a difference in the soundness of the timber will be noticed." "When the moon is new to full," reads an old almanac proverb, "timbers fibers warp and pull." There were rules even for cutting firewood, for an entry for January 6, 1799, in an early Almanac advises, "At this quarter of the moon, cut fire wood to prevent it from snapping and throwing embers beyond the hearth."

Eric Sloane, American Barns and Covered Bridges, 1954

For end the year I have to give a warm and hearty Thank You! to Luke Townsley of unpluggedshop.com for picking up my blog. Luke, may you never grow tired of my blog! I hope to always post something that will interest you and hopefully, help you learn something new! Thanks to his site my blog has gotten over 19,000 hits in the last six months! I had been blogging for 4 years before this and had only received 640 hits! Thank you, Luke, because of your work I have gotten to meet such great folks as Terry Kelly, Tico Vogt, among others, and all the people who have viewed my blog. This December, Robin Wood, that wonderful English bowl turner extraordinaire, also discovered my blog. I believe that he has single-handedly revived the art of bowl turning on a spring pole lathe world wide. Thanks to all of you!

It was a touching year, my wife and I moved from my ancestral home in northeastern California back to her ancestral home land of gold, Gilpin and Boulder counties Colorado. There are many people who are gone and still loved that I would like to talk to again to make sure that everything that I am doing is "correct and proper" because they were the ones who taught me in the first place.

Wood working is a very personal act and any part of creating is, but remember, always look over your shoulder because somebody is looking, there is always an audience and you must strive to always to do your best.

I have 2 guitars that I will be building this year and I am already worried about who will play them and what kinds of music will be played on these guitars. I know the sounds, richness, fullness, depth and clarity that I want these guitars to create, I want them to express the music of Llobet, Smith-Brindle, Tansman, Thea Musgrave, de Visee and Dowland with all the nuisances a performer can get out of them.

Don't comprise quality, fellow woodworkers and don't be slaves to copying James Krenov or Dave Ellsworth! Robin Wood, Tico Vogt and Terry Kelly have it right, take the work that was done before us, honor that work by equaling or exceeding their work!

Terry, this emblem of the Red River Lumber Company is for you, this is what Paul Bunyan really looked like, Everett Jackson (The Marvelous Adventures of Paul Bunyan, Louis Untermeyer) was close with his illustrations but Paul really did have facial hair. Though Paul may have started the destruction of the old growth forests of the United States, because of him and my grandfather's hand tools I started wood working, I also gained a love of trees and what can be created from them. We are not the first people to love and know trees, our Bronze age ancesters knew what wood made the best bows and arrows, knife hafts and living structures.

Fifteen years ago or so, a good friend of mine, Andrea Gunderson, reminded me that winter is the time to come to one's self to regroup and become quiet in thought, like the trees and rocks around us that embrace winter with the eternal knowledge that spring, and new growth, always return, life is revitalized and with it new thoughts and acts of creation.

Here's to a happy, wonderful and productive New Year!

Thanks everyone!

Wilson

My Grandfather was Paul Bunyan

2011-12-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

Nobody asked them about Paul Bunyan, for no one outside of a lumber camp had even heard of the hero until 1910. And the early woodsmen did not write their stories down. They told them, though, and so Paul Bunyan's fame spread far and wide.

Daniel Hoffman, Paul Bunyan, Last of the Frontier Demigods, 1983

Rufus Wilson, top of spar at the Gerber Sawmill, Mineral, California, circa 1925.

"My grandfather was Paul Bunyan" I know is a big claim to make, but from the stories that I heard about him when I was young sure enough made him sound like Paul Bunyan. He was Rufus Wilson, a logger, shake maker, blacksmith, saw sharpener, barber, house carpenter, well digger and I am sure that I am forgetting some of the things that he did. He was one of the last of the old time fallers in northeastern California, one of those men who felled huge ponderosas, Douglas firs and sugar pines with a double bit axe, crosscut saw and a bunch of falling wedges. My great Uncle Frank told me that "Rufe" could buck, by himself, a section of a four foot through sugar pine with a crosscut saw in under fifteen minutes. That when he was young, "Pop", as my mother and her siblings called him, never climbed through a fence, he always jumped them and that he willingly took the extra pay to climb and top spar trees in logging operations. I think I also heard that he was one of those guys who could jump up high enough, flat-footed from the floor, and flip in the air so as to drive the caulks, "corks", of his logging boots into the ceiling.

from left: Bill Glines; Martin Black on horseback; Billy Glines (Bill's son) leaning against horse; May Black Wilson (my grandmother), Rufus Wilson. Lyman Springs, California, circa 1910.

He wasn't a big man, I was told that he was no taller then 5'10". Frank told another story about the two of them deer hunting and my grandfather shot a 150lb blacktail buck way down at the bottom of Battle Creek Canyon. Frank said that they gutted the deer some and that grandpa then proceeded to "Indian" carry the buck the 15 miles back to Lyonsville. Frank said he had a hard time keeping up with him and all he had to do was carry the rifles!

Rufus married my grandmother, May Black, in 1910, she was just as tough as my grandpa, she bore him 11 children and took care of them all. She was a virtuoso on the piano and organ, everyone told me that she was a wonderful singer and that "her voice could raise the roof". Martin, the buckaroo in the photo, was Grandma's older brother. There are stories about him, too, I guess he made money as a bootlegger and ran a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Steam donkey near Lyonsville, California. Ollie Wilson at right of photo, other man is unknown. Date unknown

All the Wilson boys, Jerry, Rufus, Ollie, Tod and John were loggers and at some point in their lives had worked at the New Champion Mill in old Lyonsville. John owned a little sawmill down below Lyman Springs and I think Ollie ran one for awhile too. Ollie was a bootlegger, too, a story I heard was that he had his lumber wagon fixed up with a secret compartment to cache the liquor and once a month drove a load down the Hog's Back road to Red Bluff. About half way down to Red Bluff Ollie would meet the sheriff who would ask for some "lumber". My grandfather was heard to say about his brother Ollie, "You never see a bead of sweat on his brow or a callous on his hand, yet he makes more money in a month then I will in a lifetime." I wish that I had some photos of those boys falling trees. (When you grow up with loggers, the verb "to fell" doesn't get used a whole lot. You "fall" a tree and it "fell" in the right direction. I never heard anyone say, "Well, I'm going to fell that incense cedar today." "Fell", I suspect was too clumsy of a word to say.)

An early drawing of Paul Bunyan. Drawn by W.B. Laughead of the Red River Lumber Company.

Making those froe mallets and using the froes the other day set me to thinking about all the people I knew growing up in northeastern California and then Terry at CT Kelly Furniture had to mention Paul Bunyan to me the other day in an email. I felt that I needed to talk a little bit about the giants in my life and Paul Bunyan, too. I grew up not too far from Westwood, California where Paul Bunyan first took life in folklore writing (I know MacGillivray's poem was first) under W.B. Laughead's hand and I understand that there is a new book out on Paul Bunyan by Michael Edmonds, Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan. It sounds like an interesting read.

For those of you who love the history of logging, sawmills and conservation please check out the blog of the Forest History Society, Peeling Back the Bark. There is a lot of good stuff on there!

Reclaimed Redwood Guitar Top and 2 Panel Saws

2011-12-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

American soil and American spirit have created Paul Bunyan. His forerunners are heroes who fed on fable and thrived on exaggeration: Hercules and Gargantua and Gulliver. Bunyan is not only more humorous but more high-hearted than any of his predecessors. He was born in the days when the forests of the Northwest were dark and immense, and the men who lived in them were few and lonely. The trees dwarfed the men; the men had to make themselves big, if only in imagination.

Louis Untermeyer, The Wonderful Adventures of Paul Bunyan, 1945

I'm waiting for the bread to rise, thought I'd practice writing a bit.

I have 2 guitars that I want to get started: one will have a spruce top with California laurel back and sides and will be a loose copy of guitar FE 19 by Antonio de Torres; the other will have a reclaimed redwood top with Indian rosewood back and sides, I hope to make this one a very close pastiche of an early 1960's Hernandez y Aguado guitar. Now is the time to start, the humidity is low in my studio.

This redwood board was saved from a picnic bench. I couldn't let it sit out in the elements anymore, the board has almost perfect vertical grain and rang like a bell when I first tapped it with my knuckles. It is similar to a redwood top set that I re-sawed from an old redwood water tank, the wood is something to behold! It had been so long since I re-sawed anything, I had almost forgotten what to do!

Here are the two tops together. I bought the Englemann spruce top about 10 years ago, it has a great tap tone and some very light bear claw. I should post photos of the rosettes that I am going to use, they were made in Russia and I purchased them through LMI. I look forward to building these guitars side by side, it'll be interesting to hear the differences in the tone woods when I finish them.

A close up of the two tops.

This neck is being made from some Spanish cedar (cedrus species) that I bought from Marc Culbertson at Gilmer Wood a little over 5 years ago. At the time of purchase Marc told me that the company had bought this cedar from a newly retired pattern maker who had had this wood for over forty years. It is marvelous stuff! This is for the redwood guitar.

The neck staff is a little too narrow for my comfort in cutting out the peg head, so I added 2 little "ears" to the head blank. As you can see I am copying even the crest that Hernandez y Aguado used on their guitars. I think I will skip texturing the field of the peg head like many of the H y A's where, I did some looking on the internet and found some H y A guitars that had peg heads that weren't textured.

For you tool geeks here is another project I have in mind. I was ripping down brace wood stock for the 2 guitars the other day and I was wishing that I had a shorter panel rip saw instead of the gorgeously large No. 7 Disston rip saw that is my "go to" rip saw. I've 2 other panels saws that are crosscut, but I lack a rip one. Then I remembered these 2 saws hiding out in my other tool chest. So, tomorrow I will drive the Jeep to a nearby wood store and look for some wood for proper handles. (I tried to put the saw nuts back in my grandfather's saw, now they don't fit!)

The saw with the handle is an 10 point 20 inch panel saw, the saw nut states "Warranted Superior" and you can just barely make out the same on the saw etch, the etch is very faded. The saw belonged to my maternal grandfather, he made a handle for it out of black (red) oak, [quercus kellogii] that is indigenous to northeast California. I have no idea how old the saw is. The saw without the handle I made by cutting down an old Disston, I think it might have been a No.7 or a D-7, but the etch is so faded I can't really read anything other then Disston. I think I bought that saw 15 years ago with the intent to make it a mate to the other saw, but to make it an 8 point rip saw. I do remember working on it, reshaping the teeth to rip configuration, I did about 1/4 of the teeth then quit. I must have gotten frustrated. As if I don't have enough projects all ready!

Springpole Lathe, Snow and the First Day of Winter

2011-12-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

Once again we are in the grip of that grim old gentleman familiarly known as Jack Frost. He is no effete degenerate, but is forceful, lusty, strong and energetic, yet he is not unkind to those who fear not to meet him face to face in his boisterous play.

Daniel Carter Beard, The Field and Forest Handy Book, 1906

Seventeen inches of champagne snow by 9am, my wife told me that Evergreen, Colorado got two feet of snow. It's warmed up to 14 degrees F, supposed to be a low of 2 degrees F tonight.

The dogs wanted to go for a walk as usual, the snow sloughed off the rocks at the narrow part of the gulch and was up to my hips.

At this point the dogs wanted me to break trail. Pete, the Kelpie, the littlest dog of the bunch, had been doing most of the trail breaking.

The lathe awaits another day.

Today is a day to be inside drinking hot chocolate or some nice whiskey. My wife is buying some sleds tomorrow before she comes home, there is a spot behind our house that is perfect for a sled run! Thank goodness for Christmas snow!

How to Make a Traditional Froe Mallet

2011-12-20T14:22:00.000-08:00

What holds the Holy of the Holies, what did Brahma become? Wood. Why will aspen always tremble? For the nails driven into the cross. What makes the color of wood? The soil it tastes. Cradle, fiddle, coffin, bed: wood is a column of earth made ambitious by light, and made of beauty by the rain.

Kim R. Stafford, Having Everything Right, 1986.

Rive, verb, to split
Shake, noun, a split in a piece wood. (Heart shake, ring shake)
Shake, verb, (Middle English), to split.

I know I should have been in the studio working on my back log of guitars, but the day was so nice and warm with a tall blue canopy, I couldn't stay inside. I decided that I needed to make a proper froe mallet. This style of mallet is traditional to northeastern California, primarily Tehama (where I'm from), Butte, Shasta and Plumas counties where making shingles by hand from sugar pines was an industry. I don't know if it was used in any other region along the Pacific Rim, other parts of the United States or even other counties in California. I haven't had a chance to research this style of mallet more extensively.

This is a copy of a froe mallet that my great grandfather, John Wilson, made around 1900 and is in my brother's tool collection. It's surprising that we have it, these mallets were disposable, they wear out quickly when you rive out a thousand or so shingles a day, and were often made on site. When I was splitting off the cheeks of the legs of the poppits for the lathe, I was wanting a proper mallet to strike the froe with, so here is the process. Tools needed: a crosscut saw, axe and a knife.

First, find a nice young Douglas fir tree that is about six to seven inches in diameter, preferably a dead standing tree with no splits in it. Douglas fir was the preferred wood, it is a hard conifer, it's sectional density is .92, and is quite a bit lighter then foothill live oak which, by the way, makes wonderful mallets. Cut out a section between the branch whorls, a foot or so long. I felled a young Douglas fir that had a double top and cut 2 pieces.

Remove the bark with an axe, hatchet or a drawknife.

Mark out the size of your handle on the growth rings, they are a great reference to use and you'll make a round handle! Orient your piece so that the cut end that was closest to the crown of the tree is up when you mark the circumference of the handle. The opposite end cut should be the end that is closest to the butt of the tree. Why? Wood splits better from the crown, or head, to butt.

Put a line all around the piece, this is where you will the shoulder. Usually the length of the mallet's handle is the same as the diameter of the tree, the same for the head. So a piece that is six inches in diameter will have a handle six inches long and the head is also six inches long. The handle can be a little shorter then the head, it balances better in your hand and is easier to swing saving your arm.

Take your saw and start cutting, again using the growth rings as reference. Don't go too deep, you can adjust the thickness of the handle as you work.

Go to your chopping block and start splitting away what doesn't look like a handle. Try not to split any of the mallet head, some axe marks are okay, go ahead and use your axe to carve the handle.

Keep carving with an axe for as far as you are comfortable, then switch to a knife, pocket, sloyd or otherwise to smooth and finish it up. Traditionally, the handle tapers down a little from the end to the head.

Adjust the thickness to what you desire, I make mine so that my middle finger just touches the pad beneath the thumb. I learned that while attending the Horseshoeing School at Montana State University, we had to size the handle on our 2 1/2 pound rounding hammer to fit our hands before we could start shaping horseshoes.

Two finished froe mallets. I made these as close as I could to the originals, I did not change anything! I say that because hand riving shingles is tough, hard work, the men who first made these mallets swung them all day long, they had to work out a form and shape that worked well for them. As I said earlier, these mallets are traditional to one region in northeastern California and didn't come from a book about woodworking in Appalachia. The originals were made from Douglas fir, were considered disposable and were often made on site. Who knows what shingle making tradition originally used them, the lumber industry in California attracted men from all over the United States and the world.

I spent about an hour making these, I could hear the voices of my mom, my dad and Uncle Frank as I worked, they were the ones who showed me how to make these mallets. I loved them all and now they are gone. It was good to make these.

I hope you enjoy making one!

PS

I buried these in snow, I know that they are going to split!

How to Make a Spring Pole Lathe for Bowl Turning, Part 5

2011-12-19T08:14:00.000-08:00

I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.

J.S. Bach

Work continues on the lathe, yesterday I fashioned the legs for the poppits. In this shot I'm cutting the shoulders for the poppits, they'll sit on the bed of the lathe. By the way, the saw I am using belonged to my grandfather, it's an E.C. Atkins crosscut with a rosewood handle. I've never had it dated, I'm assuming that he got it around 1910 the year he and my grandmother were married. (After that they had a lot of kids and not much money!) It's a wonderful saw.

Now comes the fun part, splitting of the cheeks so I can finish with an axe. The froe is another heirloom made by grandfather from a car spring. I have 2 of his froes, a riving froe and a checking froe. I used the riving froe to split off the cheek, it is a narrow froe, I was told by my uncle that you used a narrow froe to split the shingle off of the bolt. The checking froe is wider and a little heavier, it was made to mark the bolt to see how many shingles you could rive from it, in other words, you used it "to check and see what you could get." Douglas fir is a bit stiffer to split then sugar pine, you can see I'm trying to get my right hand into the split to help it along. The right hand holds the split while you work the froe down the split, usually your hand gets a little squashed in the process. I once tried to teach this skill to some historic preservation workers that I worked with, they thought it was the dumbest thing. "Why, do we need to know that?" they said, "can't we buy the shingles already made?"

