On the Bench: Western White Spruce/African Rosewood Concert Guitar

...the art of knowing and working with Mother Nature's wood is one of the noblest occupations created for the development and enjoyment of human beings.

Manuel Rodriguez, The Art and Craft of Making Classical Guitars, 2003


We've had a cold snap here in our neck of the woods, thankfully the temperature hasn't dropped below 0 degrees Fahrenheit at the house, but daytime temperatures haven't gotten about 25 degrees F. The relative humidity has dropped and my little humidifier is having a hard time keeping moisture in the air of my new little upstairs workshop, which means I have to watch the hygrometer and the wood very carefully. I doubt I will be doing much glueing until the temps get above 30 degrees.

That said, I have parts for another guitar ready for the bench, a spruce and African rosewood (bubinga).

I bought two white spruce tops from Stew-Mac several years ago, it was a limited time offering, the wood sold out