Success! The cheek split off more or less how I wanted it. As I said, Douglas fir is tough and stringy and this tree had a twist to it, not the best stuff for splitting. I finished up the cheek faces with an axe. I wanted to include a photo showing me trying to fit the poppit into the slot, by for some reason Blogger would allow me only 4, not 5, photo uploads today.

Both poppits fitted into the bed. Now I need to drill and cut out slots for the wedges that will hold the poppits in place.

It's lightly snowing right now. I have to replace a fingerboard on one of my guitars, the walnut/spruce one and I need to finish french polishing the neck of the cedar/maple guitar. Always, there is too much to be done!

Post Script 12/20/2011
After Steve's comment I decided to add a photo of me using the handle of the mallet to hold open the split while I work the froe down the split. I wasn't able to upload this photo when I wrote the original post. (I know it is a small mallet, it was the only one that I could find at the time, I later remembered that the other mallet was in another tool chest!) Steve is right, your hand can get trapped in a split. It's a habit for me to put my hand in the split, that is what I was taught when I learned how to rive sugar pine shingles. You start the split and open it with the froe driving it down through the bolt with a mallet and then work your fist with the thumb up into the split to hold it open while you continue splitting with the froe. A sugar pine shingle is supposed to be less then 3/16ths of an inch thick, sugar pine splits easily, there's less chance of getting your hand trapped. I learned this skill from 2 uncles, men who could rive over a 1000 shingles day back in the 1930's and 1940's for "a penny a shake". That doesn't mean I shouldn't be aware of safety concerns, thanks for the safety tip, Steve!

How to Make a Spring Pole Lathe for Bowl Turning, Part 4

2011-12-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

The past is never dead. It isn't even past.

William Faulkner

My wife was kind enough to take some photos of me working on the lathe this weekend. I needed to length the slot in the lathe bed, after first cutting it I discovered that I wouldn't have enough room between the centers for a bowl blank and the mandrel. Here I've drawn some reference lines.

Thanks goodness for small chainsaws! Here I am cutting an extra five inches that are needed at each end of the slot.

Now comes my safety message: I hope you can see where my left hand thumb is in this photograph, because you will notice that I have it wrapped firmly around the chainsaw handle. I do this to maintain firm control of the saw. I know a guy who refused to do this, he put the bar of his chainsaw all the way to the femur of his left leg, luckily he didn't die, he walks with a bad limp today. I bring this up because I was looking through Dave Ellsworth's book Ellsworth on Woodturning and there are several photos of him operating a chainsaw and he does not have his left hand thumb wrapped around the chainsaw handle! This is a very dangerous practice! I was on a forest fire at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison back in 1995 swamping for a sawyer who wouldn't hold the chainsaw properly. The crew boss took the saw away from him and handed him a pulaski. He told the sawyer that he wasn't going to have anyone injured on his crew. Chainsaws are dangerous! Treat them with respect!

I cleaned up the slot best I could with a 2 inch wide mortise chisel, I was wishing that I owned a slick.

Our dog Rufus says "Hi!"

How to Make a Springpole Lathe for Bowl Turning, Part 3

2011-12-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

During the 16th century living standards rose and those who were well-off could afford pewter plates and dishes. Salt-glazed stoneware jugs from Belgium and Germany gradually took over from the wooden bowl as the commonest drinking vessel and English potters started making more earthenware dishes. However, the biggest challenge to woodware came in the late 17th and 18th centuries when cheap glazed pottery, dishes and bowls became available for the first time.

Robin Wood, The Wooden Bowl, 2005

Please visit Robin's blog at
http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/

(For those of you who are coming to my blog from Robin Wood's blog, I have updated How to Make a Spring Pole Lathe for Bowl Turning with Parts 4 and 5, so please check out these newer posts. I don't want you to miss a single episode! Wilson)

The lathe bed is upright, I decided to level it with a scrub and jack plane. This is the fourth wooden lathe that I've built and I know the need to have a flat and level bed, if it isn't there will be problems with the poppits. They need to line up correctly to each other or things won't run right.

Here again I cheated, I used my little Stihl chainsaw to cut out the slot for the legs of the poppits. I need to finish truing up the inside of the slot so the poppits will fit properly.

I split the wood for the poppits from another Douglas fir. After I opened that tree up I realized that I should have used it for the bed of the lathe, it was a nice tree with fairly straight grain. These poppit blanks are about 5 inches square and I hewed them with an axe.

Here are the poppits. After I clean up the slot, I will cut the legs for the poppits and then cut out the slots for the wedges that will hold them in place on the lathe bed.

Right after I took this photos we got several storms that each dumped over a foot of snow and the temperatures dropped below 0 degrees F. Needless to say it's been a little too cold and snowy to do anymore work on the lathe.

The Wonders of French Polish, Part 2

2011-12-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

Among the greatest perils that could stalk a guitar, except for being run over by a truck, are the climatic changes from humid to dry and viceversa, especially if these changes are produced rapidly.

Jose Ramirez II, Things About the Guitar, 1990.

Just a quick blog, here is the sitka spruce/black walnut from an earlier post. I leveled sanded the entire guitar after several "bodying" sessions with shellac, I sanded with 800 grit wet/dry sandpaper and used olive oil for a lubricant. I understand that this "satin" look is very popular on guitars today.

Here is the guitar after 15 minutes of french polishing, quite a difference isn't it.

Last night I was re-reading Things About the Guitar, by Jose Ramirez II, he didn't think that shellac was a suitable finish for a guitar. From what I read in the American Luthier magazine, many Spanish makers today send out their guitars to be finished with catalyzed urethane, which I understand is highly toxic to apply. Apparently you have to be suited up with a self contained breathing apparatus when you enter the spray both! Wow! You have to watch the beautiful video
of the workshop at Ramirez guitars, http://www.guitarrasramirez.com/video.html

I'm getting better at this technique called french polishing and I enjoy it far more then trying to brush on some other varnish, I just wish I had tried it sooner!

How to Make a Spring Pole Lathe for Bowl Turning, Part 2

2011-12-03T15:53:00.000-08:00

Appreciation for skills and the interpretation of the elements of design expression, inspires understanding and the desire to acquire these essentials of good craftsmanship. Let us seek opportunities to share and to exchange skills with others, especially craftsmen of other races and countries.

Lester Griswold, Handicraft, 1931

I leveled the bed of the lathe as well as I could with an axe, then flipped it over and started to drill the holes for the legs. The largest twist bit that I own is only 1 1/4 inches, so I dug out an 1 1/2 hole hog bit from my days in construction. It fit the brace nicely and the jaws held on to it, it was a bit of work to bore these holes, the bit didn't want to clear the chips that well and my shoulder joints were screaming at the end of each hole. The bit worked and made a nice clean hole. I drilled the holes about 4 inches+- deep, I drilled until the bit was buried in the log and the brace's nose was hitting the bark.

The legs I split out of the rest of the tree and roughly shaped with an axe. I have no idea what length I cut them to I was doing everything by eye. One of the rules in making this lathe is not to measure anything, except maybe with my out stretched arms, or my fingers or my hand. In this photo you can see that I am rounded the tenon with my little double bit cruising axe. You make the tenon square, cut off those corners to make an octagon and then continue cutting the facets until it is round.

Four holes drilled, here again, I used my eye to adjust the angle of splay using the bit and brace for the visual reference. I drove the first leg home with a sledge hammer, then used that as a reference for the next leg hole and so on for the others. You hammer the legs with the sledge until the leg stops ringing, that means you've driven it as far as you can. You'll be surprised at how sturdy these legs are.

Four legs made, tenons cut and driven home. If this lathe doesn't work out, I'll cut the legs down to have nice bench.

How to Make a Spring Pole Lathe for Bowl Turning, Part 1

2011-11-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

I like making bowls more than I like making money.

H.V. Morton, In Search of England, 1930

I've been wanting to make a new spring pole lathe for the last 2 years or so and now that I have 5 acres with trees again, I decided that making such a lathe would be a good winter project. If any of you happen to have a copy of the February 2002 issue of Woodwork you'll know that there is a wonderful article in that issue about Robin Wood, a bowl turner in England. (If you don't know about Robin already please visit his website at www.robin-wood.co.uk/index.htm, he is simply an amazing woodworker and you should see his work.) In the article there is a photo essay of him building a spring pole lathe out of a log using just an small broad axe, centers made from 5/8 inch rod and several different sized augers. That is what I am working on, making a lathe from a tree with just a Jersey pattern axe and a brace with a bit.

There was a Douglas fir near the house with a dead top that had a little bit of lean to it, but it looked like a decent tree. I felled it with my Husky 385 chainsaw and bucked most of it into firewood except for the butt of the tree which I cut to a six foot length. Then I started to split it with wedges.

When I was a teenager back in the mid to late 1970's, I split incense cedar trees for fence posts for our property in northeast California, my parents and brother did too, it was a family affair, each one of us seeing who could split out posts faster and straighter then everyone else. Splitting this log brought back many memories. I knew that the Douglas fir would be tough and stringy, I've split Doug fir before and this one was no exception to the rule.

The tree had more of a twist then I expected, so to shorten the amount of time I needed to swing an axe I scored the log with the chainsaw, okay, so I cheated from my rule of using only an axe, etc. Those little pieces are a lot easier to split off then big chunks.

Here's what it looks like after some hewing, as you can see I have more work to do.

I don't own a broad axe, but I do have a nice Jersey pattern axe that works well and a little double bit cruiser axe that I use for carving. I would like to get another Jersey pattern axe and re-grind the bevels so that it would be better at hewing. Wow, I guess I'm tired after a day of tree falling and hewing, my sentences aren't making much sense. I'll post more tomorrow, there's a snow storm coming in with strong winds and a high of only 17 degrees F.!

The Wonders of French Polish

2011-11-10T12:26:00.000-08:00

In my former papers I have shown that the nineteenth century was the century of ugliness, and that the labor-saving machinery which gave us in exchange for the beauty of life degraded the workman without really adding materially to the happiness of the consumer. Some of my readers and critics have called this pessimistic, and so it would be, if I had intended to stop there. But pessimism is the root of optimism and you have to be thoroughly persuaded that things are in a bad way before you are willing to set to work to improve them.

Ernest Crosby, 'The Beauty of Ugliness', The Craftsman, c. 1905

This is a guitar with a Sitka spruce top with eastern black walnut back and sides that I made sometime ago on a Robert Bouchet plantilla and is braced with an asymmetrical bracing from Manuel Hernandez and Victoriano Aguado. When I built it all the books I had read on guitar making up to that point, Cumpiano's Guitarmaking, Sloane's Classic Guitar Construction, Overholtzer's Classical Guitar Making, etc., etc., pretty much stated that a student should stay away from french polish because it was too hard to learn and to stick with lacquer or an oil varnish. Even John Bogdanovich in Classical Guitar Making states that shellac is an inferior finish to use on a guitar. The only book that suggests one can french polish a guitar is Roy Courtnell's wonderful Making Master Guitars. With admonishments like that I stayed away from french polish. Since I didn't have the facilities and proper personal protective equipment to spray lacquer, I tried several wipe-on oil varnish recipes that I found in Fine Woodworking with terrible success. Then I came across an article posted on Bill Cumpiano's website that discussed Frank Haselbacher's use of Behlen's Rockhard Table Top varnish "straight from the can". Just Google Frank Haselbacher and the article appears as "Varnish Technique". I figured if Cumpiano says it's a good product, I should use it. What Cumpiano fails to mention in the article is that Behlen reformulated the varnish sometime after Haselbacher's death. That information comes from an interview in American Luthier #98 with the great luthier, Cyndy Burton. I applied the Behlen product, not knowing that it was not the same stuff as what Haselbacher used, with a brush and within six months that varnish started to yellow, this photo shows what it looked like after a year, the varnish continued to yellow.

I finished one other guitar with the varnish and after 2 years started to sound as if it were being choked. A man wanted to buy the guitar, so I stripped it, brushed on some shellac, rubbed it out and he loves it.

With this spruce/walnut guitar I bought some Jasco brand "Green Strip" and slathered it on the guitar. Here is the top after about 20 minutes of soaking. The varnish really was "rockhard", some of it I had to let the remover sit for over an hour and a half and I still had to scrape off the leftover varnish. All nasty stuff.

What a difference! The same guitar after a spit coat of "blond" shellac that I purchased from Luthier's Mercantile. You can see that the top is a nice piece of spruce, it has some bear claw running through out the top and if you can view the photo magnified a little more the wood has nice medullary rays to it. You couldn't see all of that under the Behlen varnish.

A new batch of 2lb cut shellac. I will say it again, shellac is wonderful because you don't need a hazmat locker in your shop! American Lutherie #96 has a great article on Manuel Velazquez, one of the accompanying photos in the article shows a hazmat locker in the back of their shop, they use Pratt and Lambert's #38 Clear Alkyd Varnish. At Yosemite National Park, due to OSHA regulations, I had to have MSDS sheets on various liquids that I used with me at the job sites, every thing had to be placed in a locker at the end of the day, after that I decided that I didn't want that for my own shop.

This a blond guitar for a client in Arizona, I am doing a bodying session with a large fad that is made up from cotton gauze covered with a piece of old t-shirt. I plan on going back to using wool for the heart of the fad, I have better control in applying the shellac with wool.

So, am I going to catch hell from treading on the writings of maestro Cumpiano and the other writers of build-it-yourself guitar books? I wish that they had stated that french polishing is a viable option and encouraged their readers to attempt it, it would have saved me a lot of grief and heartache. Ron Fernandez has a great DVD on french polishing, Milburn Guitars has a marvelous tutorial on french polishing that I refer to on a regular basis, even Dan Erlewine at Stew-Mac has a Trade Secret article on french polishing that is very "user friendly"! My next question is why did all those great guitar makers, Jose Ramirez, Santos Hernandez, Francisco Simplicio, Hermann Hauser french polish all their guitars? Why does Jeff Elliot continue to use shellac if it is such an interior finish? Maybe because it works.

Restoring a Craftsman Style Rocker, Conclusion

2011-11-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

There is but one rule - it must belong, must blend, must fit the setting, whether it be cabin, outdoor kitchen, bench, stool or whatnot in the woods. That which is wholly in order in the city may raise its distressing head with consummate ugliness in the wilds.

Bernard S. Mason, Woodcraft, 1954

Here is the rocker in its restored form.

The seat cushion was made by Georgia at Lyons Upholstery in Lyons, Colorado and she did a wonderful job.

I used a Minwax red oak stain that I left on for quite a while before wiping it off. I applied 3 coats of Minwax Wipe On Poly, which I must say, is very easy to apply and the results are amazing! I was truly impressed with this wipe on polyurethane, I would use it again. No wonder the luthier Paul Jacobson is now using this poly as an option to finish the tops on his guitars.

Our living room, the restored rocker is on the right. The rocker on the left needs to be refinished, but doesn't need any work to keep it from falling apart like the other did.

One Man Crosscut Saw, Firewood and French Polish

2011-11-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

There is a wonderful rhythm in using a crosscut saw, the "shish" of the cutters and rakers clearing out a kerf almost becomes hypnotic, but your arms, shoulders and hips tell you that you are working. To work is to pray.

We don't need to heat with wood, the house has a steam heat furnace that is quite efficient. The fireplace is huge, but more for a romantic show. I cut about a cord and a half of lodge pole pine before these last 2 storms. My Husky 385 chainsaw is overkill on these small trees, cutting the wood to stove length is quick, but after watching "Alone in the Wilderness", a documentary on Dick Proenneke's life in Alaska, I pulled out the one man crosscut saws I own. I figured I need the exercise. This saw belonged to my father-in-law, it's a Monkey Ward saw with perforated lance teeth with a "D" handle, the auxiliary handle came from our place in northeastern California. This set up works though after using it for about a half an hour I put on a regular crosscut saw handle, it is what I am use to.

This saw belong to my maternal grandfather, I have no idea how old it is or what brand it is, I just know that I have cut a lot of firewood with it. The saw started out with perforated lance teeth, like the other saw, through repeated sharpening the teeth lost almost five eighths of an inch of length. I need to file out the gullets to add some more length to the teeth.

The maple guitar that is heading to a client in Sedona, Arizona. I took this photo to show him how a several sessions of french polishing can make the figure in wood really "pop". I wish that when I started making guitars I hadn't paid any attention to Bill Cumpiano, Irving Sloane, Stanley Doubtfire, etc., when they said in their books that french polishing was too hard to do. At least Roy Courtnall says that you can do it.

It is not hard to do, I find it much easier then trying to brush on some highly toxic oil varnish or lacquer. I don't have to apply any wood filler and then sand and sand and sand the filler down to the wood, then once you apply the varnish you have to sand, sand, sand. I don't like sanding and wearing a respirator while I sand. French polish, which is a technique used to apply shellac, is very friendly to you and the environment. Shellac is refined from what is secreted by the "lac" bug and it can be dissolved with 150 proof grain alcohol. You don't need a haz-mat locker for that.

A Spoon Carving Knife

2011-10-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

Well now, in any case, I hope you enjoy these songs, they are, like you and me, product[s] of a long, long human chain, and even the strangest ones are distantly related to each other, as are we all. And there be many links to come.

Pete Seeger, The Bells of Rhymney, 1964

If you have read A Handmade Life by Bill Cooperthwaite, you might have come across the short section where he describes a knife maker who makes crooked knives from store bought knives. The maker shapes the knife with files and then goes to an anvil and proceeds to cold bend the "crook" in the knife with a hammer. I thought I'd give it a try. In the above photo is an old hoof knife that belonged to my grandfather, at some point in its life the hook at the end got broken off. It's a perfect candidate for this project.

I spent almost 2 hours drawing filing the knife to the shape I wanted and putting a proper bevel on it. Then I went after it with an India stone.

Here is the knife with the start of the bend, I couldn't find my two and a half pound rounding hammer that I used when I was a horseshoer, so I grabbed an old framing hammer to do the work. The bending went easier then I expected and at the point I began to fear that the steel was too soft, it might not hold an edge.

Here is the spoon knife with the final bend and some finish work done with wet/dry sandpaper. As I feared, the knife won't hold an edge, I am going to have to make a soft fire brick forge and do some heat treating. Wow, that can be another post!

Wood and Rawhide Snowshoes

2011-10-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

There seems to be no doubt that bindings-or what holds the feet to the snowshoes-are the most controversial part of the whole apparatus of snowshoeing.

William Osgood and Lesile Hurley, The Snowshoe Book, 2nd edition, 1975

16 inches of snow at 5am and an inch fell in the hour that I took the dogs for a walk this morning at 7am. Josey is bugging me to go out and play in the snow as I write, I guess I should strap on the old Indian webs.

The snowshoes on the left are the Huron/Maine/Michigan style, as you can tell they are claimed by several different groups of people and the ones on the right are the Alaskan style. The Huron pair I bought 15 years ago and the Alaskan pair my wife got me 13 years ago, I've used them every winter when we've gotten snow. Many people think that these old styles webs don't work in the snow anymore, they say that only modern snow shoes give the best flotation. I disagree, I have snowshoed with people who used the modern shoes, they "post holed" through the snow and I skimmed along the surface. It's hard to beat 6,000 year old or more technology. Snowshoes, or Indian webs as the old timers called them when I was a kid back in the 1960's, were the mainstay of folks who lived were it snowed until the 1930's when the first skiing craze really began. My great uncle told me that when he was 12 in 1912, there was a Swedish immigrant who worked at a nearby sawmill who made skis, or snowshoes as they were called then, for all the kids in the community and sold them to adults. My uncle told me that he got good enough on the "snowshoes" that he could jump logs and fly over 20 feet! He owned a pair of Indian webs to walk the trap line the he operated along Battle and Panther Creeks.

I should have titled this blog, Why Woodwork When You Can Snowhoe. The National Weather Service is forecasting an additional 7 to 11 inches of snow today, gotta love a Winter Storm Warning.

Historic Preservation, Leadville, Colorado

2011-10-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down... some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

Aaron Copland

Got back on Saturday, 10/22, from a 3 day class in Historic Building Structural Assessment at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville. We crawled through 4 buildings in town, the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum, St. George's Episcopal Church, the 6th Street Gym and the Horace and Augusta Tabor House, assessing the buildings for further preservation work. With this knowledge we are to complete a Historic Building Assessment, a document which is used in Colorado to get grants from the Colorado Historic Fund to preserve the building.

Horace and Augusta Tabor House, 1877

For those of you who don't know, Leadville was the "Silver Queen", millions of dollars in silver were pulled out from the veins underneath the town from 1877 until 1893 when the Sherman Act caused silver prices to crash. Horace Tabor made some of those millions through lucky acts, one was to grubstake to miners who struck a large vein and the other was purchasing the Matchless Mine. That mine was salted (high grade ore was put in the shaft to make it look like it had good ore) and Tabor quickly found that out, but had his crew continue the digging and 20 feet later struck one of the biggest veins in Leadville. His first wife, Augusta, was considered to be an austere woman, she did not allow Tabor to build her a big house. They lived in this until they moved to Denver in 1881. To find out what happened to HAW Tabor, visit the website on Baby Doe Tabor.

George King, Home

George King was an architect who lived in Leadville during its boom days and among others, designed this house, the Tabor Hotel and the Delaware Hotel in Leadville, plus houses in Boulder, Colorado.

National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum

The Mining Museum is housed in 3 buildings, the original Leadville High School, built in 1899, then another was added on to it in the 1940's and then in the 1950's and all of it was abandoned in the late 1960's. It is quite the site to explore, especially the attic of the original 1899 building. By the way, all the exterior trim that you see on the 1899 building, the Victorian part, is made from tin.

Historic Window Preservation, Rocky Mountain National Park

2011-10-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

Returning from his wartime duty in England, one Montanan watched as his ship approached New York.
"Just think," the guy next to him said, "somewhere in those canyons you can find anything you want."
"Yeah," the Montanan said. "Show me where I can go shoot an elk."

Edmund Christopherson, This Here is Montana, 1961

This is the view outside the Projects Administration Shop where I worked this summer at Rocky Mountain National Park (ROMO). Not a bad view.

Here's a view of the inside of the shop, it's quite cramped and tiny compared to what I worked in at Yosemite.

I am a specialist in repair work on historic windows, my dad taught me how to glaze a window when I was a teenager in the 1970's and got really good when I worked at Lassen Volcanic National Park. At Lassen I restored windows and built new sashes, the same at Yosemite where I lost count of how many windows I repaired, built and glazed. For some reason this summer at ROMO we had a lot of windows to repair and re-glazed, I worked on the windows at the historic assistant superintendent's house and then all these storm windows.

I put glass lights in and glazed 13 windows the day I took these photos, it was a lot of work!

Hand Splitting Douglas Fir

2011-10-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.

Josephine Baker

You can take the boy out of the mountains, but you can't take the mountains out of the boy. I can think of only a few times in my life when I didn't split any firewood in the fall, to split wood is such a part of my life I miss it when I don't do it. Split wood, carry water, the only 2 things one really needs to do with his/her life.

This dead Douglas fir was behind our house, the National Weather Service is calling for snow on Saturday, it would be nice to have a fire in the fireplace to enjoy watching the snow fall. That's Rufus, our wonder dog, sniffing the wood.

This is my mule. The wheel came from a wheel barrow that my grandfather made years ago, the handles were made in 1975 by me, my mom and my brother when Mom decided to re-build the barrow. I rebuilt the barrow about 4 years ago when we were at Cedar Grove, the handles and wheel I kept, but the box is made from some ponderosa pine that I milled with a chainsaw.

Our house basking in the light from sunrise. The aspen are still turning golds and reds, yes, reds, something you don't see here that often.

Got some Sloane tuners yesterday for a guitar that is going to a man in Sedona. My, oh my, those tuners sure are pretty, for $250 they should be.

Hey, every one! Go to the Wall Street Journal website and check how Gibson Guitars got busted for "illegal" wood. It won't be long before every guitar will be made out of carbon/graphite! I'd supply the link, but I am still figuring out Blogger because I don't have the hours and hours to spend learning all its quirks! I've got guitars to make!

Restoring a Craftsman Style Rocker, Part 2

2011-10-05T11:27:00.000-07:00

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

Pablo Casals

There are people who think that when someone is unemployed, or in my case, on furlough, they have nothing to do. Monday, I felled a Douglas fir for firewood, yesterday was spent making a guitar bridge from ebony for a WRC/Maple guitar that I need to complete by November and today I hauled firewood and cut out a door on the garage. I know that is not the point of this blog, it is about a Craftsman style rocker that once belonged to my great aunt and uncle. In this photo you can see that I have glued the rails into their mortises. All the joints have been cleaned and I used "Tite Bond II" brand glue for the job. I had to take some time to figure out how to glue the 2 halves together, I did one dry run before I poured the glue.

Thank goodness for ratchet straps! I don't own enough long Pony clamps for this job so had to resort this this solution. I needed to glue up the halves in such a way that all the glue stayed in the mortises, I had some run out, but not much.

This shot shows that I am ready to put in the corner blocks to help hold the chair together (there are no pegs or other fasteners in the joints) and support the cushion. I didn't have time to put any stain or finish on the chair before it went off to the upholsterer.

Part 3, the finished product is coming soon!

Historic Preservation Work at Rocky Mountain National Park

2011-09-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

John Ruskin

My season is over at Rocky Mountain National Park, now I can catch up on blogging about some of the work that we did this summer.

One big project was re-siding a residence out in Wild Basin, it had once been a very small dude ranch known as "Deer Haven". The building we re-sided with cedar shingles was one of the rental cabins.

The main "lodge" was larger and not part of this summer's project. This is the south elevation of the cabin, my friends Tate and Chuck did the work on this side. We had to set up scaffolding to do this part. That is Tate on the scaffolding.

It was a little different to re-side with sawn tapered shingles then the hand split sugar pine shingles that were used on the historic Post Office at Yosemite National Park from last October to this past February. That is Greg coming down the ladder, he is one hell of a window "glazer"!

The north elevation (this is the side that I did!) is almost done in this photo, it was a happy day to complete this project! It was also a very fun project to work on, all of us-Bob, Chuck, Tate, Steve, James, Joe, Greg and I work on this cabin, it was a great team building work! Just this past week we all worked on building a solar shower stall unit at Moraine Park Campground, and then I ended up re-installing windows on the historic assistant superintendent's house in the housing area this week!

Gluing the Back on a Soprano Ukulele

2011-09-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

Oral cultures have never developed the same capacity for self dissection and information retrieval that our society has. Instead they build holistic visions of the world and self where image and experience are intertwined. In many societies to separate image or sound from experience - its context - constitutes a violation of the natural order.

Allen Feldman, The Northern Fiddler, 1979

This little beauty is built just like a Torres guitar, it has an domed top. The neck and back block are "in plane" (to use a term from Eugene Clark) with each other, the doming of the top makes it look as if the neck is canted in towards the sound board. The bracing is a variation on one used by Yacobi. The lining blocks are glued in place using an awl to hold the block until the glue set. The lower transverse brace is slanted `a la` Santos Hernandez, this was also done on some early 19th century guitars. Why did I slant the bar? To find out if it makes a difference.

I shaved out the center of the back braces to reduce weight, this idea was borrowed from Jose Romanillos. Ten years ago I read an interview with Dave "Kawika" Hurd done by the staff of The American Luthier magazine, in where he stated that he treated a ukulele just like guitar, he applied the same construction principles. His ukes were well received and liked. Why not follow his example.

The last guitar that I made I glued the back on with using the solera, workboard, and the lower bout falls away from the line of the neck, which means that I might have to make a taller bridge for the guitar then I had originally planned. I don't think it will hurt the sound of the guitar, but with this little uke I didn't want to risk that problem. I used the work board to keep everything in the proper plane.

The Little Giant sawmill was owned and operated by the Diamond Match Company at Lyman Springs, California from the late 1940's until it was dismantled in the early 1960's. It was named after a mill that operated in the 1870's that was named for Stephen Douglass, the first "Little Giant". Lyman Springs was just 5 miles south of where I grew up, "the Little Giant", along with Brokeoff Mountain, were part of my young lexicon.

Restoring a Craftsman Style Rocking Chair, Part 1

2011-09-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

John Ruskin

He told me about how it was to be a boy in 1910, in the mountains there in northeastern California, hunting, fishing, trapping first and then how he became an old school buckaroo before he submitted to alcohol. I sat in this rocker when I was a teenager there in my great uncle's house in Red Bluff, California listening to the stories that rolled from him. When he died this rocker went into the attic of the barn at our place in Paynes Creek and sat there for 20 years before my wife pulled it down and placed it in the house.

Now here in Colorado, I decided that my wife was right, it was time to restore this old rocker. It didn't creak when you sat in it, it was a little rough around the edges and gray from the break down of the lignin in the oak. I gently pulled on an arm which came up with no resistance...

Then I pulled a little on the post and the rail came away from the joint...

...then the whole chair fell apart on its own. From those years sitting in a barn attic the hide glue in all the joints failed from the moisture in the winter and the searing heat from the roof in the summer.

The first thing that I did was to use a card scraper to remove what was left of the patina and old finish to get back down to the original wood. That took several evenings after work to complete and then I attacked the old mortises and tenons to clean out the old glue and to make sure all joints fitted tight.

More on the restoration in Part 2!

Four Good Books to Read on Classical Guitar Making

2011-08-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

The chequered bark is unique, and its resemblance to a saurian hide has well earned for it the name of Alligator Juniper. So apt is the description that if you have ever heard of the existence of such a tree you identify it upon your first sight of it.

Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of Western Trees, 1950

Four books to read if you are interested in making a classical guitar.

Guitarmaking, by Art Overholtzer. This is not the book to use to make a classical guitar, you'd get stuck half way through and then you'd have to figure out on your own how to finish it. Overholtzer has some different ideas about guitar making, and like Bogdanovich, if you have a shop full of big huge metal or woodworking machines you can make the Overholtzer guitar. Read it for Art's opinions on wood and sound production.

Make Your Own Classical Guitar, by Stanley Doubtfire. Another book that shows you a wacky way to build a guitar. Some very interesting techniques and several good hand tools that every aspiring luthier should have in his/her tool box/cabinet. The biggest plus about the book are the interviews that Doubtfire did with the Fleta Brothers, Jose Romanillos and Robert Bouchet. If you can find a copy be ready to shell out some big bucks, it is quite collectible.

The Art and Craft of Making Classical Guitar, by Manuel Rodriguez. Not so much a how to box like the previous ones, but Rodriguez wrote a book very much like Jose Ramirez III did with Things About the Guitar. He gives us a wonderful history about some of the great Spanish makers and alludes to what the guitar means to a Spanish maker. Definitely a must have for the book shelf.

The Guitar Maker's Workshop, by Rik Middleton. Bottom line on this book: if you can get a copy of Cumpiano's book, Courtnell's book and this one by Middleton, you can build a guitar! Quirky and wacky like his predecessor, Stanley Doubtfire, this is a very English way of making a guitar. He has some great ideas for a home shop with little in the way of power tools, hand made clamps, bending iron, using bubble wrap on your bench to protect the guitar, some wonderful pointers. It's not the Spanish way of constructing a guitar, but it works. The best thing about this book is his little chapter that discusses neck relief, it's the only book in print that is widely available that talks about it. He is very much in line with Eugene Clark's definition of neck relief as presented in his 2004 Guild of American Luthiers presentation. Buy it for that!

As always, little buckaroos, remember-Hand tools rule the school!

Thoughts after a Sharpening Session w/ Water Stones

2011-08-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Fallers, or choppers, as they are known locally, work in pairs. An outsider is impressed by the number of tools a set of choppers carry around with them in a Redwood operation-two axes, two eight-foot saws, one twelve-foot saw, two dozen plates, one dozen shims, ten wedges, two sledges, one pair of gun stocks, one plumb bob, twelve springboards, six pieces of staging.

H.I. Bower, from a speech presented at the Pacific Logging Conference, 1936

It took me almost 2 hours to sharpen all the plane blades that are on the cutting board, I made a pact with myself never to let the blades get in that bad of shape again. There were more blades that needed sharpening, but that meant going out to the garage to dig out the low speed grinder from the furniture and other stuff left behind by the previous owners that still need to go to Good Will. Another day will be set aside for grinding more edged tools. All I ready needed were the 2 blades for the No. 4 planes, likewise for the No. 3 and 1 for the No. 7.

Several years ago I purchased a set of 4 water stones after getting tired of using Wet/Dry sandpaper fixed to a piece of plate glass. I am still ambivalent about the water stones: there is the soaking before using, the almost constant flushing away of the swarf and then flattening the stones on a very regular basis. Granted that 8000 grit stone makes metal very, very shiny, there are times when I miss the ease of using the "Scary Sharp" system of sand paper. After using DMT diamond stones at work, I often think I should have picked up a set, they don't have to be soaked, they cut quickly so you can do the final honing on some 2000 grit sandpaper or extra hard oil stone. I can't say enough about the wonderful Lee Valley MK II Honing Guide, the best guide I have ever used. I enjoy the fact that you can repeat the angle that you need every time.

To be honest, I think the best sharpening system I have ever seen is the one that James Krenov used in his The Fine Art of Cabinet Making. A simple hand cranked grinding wheel with a shop built tool rest is used to establish the bevel and then the blade is honed on an oil stone. How simple and elegant, a part of a handmade life.

New Tool Chest, Part 2

2011-08-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

Sheer, snow-mantled peaks of the Front Range frowning down on verdant valleys; a high rolling plateau carpeted with dwarf tundra plants: these are the hallmarks of Rocky Mountain National Park.

from Rocky Mountain National Park Map, National Park Service, c.1974

I have noticed that many of you are going to a 2008 posting I did about my new tool chest, it's not "new" any more, I still use it, though in the near future it may be replaced by a cabinet style tool chest to free up floor space. Here are a few notes about it.

The design is based upon the famous tool chest of Duncan Phyfe, the plans I used were the ones drawn by Carlyle Lynch. (The plans are available from www.toolsforwoodworking.com) I didn't want the box to be as big as Phyfe's, I measured the longest saw that would live it and then sized the exterior dimensions accordingly. I think the Phyfe chest is 36 inches long, I subtracted 2 inches from all dimensions to keep the same ratio for the entire box. I made the case from birch plywood ripped down with a Skilsaw and finished on a table saw, the corners are fastened with glue and finish nails fired from a pneumatic trim gun. The bottom piece is set into rabbets and the entire box is trimmed with white fir (abies concolor). The lid is not like Phyfe's and are attached with some butt hinges. I never did get around to filling in the nail holes and painting the exterior, which, when I do paint it, will be Prussian Blue.

The interior trays are based upon a chest that is in Jim Tolpin's, The Tool Box Book, published by Taunton Press. It is a great book for ideas. The wood is yellow pine that I ripped by hand with a Disston rip saw and hand planed to final thickness. They slide back and forth on rails. I have no problem with this, some might not think it very efficient to move the trays back and forth, I know time is money, I'd rather have the time then the money these days. This tool chest works for me.

The saw till is made from pine and slotted to take 2 rip saws, 1 E.C. Atkins crosscut saw and 1 Disston D-100 18 inch crossut saw.

The box holds some of my planes, chisels, sharpening stones and jigs, and miscellaneous tools for guitar making.

If you have any questions about this tool chest, feel free to ask me.

Guitars, Ukuleles and Old Brown Glue

2011-07-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

A man's wealth is measured by the size of his wood pile.

Old New Mexican proverb

I ordered some Old Brown Glue a while back and I can't say enough good things about it! Case in point, the tenor ukulele neck heel block that you see to the left of the glue bottle I glued together this afternoon. All I did was apply glue to individual blocks, rubbed the joint together about a minute and then I clamped them together. The blocks stayed aligned and I didn't have to use extra clamps and clamping jigs that you see used in some books on guitar making. I have used fish glue, purchased from Lee Valley, in the past with wonderful results, this Old Brown Glue dries as hard as the fish glue, which is a real plus when gluing on bracing. I probably won't use it to glue on bindings or for rosettes, but I will for everything else.

Works in progress--
(When I should really be refinishing 4 guitars that I made a couple of years ago!)

Guitar top on the left: Sitka spruce, laurel back and sides, bracing after Torres with a slanted lower harmonic bar on a Friedrich plantilla.

Ukuleles on the right: soprano uke with a redwood top, laurel back and sides, it's neck is just in front of the top; tenor uke behind it, Douglas fir top, with bubinga back and sides. The soprano ukulele in the front is a Montgomery Wards Airline, I believe it was made for them by Harmony.

California laurel guitar back on the right behind the ukes, the plantilla is based upon Torres FE 12 and FE 17 with a 640mm string length. FE17 was owned and played by Francisco Tarrega for 14 years. The body is smaller than classicals played today by the big name players, I chose this smaller body to see how it would sound and compare to a full size "Six-Fifty" (Six-Fifty sounds like it should be a cartridge for an old Sharps buffalo rifle!) that is in current use today. The top will be Sitka spruce.

I am waiting for the humidity to drop some more in my shop, we've had a lot of thunderstorms this month and the RH is still quite high. I really want to brace the top of the redwood uke and start putting it together.

For a fun read, check out Jim Beloff's The Ukulele-A Visual History. published by BackBeat Books, available at Jim's website,
http://www.fleamarketmusic.com/.

Master Class with Christopher Parkening, August 1980, Part 2

2011-07-01T08:33:00.001-07:00

Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound, funny,
but it's still rock and roll to me.

Billy Joel, It's Still Rock and Roll to Me, 1980

I finally found the photo that I was looking for, of me performing on stage at Montana State University way back when. I still haven't found the program from the final recital. I remember that I played an etude by Sor and a lute piece, Wilson's Wilde and maybe an etude by Giuliani. It was quite the experience and I got to met several wonderful players. I had to include the Billy Joe quote, because I remember I first heard that song on the car radio as we were driving by Idaho Falls, Idaho on the way to this class. I had just graduated highschool and was moving out of classical music geekdom, I discovered punk rock and that kids my age were dying their hair pink and spiking it, I thought that Still Rock and Roll to Me was an anthem for those of us who were 18 years old. Back then I wore Wrangler Cowboy cut jeans, denim shirts, custom Bowman cowboy boots from Livingston, Montana and my hair over my ears.

The guitar that I was playing in the photo I still have, it is a Hernandis Model 1, imported by Sherry-Brenner of Chicago from Japan. The label states that it was made February 1973, has a western red cedar top, the back and sides are Indian rosewood plywood. It is basically a Ramirez with a long string length of 665mm! Most classic guitars are 650mm! Despite the plywood back and sides it is a well made guitar, I keep it as a reference for when I am making full size guitars. I haven't played it in years. My parents and I went in together to buy it in 1979, it cost $779 with tax. Imagine that!

I have started a soprano uke, redwood top and California laurel back and sides, I have been hanging on to this wood for a while and I needed to make something. Recently bought some Old Brown Glue , it seems to be some really good stuff. Will post more about it as I have time.

Planing Guitar Braces with Handmade Thumb Planes

2011-06-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

In the long-ago land of my childhood we clearly understood the high desert country of southeastern Oregon as the actual world. The rest of creation was distant as news on the radio.

William Kittredge, Owning It All, 1987

This is a top that I made several years ago from Sitka spruce, originally it was braced entirely with old growth redwood, but I glued the bracing on when the wood moisture content was very high. That summer the top "potato chipped", I had to remove the "fan" bracing with a hand plane and glued on bars made from Douglas fir with fish glue. I took this photo this afternoon to show off the little thumb planes I made, whenever I show them to visitors to my shop they ask if they work. As you can see they do.

How Many Handplanes to Build a Guitar?

2011-05-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

Houses tell a lot about the people who built them and the people who live in them.

Jane Valentine Barker, Historic Homes of Boulder County, 1979

What's wrong with this photo? Can anyone find fault with what is on my workbench?

Now that we are more or less settled into our new place, I had to inspect all my hand tools to see if any were damaged in the move from California. The only one to suffer some dings was my grandfather's Stanley No. 5 plane, then I discovered another problem. I think I own too many hand planes!

Starting left to right:

1. Transitional jointer, blade is marked Fulton. I purchased this in Flagstaff, Arizona about 1990.
2. Stanley No. 7 jointer, Sweetheart era, I haven't typed it out yet. Purchased from Sydnas Sloot around 2003.
3. Stanley No. 7 jointer, purchased new from Garrett Wade in 1996.
4. Stanley No. 36, Transitional jack plane, purchased from Sydnas Sloot in 2009.
5. Stanley No. 5 jack plane, type 5, this plane belonged to my grandfather, I have no idea when he acquired it, I assume 1909, before he married my grandmother.
6. Stanley No. 5, corrugated jack, type 11, purchased 2010 from Jim Bode Tools.
7. Stanley No. 5, jack plane, type 11, purchased from Syndas Sloot about 2004. (You think I like No, 5's?)
8. Stanley No. 5 1/4, junior jack, haven't typed it out yet, probably post WWII, purchased at Cascade Antiques, Redding, California 2006.
9. Stanley No. 35 transitional smoother, purchased at Fort Collins Flea Market, Colorado, 2006. It bears the stamp of an owner, A. Valentine, I like to think he was associated with Valentine Hardware that once operated in Boulder, CO.
10. Stanley No. 35, transitional smoother, purchased from Syndas Sloot, 2009 just so I could get the handle to replace the broken one on Valentine's plane.
11. Coffin smoothing plane, modified to carry a handle. I posted photos of this plane on an early post.
12. Stanley No. 4 smoother, Type 11. Purchased at Fort Collins Flea Market, 1997 on my way to visit friends in Cheyenne.
13. Stanley No. 4 smoother, Type 11. I purchased most of this plane from Sydnas Sloot, I swapped out the knob, blade adjustment wheel and few other parts from a plane that had a cracked body.
14. Stanley No. 3, Type 11. Got this from Sydnas Sloot, not sure of the year.
15. Stanley No. 3, haven't typed it out, probably from the 1920', bought this from Akbar's Tool Hut in 1999.
16. Stanley No. 40, scrub plane, I can't remember if I purchased this from Sydnas Sloot or Jon Zimmers around 1999, 2000.
17. Stanley No. 40, scrub plane, no blade, no blade cap. Got this at Cascades Antiques in Redding, 2008.
18. Stanley No. 192, rabbet plane, belonged to my grandfather.
19. Stanley No. 9 1/2. Can't remember where I got this one.
20. Stanley No. 9 1/2, block plane. Purchased at McGuckin's Hardware, Boulder, Colorado, 1996.
21. Stanley No. 60 1/2, block plane, purchased at McGuckin's in 1999, I remember that it was on sale for $20!
22. Stanley No. 60 1/2, block plane. Got this at an antique store alongside the road that takes you to Shasta Dam in northern California, 2008.
23-24. The two little thumb planes I made in California, they appear in an earlier posting. One is ebony, rosewood shaft and manzanita burl for the knob, the other is Pacific Dogwood, ebony shaft, walnut knob.

Do I own enough hand planes? What do you think?! Oh, you can see my new bench room in the photo.

2011-04-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hi, Everyone!

We've landed at home in Colorado! The cabin is tucked up against Arapaho National Forest and Rocky Mountain National Park. It's great to be back in Colorado and after living in central California for the last 3 years it's nice to be somewhere where there is weather! Here's a photo of our place a week after we moved in.

Handcrafted Guitar vs. Handmade Guitar

2011-03-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have come thoroughly to understand the manner of work under which the art of the Middle Ages was done, and that it is the only manner of work which can turn out popular art; only to discover that it is impossible to work in that manner in this profit grinding society.

William Morris, from a debate on Socialism that took place in Cambridge, England, 1884

Is the guitar on the left "handcrafted" because it will be offered for sale once it is completed? Is the guitar on the right "handmade" because it was made for my own personal use? What do you think?

I came across a blog by a guitar maker yesterday that makes wonderful looking instruments, and in this posting he had a bone to pick, he stated that only those who make a living at lutherie or were trained in the art can rightfully call themselves luthier. He went on to say that those of amateur status should call themselves just that, amateur builders. Hmm. The Oxford American English dictionary defines "luthier" as a maker of stringed instruments such as violins or guitars. Origin: late 19th cent.(emphasis mine): from French, from luth 'lute'. Again, hmm. I know I should ignore the statement and let it go. I do find it interesting that the great Spanish guitar makers-Simplicio, Hernandez, etc.-use the noun maker on their labels.

In that slick publication, Acoustic Guitar, a guitar manufacturer ran an add for their guitars that included a quote from St. Francis of Assisi that went something like this:

He who works with his hands is a laborer, he who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman, he who works with his hands, his mind and his heart is an artist.

I am surprised that that corporation didn't use "to work is to pray", but maybe that is going too far. I'll stop ranting now, I just wanted to give you something to think about.

Master Class with Christopher Parkening, August 1980

2011-03-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's like this, truth is: it's looking out while everything
happens; being in a place of your own,
between your ears; and any person
you face will get the full encounter
of your self.

William Stafford, Tuned in Late One Night, from A Glass Face in the Rain, 1982

The "move" to Colorado draws closer and while going through stuff I found this photo of Chris Parkening from the master class at Bozeman, Montana that I attended in August of 1980. He is seated left of center in the photo, I am at the far right in the photo, the other guy I can't remember his name, I would have to look at the class recital program to find his name. I was a month from turning 18 and attending the University of Montana at Missoula, where I would major in music and changing over to theater my sophomore year. My parents drove me out for the class in their 1963 Plymouth Station Wagon, what a hoot that was! My mother took the photo, at least she didn't cut off any heads in this photo.

Snow today, slush, really and I will post photos of dismantling my shop for a move to Colorado.

Handled Coffin Smoothing Plane

2011-03-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

Paul Bunyan, the lumberman, came from St. Paul.
He owned a big ox that was eleven feet tall.
He mowed down the trees as the farmers mow hay,
And the crew was at work before break of day.

E.C. Beck, They Knew Paul Bunyan, 1956

Here's a handled coffin smoothing plane that I picked up from Jim Bode's antique tool web store a month or so ago. That's a No.7 jointer plane in the background.

Who ever owned this decided that it needed a handle, they did a good job-the handle is well shaped and the mortise joint is fairly tight. You can still see the rasp marks on the handle. The only problem that I see with the craftsman-made handle is that there is nothing, other than glue, that is keeping the handle in place. When you push on it the bottom of the handle wants to come out of the mortise.

Yes, that is a pair of crosscut saws in my shop. Three generations of my family worked for the lumber industry; my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my dad worked in the woods. My dad worked for Diamond National, Kimberly-Clark and Simpson Paper. The lumber industry put me through college. The darker saw belonged to my grandfather who topped trees back in the 1920'-30's to make a spar trees for logging operations; the other belonged to my father-in-law.

The Making of a Guitar, Part 3

2011-03-06T13:29:00.001-08:00

Mindy: Mork, why are you making a tower out of Cheerios?

Mork: Because it's hard to stack oatmeal.

Mork and Mindy, 1978

Here's the "Mae West" Lacote and I am ebonizing the alder neck. I will probably apply a few coats of shellac colored black to the neck once I get settled in Colorado, but for now I just want to stain it.

I am using india ink. I have an old Harmony guitar that is painted black with white pin stripe-ing and after playing blues on it awhile I discovered that it has a maple neck because the paint wore away from where my thumb rested. I don't want that to happen to this guitar. If the shellac ever wears away I want the wood to be black.

The back side of the guitar. It's very striking with the black neck. As I was staining, I remembered that when I was a freshman in college (oh so long ago!)I was preparing a music score for my music composition class and I just had to use a calligraphy pen and india ink. I knocked the bottle over my desk, it stained the top and I think I also ruined a pair of Levi's. Things that come out from the dark recesses of my mind.

Here's the bottom of the guitar, I think I had promised a photo of this back in an earlier blog.

The Making of a Guitar, part 2

2011-02-04T15:54:00.001-08:00

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.
Georgia O'Keeffe

Plans that I drew for a terz guitar, it shares the same outline as the "Mae West" Lacote posted in the last blog. I did some research a while ago on the terz guitar and thought I should make one, because it would be as fun as a uke, bigger then a baritone uke and has six strings. This all started because I came across a fugue for terz guitar by Mauro Giuliani in the Boije online collection and fell in love with the piece.

In this photo I am gluing the peghead to the neck shaft. It is a simple butt joint and it will be reinforced with a dovetailed key, this is one time I will pull out my Porter-Cable router. I'll make the channel with a dovetail router bit, make the key on a table saw and glue the key in place.

Here is the wood that I am using to make the terz-Indian rosewood back and sides (I bought the wood from Allied Lutherie almost 10 years ago) and the top is Sitka spruce that I purchased from Alaska Specialty Woods. Believe it or not, the piece is from a 1A top.

Still waiting to see when I will be going to Rocky Mountain National Park. Weather has been gorgeous.

Oh, if anyone listens to NPR, maybe you have already heard about the Yosemite Valley Post Office getting a face lift with new sugar pine shingles. I was lead carpenter on that project, Nick G. and I put the last shingle on at 4pm on Groundhog Day. I will post some photos soon, the post office looks great!

The Making of a Guitar

2011-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

...a guitar is not a work of art-it is almost fundamentally a technical opus.

Jose Ramirez III, Things About the Guitar, 1990

I am at home sick today with a whopper of a head cold. I had the chance to read a little more of Ramirez's book this morning and went to the Ramirez guitar website. You should check out the video on how they make their guitars. Got to watch it again to get some ideas.

Here is the Lacote I have been working on, the neck was glued in place along with the fret board. Can't do much else, my wife got a promotion to Denver, she leaves mid February and I am waiting to hear if I have a job at Rocky Mountain National Park. I probably won't leave California until May.

Back in the late 1970's when I was in high school studying the classic guitar, everyone had to have a Ramirez guitar, because Parkening and Segovia played Ramirez's. I have had the chance to play 2 Ramirez's, one didn't impress me, the other was a wonderful guitar, though it didn't compare to the Dake Traphagen guitar that belonged to Dave Feingold at Western Washington University. That guitar was so responsive, I still can't wrap my head around how good it was looking back at the experience fifteen years later.

Basic Hand Tool Kit for Guitar Making, Part 1?

2010-12-29T08:45:00.000-08:00

My grandfather himself used to say that if a guitar maker did not die in a social welfare hospital, it was because he did not have the means to get there.

Jose Ramirez III, Things about the Guitar, 1994

Rain again today, flood warning until 11 am, thought I would go out to the shop and tidy it up a little. This gave me the idea of what a basic tool kit would be for guitar making, because when I made my first guitar I didn't have much. People back then would ask me if I would show them how to make a guitar (they still do) and would they need a shop full of power tools? As soon as I told them that they could build a guitar with hand tools, their faces would go blank, they'd take a step back and mumble something about going home to see if they left the iron on.

This is not a definitive list, just a place to start (please note that all of these tools are in the above photo on the work bench):

No. 3 plane
No. 7 plane (this is the only one you need, but get several blades)

Lee Valley Spokeshaves, flat and round
Wooden Spokeshave, made from the Lee Valley kit (this is my favorite shave)

8 inch drawknife

1/8 inch chisel
1/4 inch chisel
1/2 inch chisel
3/4 inch chisel (the most used chisel in my shop)

Marking gauge (handmade)
Cutting gauge (handmade)

Sloyd knife, 2 inch blade (a must have!)(Mora of Sweden #120)
Sloyd knife, 3 1/4 inch blade (Mora of Sweden #106)

Card Scrapers (Bahco Brand)

Gramil, buy from LMI and get 2 of them

Japanese pull saws, a nice one for cutting slots in heel and other for frets

Classic tuner drill jig, again LMI

Handmade Rosette and Sound hole cutter

Razor saws with hand turned handles (make your own handles on a lathe!)

Miller Falls #2 hand drill (or some other hand drill)

Cobbler's hammer for fret installation (or buy a nice one from Stew-Mac!)

Side cutters for cutting frets

Nut slotting files

Bending iron, made from a piece of four inch copper pipe heated by a propane torch

WORKBENCH! the most important tool you can have! I made mine after a folding workbench that is in Roy Underhill's, The Woodwright's Apprentice. It has served me well for fifteen years.

Guitar Making, by Cumpiano and Natelson
Making Master Guitars, by Courtnall

I should have included a bow saw and a 13/32 drill bit for the tuner machines. I make no mention of clamps, that is another posting!

Buy these tools used at a local flea market or antique store, make your own, buy new if you can afford it or as a last resort. When you buy vintage tools you get to hold history in your hand and have the chance to put your own life into it, just like the previous owners. Find, buy or steal a copy of Dunbar's book on restoring hand tools and learn how to soup up, or as they say at the North Bennett Street School in Boston, "keen" your vintage tools. Don't be afraid to make your own tools, however, don't lose yourself in toolmaking, you want to build a guitar!

I have noticed that this blog is getting more hits then other blogs I have posted. Do you folks want a part 2 for a basic kit for guitar making? Please let me know. Wilson, 6/24/11.

How to Make Guitar Bindings from a Baseball Bat

2010-12-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

The craft of the wood-turner is ancient. Turners are recorded as having reached England at the time of the Norman conquest and they introduced the pole lathe at that time.

Tom Crispin, The English Windsor Chair, 1992

A while ago I bought a maple baseball bat blank from Rockler with the idea of making bindings, because it gets a little pricey buying pre-made bindings from LMI. I carefully ripped the blank down on my table saw into 1 1/2 inch wide strips and ran those through a thickness planer.

These are the tools I use, a cutting gauge and a Frost knife. The holey board that you see is my shooting board, once I cut a binding off the strip I joint the strip to have a straight edge to register the gauge on for the next binding. This also makes the edge that will go against the shoulder of the rabbet on the guitar.

First, I mark the strip with a cutting gauge on both sides of the strip. These bindings will be a 1/4 inch wide.

Then I take a knife and make the cut deeper working from both sides.

Making sure that I follow the grain, I score deep enough until I can snap the binding off the strip. I joint the strip and make another binding. Next step is to thickness the bindings on the Clark thickness-er.

Getting Ready to Install Guitar Bindings

2010-12-20T10:52:00.001-08:00

The woodcraft way is the simple way. Few tools, and simple tools, supplemented by a helpful gadget or two fashioned in the woods, plus a little ingenuity! The pioneer with few tools, sometimes none besides his ax, applied his intelligence to the task at hand and figured out some way to get it done.

Bernard S. Mason, Woodcraft, 1973

I like to tape the binding in at the waist and work my way back to the end block, simulating how the binding would be glued into the rebate. This way I know exactly where to trim the binding's end.

A butt joint. I shave it a few times with a very sharp chisel to get it right. I guess I had better take a photo of the finished joint and post it!

The bass side binding has been glued into place and looks good! Honestly, it does! I didn't mean to set the block plane right in front of the guitar, I'll post some more photos later!

How to Make Guitar Purflings

2010-12-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

The good worker loves the board before it becomes a table, loves the tree before it yields the board, loves the forest before it gives up the tree.

Wendell Berry, Landscape of Harmony. 1987

I am such a process freak.

It's been quite a few years since I have bought pre-made purfling, I bought one sheet each of white and black veneer from LMI, made a cutting gauge from a piece of walnut on hand and made a board for cutting the strips. The board came from watching an episode of The Woodwright's Shop where Steve Latta showed how to do traditional Kentucky style inlay with holly strips, etc. Here's shot of the board, veneer and cutting gauge.

The process is pretty simple: set the fence to the width of the strip you want and start cutting. Be sure to pay attention to the grain of the veneer, it can change directions quickly and you'll end up with a strip of uneven width.

All the strips cut, ready to be glued in with the maple binding.

The Best Books on Classical Guitar Making

2010-12-17T13:13:00.001-08:00

Skilled use of the knife and ax is seldom described today because there are few persons who master these tools. Those who do are often more articulate with their hands who master these tools.
James Rudstrom, from the introduction to Swedish Carving Techniques, Wille Sundqvist, 1990

If you want to make a classical guitar these are the two books to get!

Making Master Guitars, by Roy Courtnall is like having an old master looking over your shoulder prodding you to listen to him, because he knows the most efficient way to do it. Besides, it is tradition! I love this book!

Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology, by William Cumpiano and Jon Natelson, is "the" book that I used to make my first guitars and I still reference it. I have leafed through it so much that the pages are falling away from the binding!

I can't recommend John Bogdanovich's book Classical Guitar Making, it is for someone who already has a well-equipped professional cabinet shop that is capable of turning out kitchen cabinets at the rate of one kitchen install a day. He loves his power tools so much I was surprised to see photos of chisels and a block plane! This is not a book for a beginner, it's better suited for someone with a strong professional cabinet maker background.

Making Master Guitars and Guitar Making are the best way to get started, if you want to learn more about the nuances found in true Spanish guitars made by the likes of Santos Hernandez, Hernandez y Aguado or Francisco Simplicio please read articles by Eugene Clark, R.E. Brune and Jeff Elliot in American Luthier, published by the Guild of American Luthiers!

How to Make a Guitar

2010-12-17T12:39:00.001-08:00

By its very nature and design, a good, well-tuned, well-sharpened and well-maintained chain saw is a very precise tool that can be used by almost anyone to make almost anything.
Walter Hall, Barnacle Parp's Chain Saw Guide, 1977

Many apologies to everyone, it's hard to keep up with a blog when you have a full time job (I am gone from the house 12 hours a day!), plus I am enrolled in a historic preservation certificate program at Bucks County Community College in PA. Now that the historic planning and sustainability class is over and with two weeks off from work for Christmas, I thought that I would try and catch up with the blog.

The above photo the laurel/douglas fir guitar, based on a guitar by Rene Lacote, circa 1830, that I am working on. Last night I bent the maple binding and glued it on this morning, I will try to bend and install the other top binding today. The purfling is BBWBB, I thought that if I went with a BBWBBWBB like what is around the sound hole the guitar would become very busy visually.

Here's my version of Eugene Clark's purfling/veneer thicknesser (American Luthier #73, pg. 69), unlike Clark's original, I constructed mine entirely from Douglas fir and glued a piece of brass on the anvil opposite the plane blade. It works well, I wish I had made one earlier in the endeavor called 'lutherie'.

Here is a most wonderful tool-an electric bending iron purchased from Stew-Mac, and the binding bands from LMI. Again, something I wish I had done sooner, my first bending iron was a piece of 4 inch copper pipe that I flattened by dropping my Short Sugar shoeing anvil on repeatedly until I liked the shape, and was fired up by a propane torch a la Irving Sloane. A propane torch is terrible for that work, it can't keep a consistent heat! This new iron made bending the binding child's play! I can't think of how many pieces I broke on my old iron because of the size of the radii on either side and that I couldn't maintain a consistent heat!

Once the top bindings are done I will finish cleaning up the rabbets on the back and glue on those bindings. I look forward to making the fretboard and neck!

A "Mae West" style Lacote Guitar, part 2

2010-07-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

"You see, Doctor Archie, what one really strives for in art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance at the opera. What one strives for is so far away, so beautiful that there's nothing one can say about it."

Thea Kronberg, The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather, 1915

Here are some photos of the Lacote, I just glued the back on this afternoon, along with some photos of the shop. Will write more later, it's time to head to our water hole, River Rock Cafe in Mariposa.

The top is ready, I made a caul to use when I glue on the bridge, the back bars are fitted to the basswood lining.

I like to use fish glue (from Lee Valley) to glue the main parts of the guitar, it dries so hard that it is almost impossible to remove it with a sharp chisel. I really like using spools clamps to glue on the back with, so much easier, and less smelly, then the inner tube strap that Cumpiano suggests in his book.

Eat your hearts out, you people who think that the inside of a guitar should be completely glue free. As my wife said, you play the outside of a guitar, not the inside!

Some shots of my shop, one of these days I will install a real floor to insulate the shop from the concrete, new shelves and a cabinet workbench. The boards that are leaning against the wall are California laurel, bubinga, redwood. I just bought 3 Englemann spruce tops from LMI at a price that I am sure I will never see again, the wood is just beautiful!

Moore Cottage, Wawona Hotel, Yosemite National Park

2010-07-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

"...to quote an old saw from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 'A good plan makes a good elevation'.
Harvey Ellis, The Craftsman,1901-1904

The Moore Cottage at the Wawona Hotel complex at Wawona in Yosemite National Park, built in 1896 for the Washburn family that ran the Wawona Hotel at the time. It is part of a national historic landmark. Quite the Victorian era building. The nomination form states that the windows in the cupola are Palladian, one of our interns thinks that is incorrect, so I told her that maybe we should say that the windows are "Palladian-esque". She said she could live with that.

In 2003, the Historic Preservation crew lifted the porch and put a foundation under and replaced all the 2x4's that were inside the porch columns with 4x4's and now I am going back through attaching straps from the top of the posts to the bottom plate of the cripple wall that supports the porch roof. It takes an hour to pull off all the molding, cornices and fascia, 2 minutes to install the strap and then another hour to put it all back together. There are 3 more posts to finish, then I tweak a few pieces of crown mold back into place and move to the next project.

Splitting Firewood

2010-07-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

The ax is a symbol.

William Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life, 2007

The back porch thermometer reads 103F right now, and there is only a slight breeze. The last two mornings I have worked at splitting the oak and ponderosa pine I felled and cut up this spring, the oak (valley oak and black oak) is almost dry, but the pine is almost as wet as when I first cut it. Amanda and I plan on replacing the pellet wood stove that came with the house this winter for a real wood stove, one without a fan, an auger and doesn't have to be plugged into an electrical outlet. Living down here in Mariposa County has made me soft, because the house is insulated and I now that I work all winter, I haven't had the need to cut and split 4-5 cords of wood every year. I didn't realized how much I miss splitting firewood.

Before all of you start saying "What is he crazy? Who would miss splitting firewood? That's alot of work!" Yes, it is work, but it is enjoyable work and splitting wood is very much like life, you never are really sure what is going to happen next or what you will find. Each piece of wood splits differently, you don't always swing the splitting maul accurately enough to hit that split in the end and it is amazing what kinds of insects you will find living in wood and the bark. Our house in Colorado was on the corner of Ski Road and 2nd Ave, in a fish bowl, and summer residents would walk past as I split my wood. I got tired of all of them saying, "Boy, that looks like a lot of work!" To make them scurry away, I would always stop, rest my axe on the chopping block, smile at them and reply, "To work is to pray."

These next 2 photos are for my friend, Dave, just wanted you to see a little Collins double-bitted cruising axe that I picked up a couple of years ago at an antique store, it is about an inch smaller than the Warren Tool and Axe Company cruising axe that I use for carving spoons! By the way, the splitting maul in the photos is probably close to 60 years old, I remember it looking old when I was young kid playing in my grandparents woodshed.

This is a Collins single bit "Boy's Axe" that my father bought for me when I was about 10-11 years old, I guess around 1972-73. It's a great axe. I remember my dad took me to the Western Auto Store to pick it out for my birthday, it's a great axe just for that.

Superintendent's Residence, Yosemite National Park

2010-07-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

In slating or shingling a roof, great care should be taken at the hips, ridges and valleys. Where the roof is shingled, two or three courses should be left off at the ridge until the two sides are brought up, then the courses left off should be laid together, and in such a manner as to have them lap over each other alternately. This can easily be done if the workman uses a little judgment in the matter; and a roof shingled in this manner will be perfectly rain tight, without the ridge boards or cresting.

William Radford, Practical Carpentry, 1907

I had to get up on the roof of Residence #1 this week with Fritz and Paul to find out why the roof is leaking. This photo from HABS taken in 1979 shows you the valley on the upper roof where we were working. We tore up the shingles in the valley, put ice and water shield down on the sheathing and then installed new cedar shingles. Will see if the roof leaks over the winter.

By the way, the building is boarded up and the interior is in terrible condition, some people higher up at Yosemite National Park want to tear it down, others want to move it, others want to restore it. I would like to see it restored, to a nice building. Go to

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/

and enter Superintendent's Residence to see other photos of the building in its glory days.

A "Mae West" style Lacote guitar

2010-07-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

My face is my passport.

Vladimir Horowitz

(Dear Friends: There are more posts on this guitar, please see the months of January, June and July 2010. This guitar is being french polished this month, November 2011, stay tuned for postings on that. Wilson)

The sides are on the "Mae West" Lacote, when the tendinitis in my right elbow subsides (it is so bad I can't swing a hammer or shake hands with someone, the pain is pretty righteous!) I will attach the back. Before I do that I need to cut away the sides from the heel block so I can start "chalking in" the neck, the joint is very similar to a violin neck joint, just a "V" joint.

I am building this guitar for myself that is why I used pre-made basswood lining from Stew-Mac. I know that the lining of these old beasts should be solid, but I just don't have the time anymore to bind solid linings. The next romantic guitar I will build on an inside form just as a violin maker would do and also laminate the linings. I remember when I use to hand saw the kerfing into all the linings, back when I was laid off for six months at a time.

A "Mae West" style Lacote Guitar, Bending the Sides

2010-06-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.
Andres Segovia

An afternoon of bending sides for the "Mae West" Lacote. Believe it or not, California laurel bends like a dream, it took me only 15 minutes per side.

I admit that there is still alot of touch up to the sides that I must do, but laurel is wonderful wood. I just ordered an electric bending iron, I may regret doing that, I made my bending iron from a length of copper pipe 15 years ago, I have gotten so use to using it. The tip that is on the propane bottle is much easy to regulate then the standard cheap torch tip.

Here's the top all braced, I need to hurry and assemble the guitar before the humidity drops too much more!

Hunting Sequoia Trees

2010-06-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

I am back to working four 10 hours days at the park, it makes for a tiring week but I do get Fridays off. Today, Josey the Wonder Dog and I took a hike up the old skid road and rail road bed in the Nelder Grove Historic Area in Sierra National Forest. Here you can actually walk up and hug a giant, in Yosemite NP fences politely keep you back from all those wonderful trees. I wanted to find the tree that is called the Old Granddad, I never did find it or at least the sign saying that it was.

My favorite tree on the trail, it forces Nelder Creek past its roots.

That's Josey on the old road bed and the Kiowa tree on the right. We could hear the whistle from the shay engine at Yosemite Sugar Pine.

I like to think of this as the old grand dad, but there was no trail leading to it, had to bushwhack through deer brush to get to it. There were lots of other nice trees around this one, but never did find the old gent.

Work has me swamped, I will try to post some photos of the Legnani Lacote, the top and back are braced, but making time to bend the sides and put it together is another thing. I tried to french polish the redwood Lacote and Uke #1 over Memorial Day, they look better but need more work.

#705 After Rehab

2010-04-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

New images of #705 now that the rehab is done and the new residents have moved in. The building has not been lived in for 20 years, we should really celebrate! This is the main facade that looks east towards the old barite mine.

This is the service porch as viewed from the the north.

This is the south elevation.

Piedras Blancas Light House

2010-03-10T12:14:00.001-08:00

Photos from Piedras Blancas Light House

The BLM has a great website for the lighthouse, I will try and post the address later!

Trials of a Dodge Pickup

2010-02-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

The Dodge and the Go-Tag-Along at the KOA at Green River, Utah

Dear Friends:

The check engine light came on in my '02 Dodge pickup a couple of weeks ago and I took it in to a local mechanic to see what was wrong. It turns out that engine coolant is leaking into #2 and #7 cylinders, the cooling system is under high pressure from the engine compression and the heads might be ruined. However, the pickup was running as well as it ever did and never overheated, which the mechanic told me it should be doing. He quoted me $3000 for machining the heads and if they were bad it was $6200 for a re-manned engine. He looked at me with disbelief when I told him that no way would I put a re-manned engine in a vehicle that has a blue book value of $3500! As it is it is going to cost me $2200 just to have them put the engine back together, now that they tore it apart to see what was wrong. Now all I can do is hope that the engine doesn't blow up before we can buy a replacement vehicle.

This is the historic Chinquapin comfort station built in 1934, Yosemite National Park. Last Tuesday there was 2 feet of snow on the ground and probably more today since we are getting pounded with rain, it has been pouring down here since 6pm last night. I and Nick were finally able to pull the windows out of this old outhouse 2 weeks ago and this week we stripped the paint from them. In the next couple of weeks we will paint and reglaze these windows. Next week I and Marty head to Piedras Blanca lighthouse near Cambria, CA to get measurements for windows, the originals are date from 1870 and we need to make some copies.

Collins Axe

2010-01-21T19:04:00.000-08:00

Nearly all our talk, though, was about logging, because logging was what loggers talked about. They mixed it into everything.
Norman Maclean, Logging and Pimping and "Your Pal, Jim", 1976

My father gave me my first axe on my 11th birthday, he bought me a single bit Collins axe at the Lyon and Garrett Hardware store in Red Bluff, back when the store was on Main Street and still in business. That axe's been re-handled a couple of time and the poll still wears that "Collins blue" paint. I use to use it to split kindling, but now it sits in the tool box with the rest of my axe collection. I found this wonderful Collins axe advertisement, I think it was part of a calendar, at an antique store in Redding.

A "Mae West" style Lacote Guitar, The Beginning

2010-01-21T18:34:00.001-08:00

The beginnings of the guitar, like the beginnings of man himself, are buried deep within the pages of history books yet unwritten.
Christopher Parkening, The Christopher Parkening Guitar Method, Vol.1, 1972

I spent part of a Saturday afternoon thickness-ing the sides of the Legnani model with the help of a card scraper. In an effort to keep the dust down in the shop so I don't have to wear a dust mask, I am trying to stay away from the use of sandpaper. It is amazing how smooth of a surface a card scraper can make, if it is really sharp, the surface appears almost as if it was burnished.

The sound hole has been cut into the top and this afternoon I thicknessed the back with a scraper, both the top and back weigh 7 ounces. I just read an interview with John Gilbert, a wonderful American luthier, who said that he and his son, Bill, tried to keep the top and back the same weight so that both would be the same pitch. It makes since, so now I will try and weigh all the parts.

A simple rosette of BWBWB veneer.

Lacote Guitar, Legnani Model, circa 1830

2009-12-23T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Lacote, Stradivari and other guitars of their eras were of poor design. Their size created difficulty in obtaining volume or quality.
Vincenzo Scaletti, Guitarra magazine, issue 7, Nov.-Dec. 1965

I found some measurements for an original "Legnani model" by Rene Lacote the other day and with the help of a ruler and compass I think that I came up with a close approximation of the guitar's outline without actually getting my hands on the original. I think that this is a beautiful shape, very narrow waisted and, yes, very bulbous upper and lower bouts. The original has a 595mm string length (23 and 7/16 inches) with 21 frets to the sound hole without a raised fingerboard. Luigi Legnani was a guitar superstar in the 19th century and worked closely with Johann Stauffer of Vienna (the original C.F. Martin worked for him before Martin emigrated to the US) to create a guitar that suited his needs. Apparently it was a sought after style for Lacote was one of many who made a "Legnani" model. When he retired from the stage, Legnani became a luthier.

I ended up in the emergency room last week with bronchial inflammation, I had been sanding the replacement door for the El Portal Community Center, even with a dust mask on my asthma went crazy and I was at the John C. Fremont Hospital for 12 hours, not something I want to repeat. Today, I started to sand the Douglas fir top for the Legnani, with a dust mask on and with in minutes I could feel my lungs clinching up. I said, screw what I have read in books on luthierie, where you have to thickness the top with a hand plane or sandpaper, I pulled out my Bahco (Sandvik) scrapers, sharpened them up and discovered how quickly I can thickness the guitar top. Notice the shavings in the background, that is all from the scraper! I guess I am saying,"Don't be afraid to work hard!" Traditional hand tools have worked and will continue to work, to use a hand tool you gain a little strength, you keep the noise level down in your shop and you are a little easier on the environment.

Using my home made thicknessing gauge, note that the top is just a little under an eighth of an inch thick. I have marked with a pencil the areas that need to be reduced in thickness. This gauge also acts as a hygrometer, as the humidity changes the indicator needle moves away from zero. My shop though is usually around 60-65 percent RH even in the summer. Maybe the concrete floor has an influence on that.

The back is lightly flamed California laurel, the top is Douglas fir from a board that was liberated from a custom home job site about 5 years ago, the sides are also laurel and the neck is red alder. The peghead connects to the main neck with a simple butt joint and I inserted a dovetailed key (made from alder) at the junction. I know alder is not traditional neck wood, but neither is laurel or Douglas fir.

I think the master luthiers of the 19th century were a little bolder then their counterparts of today by making guitars of different shapes and sizes. Today, all classical guitars are the same and they all try to make LOUD guitars. The players of the 19th century had no microphones or speakers and yet they performed concertos with orchestras. Would you play a guitar of poor design to make your living?

Bear Mauls El Portal Community Center's Backdoor

2009-12-04T16:59:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago a black bear decided that it needed to get into the El Portal Community Center for a snack and went in through the back door.

It literally went through the back door and tore it off its hinges. Take a look at the right hand side of the photo above and you can see pieces of the door. The door was made from one and one-quarter inch thick redwood and offered very little resistance to the bear.

Here are the claw marks....

Here is the replacement door that I am making from redwood, a little thicker than the original, but I am using the same techniques as the original builder.

Yosemite Valley and Wawona

2009-11-15T10:57:00.000-08:00

For Veterans' Day we drove the 44 miles from our house to Wawona and then 37 miles from Wawona to Yosemite Valley where my wife walked the dogs and I followed. Stoneman Meadow has such a nice view of Half Dome and Royal Arches. It is always nice to get into the park and remember why we work here and for the National Park Service, we both are still very excited about working at Yosemite. Wednesday was a great day to be in the park, there weren't very many tourists, the hordes have left for the summer.

This is the Hodgdon Cabin at the Pioneer History Center in Wawona, which is at the south end of Yosemite National Park, near the historic Wawona Hotel. Several of us in the Historic Preservation crew just built the log steps on the building, it was a summer cabin originally located in Aspen Valley in the northern part of the park, the stairs that were built back in the early 1960's fell down several years ago-here are the new ones.

Concert Ukulele

2009-11-07T17:29:00.001-08:00

Somehow, once you get hooked on this "little guitar", you can't stop playing it....
Jim Beloff, Jumpin' Jim's Ukulele Tips 'n' Tunes, 1994

My apologies for taking so long to blog about this little uke.

Today I tried out out our new Canon camera, I guess I need to put it on a tripod to take these shots, maybe I'll just go back to using the Pentax.

The Redwood Uke next to the Redwood Lacote, both await final French polishing.

I am finding that it is easier to French polish an instrument then to try and slap on an oil or water-based varnish. As I have said before, French polishing is a very organic dance.

Mariposa County Courthouse

2009-08-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy summer for me, working 10 hour days, running all over Yosemite NP working on various historic structures. Work still continues on Bldg. 705, the crew has gone to the old Tioga Ranger Cabin (1931) at Tioga Pass and we've done some repair work on the comfort station at Chinquapin (1933). Soon we'll go to the Wawona Covered Bridge to do some maintenance work and some repairs at the Wawona Pioneer History Center.

Here's a shot of the Mariposa County Courthouse in Mariposa, California. It was completed in 1855 at a cost of $9,300, the original building is made from sugar and ponderosa pine from a grove that was only one mile away from the job site. All the lumber was sawn and finished by hand. As I took this photo this morning a passerby remarked on how beautiful this building is, I agree.

Hiking Lembert's Dome, Yosemite National Park

2009-07-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

We walked up Lembert's Dome on July 1st, I thought you might like a photo of a gorgeous day in Yosemite National Park.

Ukulele #1, Redwood and Walnut

2009-06-28T13:28:00.001-07:00

2 photos of a ukulele that I am working on. I decided that I wanted a little guitar to play when we drive to Colorado this September, what better than a ukulele. It's gone together remarkably fast compared to a full size classic guitar, its small size lends to the ease of construction. The chunk of wood that you see glued on the bass side of the neck is a patch where the router went amok when I was making the binding channels.

This is a concert size ukulele (oo koo lay le, if you want to sound Hawaiian, I prefer the American English of you ka' lay lee), the top is reclaimed redwood from a redwood water tank and the back, sides and headpiece veneer are the last of the walnut from a tree my grandfather planted back in 1941. The neck is Spanish cedar, the binding and bridge will be ebony. I hope to finish construction soon, it will take a while to do the French polish.

Half Dome and Tunnel View at Yosemite NP

2009-04-28T12:42:00.001-07:00

In almost every granitic mountain range (but especially in the Sierra Nevada of California) enormous, astounding hemispheres of naked stone-called domes, appropriately-stand above the surrounding terrain to catch the eye and fuel the imagination.

Jon Krakauer, Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape, 2006

We went to the park 2 weeks ago, stopped at the Yosemite Sugar Pine Railroad, (what a blast) and then braved the traffic into Yosemite Valley. It was the Saturday at the end of spring break, talk about a traffic jam. Yosemite is the Hyde Park of the West.

On the way to the valley I just had to stop and take another photo from the Tunnel View. It is always a great spot to people watch, that day there were alot of Asian Indian families there, all the men were in their business suits. If you love to look at waterfalls, now is the time to be in Yosemite. The spring runoff is going great guns and all the valley waterfalls are running full, and there are not that many people in the park. I spent the last 2 weeks working at Curry Village putting shakes on the Curry Village Lounge and everybody is surprised at how few people there are in the park.

Guitars and Porches

2009-04-09T20:34:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the time away from the blog, lots going on, the online class I am taking takes alot of free time, deed, census searches, etc.

Every now and again I actually make it into the shop and work on a guitar. Several weeks ago I routed out rosette channels for the Simplicio style double soundhole guitar and I need to update with new photos of that guitar top, because I installed the inlay of curly redwood burl. This photo shows my hand holding the top to drill holes for the router index pin.

The porch has been poured at #705. From left is Marty, Rod, Randy and Casey. Now we are ripping cedar shingles down to 5 and 1/2 inches to nail on to the exterior walls at the Curry Village registration building in Yosemite Valley. My eyes got crossed today from ripping the shingles, it is a very monotonous task.

How to Lift a House

2009-02-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

Here we are, once again at #705 in El Portal. This is the formal entrance of the building, one corner of the house is pretty much rotted and Derek and I needed a way to suspend this side of the house while we dug a trench to pour a footer.

We knew that we needed to sling the rim joist, but how to hold the beam that would carry the chain hoists and a come-along. One of the guys at work suggested that we use A-frames to hold a beam. I really liked the idea and built them. The middle beam sports a 2-ton come-along where we have slung the cable through the sling to double its lifting capacity, the other two beams have 3/4 ton chain hoists attached to the sling. The slings wrap around the rim joist and I had Derek ratchet the hoists as much as he could, we were able to put a half inch crown in the middle of the joist.

This is Derek, the man with no face. He leaves next week to go work for the US Forest Service to be a firefighter, I wish him good luck. This photo shows you how we stabilized the ends of the beams, what this photo doesn't show you is the bend we put into the beam.

Martinez Guitar, ca. 1816

2008-12-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

A guitar based upon an ca. 1816 Jose Martinez guitar, original signed by Fernando Sor.

The bridge is not a copy on the original, it is a "modern" bridge. It is made from rosewood and is fitted with an ebony saddle. The guitar is loud and sweet sounding with this saddle.

Douglas fir top, maple back and side, Spanish cedar neck. 614 mm string length.

A joy to play, it's voice surrounds you.

Martinez and Lacote Guitars

2008-12-27T11:27:00.001-08:00

As promised, a photo of the Martinez and Lacote guitars.

I strung the Martinez with light tension D'Addario strings and installed an ebony nut and saddle, the guitar sounds wonderful. I have been playing alot of Giuliani's music on it and sight read through Sor's famous theme and variations on a tune of Mozart. The music makes more sense, fingering wise, on a small guitar.

Slotting a Fretboard and New Tool Chest

2008-09-25T14:54:00.001-07:00

Ideally, the work bench should be situated near a large window that gathers north light.

Irving Sloane, Guitar Repair, 1973

I see that this blog is getting alot of hits, can you folks tell me what you are interested in: slotting a new fret board or the new tool chest? I would like to know so I can create a new blog to answer questions. Wilson 7/8/11

I recently purchased a new fret saw from Stew-Mac, my old saw was getting very dull and I am having a difficult time in finding a saw sharpening business that is willing to resharpen it. The new saw arrived with the saw blade reversed so that the teeth would cut on the pull stroke, which is fine if the teeth are shaped like those on a Japanese pull saw. Western style teeth were designed to be cut on the push stroke. Anyway, I used the saw as it came to me and I failed miserably with it, all the slots were terribly angled off perpendicular to the fret board, I wasted a $20 piece of ebony. My solution was to tap the saw blade out of the brass back spline and replace it so that the teeth cut on the push stroke. This gave me much more control.

However, even after doing that and using the block setup that you see in the above photo, I still had the problem of the blade cutting slightly off of perpendicular.

In this photo you can see how I held the saw blade against the block with my fingers making a "galoot" miter box. I managed well with this system, but was perplexed about the saw's cutting ability or lack thereof. I pulled out a set of calipers, I measured the thickness of the blade and the set of the teeth, both were the same measurement! When that happens on any saw the saw will binding in the kerf and make sawing difficult. Good handsaws, Disston, Simonds, Keen Cutter, etc., have hollow ground blades, where the "back" of the saw is ground thinner then the part where the teeth live. I measured my old slotting saw, purchased in 1992, and its blade is thinner then the set of the teeth.

What I have learned from this is that I have several options - 1.) I need to spend the money on a good Lie-Nielson saw and purchase the expensive slotting miter box from Luthiers Mercantile, 2.) I buy a slotting blade from Stew-Mac and put it on my table saw and make a slotting jig, 3.) I purchase all my finger boards already slotted, LMI does that for an additional $9 when you purchase a finger board. Hmm, not a bad idea!

I made a new tool chest for the move to Mariposa, it's loosely based on Duncan Phyfe's famous tool chest, mine isn't as large, I made the carcase out of birch plywood and I made seperate tills to hold my tools. I just have to make a lid, install handles and I am ready to go!

Early Spanish Guitar-A Musician's Review

2008-09-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Martinez-inspired guitar has an intimate size but a surprising energy of volume, while exhibiting a crispness that does not lose proper warmth. The guitar maintains its sweet tone even when played hard-but soft picking with the pads, rather than the nails, does not result in mushiness. The intonation is perfect, action as delivered just low enough for a convincing flamenco rattle while high enough for clean notes even "at speed". Amplification using Markley or Schaller transducers is not finicky and the finish gives up the traces of mounting putty easily. The slightly slender neck and comfortable scale make this a good companion for a steel-string player; it simply asks to be played.

H.D.W

I received this from the owner of the Martinez copy I made, he has performed on it all summer.

King Japanese Water Stones

2008-09-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

Life is for doing things slow, like trees.

Makoto Imai, Japanese builder of Shrines

I finally bought some water stones from Lee Valley and all I can do is ask myself why did I wait so long! These stones are phenomenal, the speed that they sharpen at and mostly importantly, they make plane blades sharp! For years I have been sharpening my tools on wet/dry sandpaper adhered to a piece of plate glass with decent results, but whenever I would sharpen freehand the paper backing allowed the edge to roll over. The last couple of months I pulled out a sharpening jig I bought years ago and have been using it with so-so results. That is why I also bought a Mark II honing guide from Lee Valley, I want my tools sharp and I want to be able to repeat the results. Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who gunsmiths for a hobby, he enjoys working on older double barreled shotguns, about sharpening, he is having a hard time getting his inletting tools sharp. I recommended that he read up on the skill and try the "scary sharp" system of sandpaper sharpening and told him he would see better results. I hope he tries it.

Peak Bagging

2008-09-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

In Northeastern California, at the very heart of that magnificent mountain region of the southernmost Cascades, lies Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Collins&Lind, Lassen Glimpses, 1929

"Peak bagging" yesterday, it was nice and cool here in the Northstate so my wife and I hiked up to Harkness Mountain lookout station to see our friend Rob, who is the lookout, and then drove an hour to Butte Lake to hike the Cinder Cone.

We got to Butte Lake around 3pm and were pleasantly surprised to find that the day use parking lot was almost full-consider that this is the northeast corner of the park and you have to make an effort to get here. On the hike up and back we met over 20 people, families out for a nice hike and gorgeous views, again something we didn't expect because it seems like every one has to "scale" Lassen Peak. Cinder Cone is young, it last erupted around 1670, and is part of a dramatic volcanic field. Go and check it out!

Ebony Bindings

2008-08-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

You need very few tools to go into the woods and bust a chair out of a tree.

John D. Alexander, Jr., Make a Chair from a Tree: An Introduction to Working Green Wood, 1978

94 degrees F. in my shop just now, a lazy Sunday afternoon with a high pressure sitting on top of Northern California. This morning, I glued in the last of the ebony binding on the maple guitar, this guitar is visually very striking, the contrast between the big leaf maple and the ebony. I am not sure that I mentioned that I got this maple from a friend in Estes Park, Colorado, his name is Leo Weber and he is a wonderful furniture maker and carver. Go to www.starroutestudio.com and click on "Artists" to learn more about Leo. He gave me this wonderful maple just so I could make something and he was trying to decrease the amount of wood in his wood shed.
In the above photo I have just taped the binding end at the end seam and proceeding up to the heel. Now all I have to do is to make and install the fingerboard and the finishing begins.

More later.

End of Summer

2008-08-21T06:31:00.001-07:00

I know just enough about wood to know what I do not know.

Art Overholtzer, Classic Guitar Making, 1974

Thanks to all of you who have voted in my poll! Any suggestions for the next question?

Next week is my last week of work at Lassen Volcanic National Park and I am very glad of that, I will have spent 2 months doing nothing but power washing old paint off of shake roofs and then repainting the shakes. When I am done I will start getting our household ready to move to Yosemite National Park, I have a lot of work ahead of me, please be patient with my blog updates.

Check out Ottmar Liebert's diary, there is a blurb about how some computer designers are being taught to use their hands again, seems that all these people can do is move a mouse. How sad. (One of these days I will learn how to create a link to the article).

Oh, the above photo is the peghead of guitar #3, western red cedar top and black walnut back and sides.

Enjoy the rest of August and have a safe Labor Day weekend!

Cutting Binding Rabbets

2008-08-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

I do a fair amount of rework. No one ever has so much experience that he can do things right all the time. I tell my students, "The difference between good work and ordinary work is rework." Sometimes people will say, " Oh my, that's beautiful. How do you do it?" I reply that I do it over and over and over."

Eugene Clark, luthier, "Building with the Spanish Solera" 2004 lecture

Today I got at routing the binding rebates (channels) in the maple guitar. I used my trusty Dremel with base to rout out the rebates and you can see in the bottom photo I added a base to the base, a piece of rosewood adjusted to compensate for the doming in the top and back of the guitar. The idea is that the router bit can address the side of the guitar at a right angle, not canted because the dome pushes the front of the router up. When that happens you end up scraping away most of the bindings because the bindings lean out at the top. I did that on my 3rd guitar. Well, the idea sort of worked, thank goodness I have the skills to use hand tools to finish the rebates (rebate is the British version of rabbet). One of these days I'll have to ante up and buy a laminate trimmer and some jig to hold it.

It seems like that every luthierie article or book I read the author is saying that the only way to build a guitar is to have lots and lots of power tools and jigs. I didn't take shop in high school, my training was at a shaving mare with an 8 inch "Lakeside" draw knife learning the ends and out of traditional wood work. I was a high end finish carpenter for seven years before I went back to the National Park Service and I had over $3000 worth of power tools in the back of my pickup to help me with trim/cabinet installations. For what I did those tools did exactly what I wanted, but I have discovered when I do true high end craft work, power tools bite back because they represent speed and money. I want to point out that those old masters-Fleta, Simplicio, Barbero, Panormo, Lacote and Ramirez used hand tools, not Black and Decker, and they had to crank out guitars to make money. Even 200 years ago time was money. Today there are makers in Spain that use hand tools exclusively and crank out 2 to 3 guitars a month! I have the luxury at the moment to take my time and do things by hand, what a wonderful way to continue to improve my skills!

My attempt at an improvement without having to drop $400 on a binding router jig.

Two Guitars

2008-07-26T14:48:00.001-07:00

All the efforts of the guitar builder, his attention to the shape, the materials, the method of construction, are for the purpose of producing an instrument beautiful to look at and easy to play, but primarily with these quality of tone.

H.E. Hutting II, Guitar Review no. 28, 1965

Today, now that I am 45 years old and have a few miles on the tires, whenever I play another classic guitarist's guitar I look at two things, how well does the guitar play and sound, to me they are one and the same. If it doesn't play well, or easy, as some would put it, why play it, and at the same time if it's voice doesn't make my heart sing it isn't my guitar. I really don't look at the purfling or soundhole rosette, to me, as a player, the construction of the guitar is secondary-the action and sound are all that I care about. Some guitars that I have played have necks that remind me of a Steinway grand piano, stable, playable and yet massive, others are more yielding and intimate. I ask you, what is a "real" guitar suppose to play/sound like?

The HyA is huge next to the Lacote. I followed Courtnall's plans as closely as I could to make a copy of the HyA, the asymetrical (forgive my misspelling!) bracing made alot of sense to me, that is why I had to make a copy. I also hope that the guitar is loud and alluring, a sound that comes from those 1950's and 1960's guitars we baby boomers (yes, I know I am at the very end of that group) grew up hearing on those wonderful LP's of Segovia, Los Romero's, et al, a sophistication (think of Frank Sinatra's singing, Martha Graham's choreography and Dave Brubeck's "atonal" jazz) that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

The HyA is getting trimmed out with ebony binding bordered with BW purfling. I learned today from Roy Underhill's, The Woodwright's Shop, that the French menusisiers called their holdfasts le valet. How appropriate!

The New Workbench

2008-07-26T14:34:00.001-07:00

Before any definite work can be done, a bench, or its substitute, must be obtained.

Paul N. Hasluck, The Handyman's Book, 1903

The new shop, with the new work bench already hard at work holding the little Lacote. The timbers that make the stand I milled from recycled lumber, they were original boards and braces on the tank house. Of course, I am sure that my grandfather recycled those from somewhere else. The bench top is from the bench I had in my old shop, it is some ponderosa pine that I felled and milled on our property.

The northwest corner of the shop, a mess as usual. That is a cedar/maple guitar, after Hernandez y Aguado on the tool box. A new tool box is next on my list, I need a larger one to hold all my tools for our move to Yosemite National Park.

2008-06-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

In designing a building, the architect makes sure that its foundation is sufficiently sold to support the weight of the entire structure. Similarly, in learning to play the guitar, the student must first establish the foundation of his technique.

Andres Segovia, preface, The Segovia Technique, 1972

The rosette of a cedar/walnut guitar that I need to complete the finish, I am using an oil varnish.
I recently replaced the fretboard on this guitar, it originally had a Honduran rosewood fretboard, it was very striking, but it is a little softer than ebony and I had a hard time with the frets not holding as well as they should. There were also dead spots only the neck as one played it, I hope that a new fretboard and new frets will correct that issue. The new fretboard is African Ebony, a very nice piece of wood with some mottling that is very characteristic of that species and it added some weight to what was a light guitar.

A new workbench is my latest project, I hope to have photos of that soon and photos of other guitars that I am working on. I am finding in difficult to pursue a hobby with a full-time day job, along with an 11 acre plot of land that demands attention and a 68 year old paper-maiche house, not to mention trying to maintain a blog that I am not sure that anyone really looks at. Ah, doubt. The new workbench is more or less a copy of Carlyle Lynch's woodcarver's bench, the plans that I picked up in the 1990's when I was worked at Hubbell Trading Post NHS. The materials are milled from old pine beams that I salvaged from the tank house that my grandfather built back in the 1940's, wonderfully seasoned and pitchy. I figured that since I was going to re-use the pine workbench top that was in my old shop, why not build the entire bench out of pine. The plans for the work bench are still available and can be purchased from www.toolsforwoodworking.com.

Please complete the poll on the right hand side of my blog and let me know what is most important to you when purchasing a new guitar!

I plan on auctioning one of my cedar/mahogany guitars on this blog this summer and put the money towards the purchase of a band saw. It is a great guitar and needs to be in the hands of someone who plays alot. Stay tuned!

A Review

2008-06-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

Making musical instruments is a most satisfying art and, as a reaction to our mechanical age perhaps, many people are eager to learn once more the old skills which gave handmade instruments their special value.

Charles Ford, Making Musical Instruments, 1979

Remember this guitar from an older post? It's guitar #1, based upon an Martinez from the early 1800's, and it went to a musician friend of mine in Arkansas. He received it this past Friday and I received this email from him-

I was off work this afternoon but came in at the close of business to see if the Martinez had arrived. it had, so I brought the packing case home, opened it and oh my goodness.

All was well--no evidence of any damage from its trip. and it is a little gem.

I've played it for a couple of hours tonight and am way impressed so far. Action and balance are superb and the shape just asks to be held onto and played a little longer. it feels tight enough (loud when pressed but not "boomy") so that it will probably respond well to using a transducer (another wedding gig seems likely towards the end of summer.)

Scale a hair longer than the Richter, so is a shade more comfortable for me (less finger-crowding).

very handsome wood

and it just wants to be played some more.

gotta go.

more soon,

dave

It does my heart good to hear such wonderful praise.

A Sunday

2008-06-15T17:54:00.001-07:00

I know that I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

Georgia O"Keefe, a letter to William Milliken, April 1937

A maple bridge for the Lacote. I made 2 out of padauk, but the handle bars kept breaking, and since this is a "concept guitar" for me, I figured I might as well go for broke and pull out some maple. This wood is not as brittle as padauk.

I had a good allergy attack this morning, something in the air got me going and spent most of the afternoon sleeping in the Lazy Boy, antihistimines can knock me out.

I received plans for a Barbero flamenco guitar and a Rodriguez guitar from GAL this week, I am very excited to start work on a Barbero-style flamenco guitar. I found it very interesting that the Barbero plantilla is almost exactly the same as the Hernandez y Aguado plantilla.

For those of you who haven't discovered Ottmar Liebert, a wonderful flamenco/world/Santa Fe guitarist, check out his website and especially his diary. The website for his diary is

www.lunanegra.com/www/diaryset.html

Eighteen years ago, my friend Andrea Gunderson, www.andreagunderson.com, a wonderful artist who just placed first at the Mendocino Art Center juried exhibition, loaned me a copy of Liebert's Nouveau Flamenco I have been listening to him ever since. Do check out Andrea's website.

Trout for dinner.

Gluing on the Fretboard

2008-05-04T16:21:00.001-07:00

" I seldom measure much, although I do use patterns as a guide, varying them to achieve different effects. I bore most of the holes by eye, although for the legs I use bevels. The result of working this way is that I have failures, chairs that are wrong. You can't have it both ways, and this is better than reducing the job to it's lowest common denominator."

John Brown, Welsh Stick Chairs, 1990

Today I glued on the finger board. It's always a little nerve racking while doing a dry run, I checked and doubled checked that the center of the fingerboard would line up with the center of the guitar and that the frets will be square to the location of the bridge. Once everything is aligned I drive in the indexing nails and then pulled them out so I can apply the glue. Then I hammer the nails back in and start clamping down the caul.

I am sure that I have mentioned that I pretty much use fish glue exclusively on my guitars now, it dries so incredibly hard that I have pulled up wood chips while trying to shave a drop of dried glue with a very sharp chisel. Fish glue, like hide glue is also reversible. Titebond never seems to dry as hard as this glue does and it seems like many high end luthiers worry alot about the energy transference of glue. Until this glue fails in a spectacular way, I'll continue to use it. I do use Titebond III to glue laminates to binding, it holds up well to heat and water.

It is always nice to accomplish something constructive during a day, knowing that I have completed a goal. Once in college, while I was having a bad bout with not being able to create, a professor told me that I should strive to accomplish one goal a day. She said, "That sense of accomplishment will allow you to complete other goals." Thanks, Ella, I still heed that advice 25 years later.

The Laurel Lacote

2008-04-27T16:30:00.001-07:00

"The many folk names of this tree (Umbellularia californica) tell a tale of the vivid impression it has made on the generations that have known it. To the Oregonians it is Oregon Myrtle, to the Californians it is California Laurel; though not strictly either a Myrtle or a Laurel, it is at least in the Laurel family and, like the classic Laurel or Bay (Laurus nobilis) with which ancient victors and poets were crowned, it has a spicily aromatic and evergreen leaf. Hence the name of Green Baytree, Spicetree and Pepperwood."

Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of Western Trees, 1953

The neck is on and the cocobolo binding, too. The fingerboard is ready to be glued on.

I love the "ice cream cone" heel.

This guitar is made in the style of Lacote, I used padauk for the end graft to contrast the cocobolo bindings.

The back of the peghead, I will install Grover friction tuners after I finish the guitar. There are many period guitars that used wing nut friction tuners, check out The Early Romantic Guitar website (click on the link in the right hand column on by blog) to view photos of some gorgeous guitars and see some of the tuners that were used.

Fretting

2008-04-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

"Though you may fret me, yet you

cannot play upon me."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1601

Fretting, what an appropriate verb to use to describe working on the fingerboard for a guitar, and out of all the parts of a guitar, the neck and the fret board are literally the heart of a guitar. One can always pluck the strings of a guitar over the sound board, but you really "play" the guitar at the neck and fingerboard, that's where as a player you do the real work. Yes, one must look at the guitar overall as an instrument, it must play well and sound well, two things which to me are one in the same. If the guitar doesn't play wonderfully, it won't sound that way. I had a long phone conversation with Marc Culbertson of Gilmer Woods last summer about guitar necks and neck woods and got quite the education on fret work from him. What a great guy!

I cut slots in a fret board with a fret saw that I bought from LMI back in the '90's that has a walnut handle that I made and an engineer's square to guide the saw for the initial cuts. This work is as nerve wracking as routing out the binding channels (rebates) on a guitar body, one slip and you have scarred the fingerboard. I enjoy taking my time while doing this, I have a chance to contemplate on my recent misdeeds (thank you, Roy Underhill!). This is the fret board for the Lacote guitar, it is African (Gaboon) ebony. I have photos coming of a full sized classic guitar that has a new fret board, also African ebony, along with new photos of the almost completed new shop. I just started my summer/fall job as a maintenance mechanic with the National Park Service, but I will try to update the blog more often. Thank you to all the people who have been checking back for updates!

Guitar Assembly

2008-03-01T15:49:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I shaped the back braces and sanded them to 220 grit and established a back arch on the sides with a sanding board. Today, I mortised out the pockets in the back lining for the braces with a 1/4" mortise chisel. Using a mortise chisel is much easier than Cumpiano's method (whose book is still worth every cent if you want to make a guitar on your own), I got the idea to use a the chisel from luthier Clive Titmuss's website. It made sense to me and proved to be a faster and far cleaner technique.

Working with the back today and trying to plane out the unconformity between the sides and the end blocks reinforced something that I have known for a long time-trust your intuition, trust your eyes and don't always trust the plans that you work with. I tried to make this a fairly close copy of a Lacote and tried to match the placement of the back bars with the plans I have. The brace closest to the tailblock is far too close and I had to lever the back down with clamps to meet the tailblock. The arch works, but when I first glued on the braces, my right brain kept trying to smack me to say that something wasn't right. I'll adjust next Lacote copy, but I am not going to try and slavishly copy a Lacote, all of his guitars were different from each other anyway. Though it is said that he rarely used any string length other than 630mm.

I wiped some Naptha on the back to try and pop some of the figure that is present in this laurel. I have really enjoyed using this wood, it is easier to bend than walnut and has a great tap tone. I can't wait to build with it again. Believe it or not these pieces are not truly book matched, they came from the outsides of the same board. I ripped the board on my table saw and ran into a little trouble, I got 2 nice book matched pieces from the inside of the board, but the outside boards were a little too narrow for a full sized classic guitar. Rarely can you get the outside boards to book match, but I took my time and ended up with a nice back.

Last winter I made 2 little planes, the one on the left is made out of Pacific dogwood that I harvested just up the road from me and the other is ebony. I turned the knobs on my spring pole lathe and shaped the dowels on the drill press. I made them to shave braces, they are fun and great conversation pieces.
Sunny and cooler today, had a snow flurry just a few minutes ago, back to sunshine.

Snow and Guitars

2008-02-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

2 weeks ago we got a series of nice storms here in Northern California, by the time the sun came out we had gotten a total of 3 feet of snow. It wasn't the best weather to keep the shop warm.

I have been working on a copy of a Lacote guitar. The top is old growth redwood reclaimed from a redwood water tank that once stood on our property. My grandfather bought the tank back around 1942 from an olive ranch down in Corning, he bought 3 tanks and sold 2 to pay for his expenses. I dismantled the tank in 1984, most of the wood was so rotten (yes, redwood does "rot" it gets really soft and won't hold any kind of fastener) I got very little usable wood. I have several pieces that I will use for future guitars, the tops will be four piece.
The neck will be dovetailed into the body. The peghead is guitar shaped and I am going to use Grover Champion friction banjo tuners instead of tuning pegs. Why? You have to be fairly strong to turn the pegs to tune the instrument and friction pegs are easier to turn and to install. I also found a photo of a Lacote guitar that had tuning pegs that were very similar to the Grovers and I am not building an exact copy, but something that is in the spirit of Lacote.

Two guitars

2008-01-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to show everyone 2 guitars that I put together and are waiting for me to complete the finishing process. Guitar to the left has a Sitka Spruce top, Eastern Black Walnut back and sides and a Spanish Cedar neck. The plantilla is based on Robert Bouchet's and the bracing is after Hernandez y Aguado's asymmetrical bracing. The guitar on the right has a Douglas Fir top with Honduran Mahogany back and sides with a Spanish Cedar neck. I tried to make this guitar a very close copy of a Hernandez y Aguado guitar, I used the same plantilla and the five strut fan bracing as per drawings from R. Courtnall's book, Making Master Guitars. They have wonderful tap tones and should be great sounding guitars when I get them finished.

Here's the front of the walnut guitar, I got the Sitka Spruce from Stew-Mac.

The back and sides were re-sawed from a board I purchased from Loren at the Wood Emporium in Loveland, Colorado when we lived in Allen's Park, Colorado. If you are ever in Loveland, go to the Wood Emporium, Loren's got a great supply of wood, both domestic and exotic and he used to have an incredible veneer selection.

California Laurel Guitar

2007-12-31T10:59:00.000-08:00

It's a cold and windy today here in Northern California, there's snow on the ground and it would be impossible for me to warm up my shop so I am using the kitchen table as a work bench. This is the top for the experimental Lacote guitar, it is redwood that is from a salvaged board off a redwood water tank that we once had here on the property. The top is made out of four pieces, the board was only 5 inches wide, the edges of the lower bout are where the narrowest pieces are. This redwood is fairly hard and has a great tap tone. After I glued on the bracing the tap tone became even louder! Remember that this is a small guitar, smaller than the Martin "parlor" guitars. This is the style of bracing that many luthiers used in the 18-19th centuries, it's called "ladder bracing" and many players today are under the delusion that this is an inferior style of bracing compared to the "X" bracing of Martin and the fan bracing of Spanish classical guitars. This bracing system worked for luthiers back then, the professional players bought and used the guitars to high acclaim.

I admit that I am using some modern concepts on this guitar, the upper graft that you see between the 2 upper braces I put in to help prevent the top of the soundboard from cracking. On the lower bout, I added a graft underneath the bridge, again to prevent splitting and support the bridge. Restoration photos of period guitars almost always so the guitar had problems at the bridge and I want to help this guitar as much as I can. It is impossible to make an exact copy of a period instrument anyway, the quality of wood the luthiers used back then no longer exists, my workshop is different from the maker back then and I don't live in 1840, I live in 2007 with all the baggage of my life and society. I'll get off the soapbox now.

The back and sides are California laurel (umbellaria californica), the folks in Oregon call it Oregon myrtle, but the scientific name is the same. A friend gave me a wonderfully figured board from his wood stash just so I could have the experience of making several guitars out of this wonderful wood.

I need to make some more cam clamps, I was a little short for gluing the back seam graft on. Maybe tomorrow or Wednesday I can steal a little time to make the back braces for this little guitar. I'll glue those on next.

Bubinga Tonewood

2007-12-18T08:46:00.001-08:00

I bought a board of bubinga, aka African Rosewood, at a local hardwood supplier this summer and I finally got around to resawing some of it. I started out using a rip saw with 5 1/2 TPI (teeth per inch) but I quickly changed over to a saw with 6 TPI. That saw cut better, but resawing bubinga by hand is pretty much like sawing through a firebrick. I am sure that most of you have discovered that most kiln dried wood one buys at a lumber yard tends to want to do weird things when you open it up. It usually cups badly on me and affects the accuracy of subsequent cuts, especially since I rip by hand. I have gotten around some of this problem by ripping out the pieces all at once. A sharp saw helps, too.

I mentioned that resawing bubinga by hand is like sawing through a firebrick, it took me a total of four hours to rip out two backs from this piece of wood. It is cheaper for me to do this than to send it off to a custom resaw buisness which charges $60 an hour, plus shipping. If I pay myself what I make at my day job I still come out ahead and it keeps my right arm in shape.

I don't own a bandsaw, though there are days I wish I had one, but I enjoy working with handtools. I tend to get in trouble with power tools on my own projects, generally I make a mistake and ruin something because I was going to fast. I do use power tools at my day job, historic preservation for the National Park Service, but making classical guitars is a highly elevated craft. Luthierie not an art, but you need to approach it as an art, to make the best piece you can. I have more control with handtools. The less electricity I use helps our poor planet. Yes, I do use exotic woods, but I try to make guitars out of Claro and English walnut whenever I can. Think globally, act locally.

My Workbench

2007-12-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

Just a word about my workbench.

I built this bench in 1995 when I started to get serious about my woodworking. I was using the bench my grandfather made, 2 slabs of Douglas fir, with a leg vise, attached to the posts of his workshop with large drawers beneath the top. I can't tell you how many toys I made on this bench when I was a kid, using the tools that he had owned and were just laying around the shop abandoned. In 1995 I saw an episode of The Woodwright's Shop where Roy Underhill built a bench with folding legs. His bench was based on one from The Handyman's Book, by Paul Hasluck, which used a regular metal vise. Roy dispensed with the metal vise, instead he added an apron front (borrowed from Nicholson's English bench) with a holding crochet (borrowed from Roubo's French bench) so that one could use holdfasts to clamp wood. Roy used a bench dog with metal teeth for the top of the bench, I don't-I have a bench stop made from a board attached to the end of the bench with hanger bolts and wing nuts making it easy to adjust the height of the stop. Now, for the shocking part of my bench-the entire bench, top and the legs, with the exception of the leg stretchers which are red oak, are made from incense cedar.

Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) is one of the most beautiful trees that grows in Northern California. It was used extensively for fence posts (my grandfather split posts for extra money) because the heartwood is very resistant to rot and for many years was used in the manufacture of pencils. Unfortantely, most of the old growth cedar is gone, another victim to over-logging practices.

The tree that made this bench is from my property, it was up on the hill near the horse corrals. The top was dead, cedars often fall victim to a root fungus (spp. annosus) that can kill the tree quickly, within 2 weeks or it can take years for the tree to die. In 1994, I felled the tree and milled it with a chainsaw equipped with a Granberg Alaskan Mill attachment. It took about 3 days to mill the entire tree. I counted the growth rings of the stump when I was done and the tree was born circa 1847, the same year my great-grandfather was born, it was a seedling at the time of the California Gold Rush. That means it was not an old growth tree when it fell, the definition of old growth in California is any tree that was mature (150-300 years old) when the first '49'ers arrived in the region.

In 1995, I went back to work at Rocky Mountain National Park and I wanted to have a work bench that I could take with me. Thanks to Roy Underhill and a stack of cedar in the woodshed, I made a traveling workbench. I have made folk fiddles, dulcimers and guitars, assembled chests and windsor chairs on it and I can't tell you how much musical instrument wood I have ripped that was held in that crochet and holdfast. I have never missed a "real" vise on this bench, I am so use this bench I don't know if I can use any other bench. It is not a large bench, it's five feet long, two feet wide and not very heavy, I put 2 50lb. bags of sand on the stretchers on each leg tower. Ever year I contemplate building new legs for it out of cedar or oak from trees on the property and, of course, I dream about making a copy of Nicholson's English bench. For me, the Nicholson bench is the ultimate bench because I use the same basic bench.

The point I am trying to get around to is to make the bench that you have always wanted. Don't get hung up on what kind of wood to use or how many vises it needs, start with a simple bench and discover what it is that you really need a workbench to do for you. Great ideas for benches can be found in Scott Landis's workbench book, The Workshop by Scott Gibson and check out Chris Schwarz's new book on making workbenches. Please, though, don't forget to look at Roy Underhill's great series of books on traditional woodworking. Find a bench that makes your heart sing, you'll be happy to work that bench.

Early Romantic Guitar, after Martinez

2007-10-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

This is the heel of a copy of an 1816 Martinez guitar that I built several years ago and just recently completed the finish on. The heel cap is manzanita burl.

The back and sides are eastern black walnut and the end graft is also manzanita.

A view of the guitar's back.

The top is old growth Douglas fir, handsawn from a board that once was a bleacher seat. This guitar has a wonderful tone and I am always amazed at how loud it is every time I play it. It's a little bit bigger than a tenor uke, but sounds better. I did make a concession by making a "modern" bridge for this guitar, the original has a lute style chordal block that was standard back at the turn of the 19th century. I had a hard time adjusting the guitar's action with that bridge, so I put on the bridge you see. The top bracing is a 3 brace fan, again typical of a Spanish guitar of the period. I find it interesting that the modern Spanish luthier Bernabe used a 3 brace fan on his classical guitars, I don't know if he still does. This guitar is a joy to play and the music of Guiliani and Sor sound better on it, the sound reminds me of a fortepaino, maybe this was the sound the players and luthiers were looking for back in 1816.

Lutherie

2007-09-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

What an intense morning! In the shop by 8am to carve out back bar pockets in the linings for the maple classical guitar and I had the back glued on by 11 am. It was intense because I felt the need to hurry, to get things done before the humidity in the shop dropped too low and not to make any mistakes. I started carving out the pockets with a 1/4 inch wide chisel, something I always do, but I end up putting away the chisels and getting my little a sloyd knife made by Frost. It's a Swedish style knife, sloyd, if I remember right, means "handmade" or "handwork" in Swedish, I use it for everything, to carve the guitar's heel, carve spoons, even remove splinters from my hands. It is a pity that most woodworkers ignore these knives because they think that they are crude tools for crude work, mostly it's an excuse woodworkers use to cover up their lack the experience with them.

Anyway, as you an see, the guitar's back has some gorgeous pillowing and in the other photo the back is being glued on and clamped with spool clamps. Thanks must go out to David Schramm, a wonderful luthier in Fresno, California, who has a great website that includes an online guitarmaking tutorial, because I borrowed this glue up technique from him. This method allows a luthier to adjust the angle of the guitar's neck before gluing on the back. All fine classical guitars have a forward pitch to the neck, this makes the guitar easier to play and reduces the stress put on the box, increasing the guitar's longevity. I want the finished string height on this guitar to be about 11mm off the soundboard and I was able to adjust the neck accordingly. The clamps will come off tomorrow afternoon and then I start to think about applying the bindings and purflings. This probably will be the last guitar that I can make this year, in 2 weeks I hope to start building a new shop, 12'x20', a shop that is insulated with lots of windows. I still need to finish applying the finish to 3 other guitars.

My Workshop

2007-09-02T18:26:00.001-07:00

The side bending machine. I do use a bending pipe, a length of copper pipe heated by a propane torch, to touch up the sides after they come out of the machine and before I attach them to the guitar top.

I keep most of the tools that I use on a regular basis in this tool chest, a creation out of plywood. I would rather use my time building and finishing classical guitars at this point then spendings hours creating a masterpiece tool chest. My resume are my guitars.

This is the workshop. My grandfather built this about 1942, the view that you see was originally his garage, where he worked on his 1936 Dodge. The space to the right was his "workshop", he sharpened handsaws and crosscut saws for local carpenters and loggers and made the occasional hope chest or chair. Notice the lack of power tools, I use handtools exclusively in my luthierie and woodworking, the only power tools I use in guitar building are a Porter-Cable router for the headstocks and a Dremel for routing out binding channels. Lutherie should be a quiet pursuit of one's time, power tools are loud and encroach upon the work, hand tools allow one to think, to reflect and keep the world a little greener.

Maple Classical Guitar

2007-09-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

Here's the classical guitar that has big-leaf maple back and sides (the back hasn't been glued on yet) this photo shows the rib-blocks being glued on the the transverse bars. The workboard is made out of particle board and is attached to 2x2 support and is adjustable with screws, to correct for any movement in the particle board. I know that it is crude compared to other workboards, but my current shop is basically an old barn that is uninsulated without a controlled climate. I build in environment similiar to what Antiono de Torres worked in, when the humidity goes down to

Maple Classical Guitar

2007-09-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today, I had hoped to glue the back onto the maple classical guitar that I am making. The back and sides of this classical guitar are big leaf maple, hand sawn out of a board that a friend of mine gave me several years ago. This friend is a well established furniture maker in Estes Park, Colorado and he was wanting to clear out some of his wood inventory. The day I picked out the board he said, "Just make a wonderful classical guitar out of it, that is all the payment that I need." The maple is a little pinkish and displays some wonderful tiger stripping. I couldn't glue the back onto the guitar because I had not glued the rib-blocks onto the upper transverse bars. It's important to anchor these bars to the guitar sides, a classical guitar is very much like a drum, a luthier has to think of stretching a wood top across a rim, just like a drum maker (or a banjo maker) does when he puts on the rawhide skin. I glued on the kerfed linings for the back yesterday and this morning I sanded the linings to arch the back. Though the plantilla (shape of the body) is a direct copy of a guitar made by the great Spanish luthiers Hernandez y Aguado, I try to arch the back of my classical guitars just like the Hernandis guitar, a Sherry-Brener Ltd import, that I purchased in 1979 when I was seriously studying the classical guitar. The Hernandis is not an exceptional loud guitar and has an incredibly long string length of 665mm, but I learned to play it and I played it well, and now I realize it was well crafted. Tomorrow morning, I should be able to attach the back and I hope that the relative humidity is up around 40-50 percent. When I stopped working at 3:30pm it was 30 percent humidity in my shop.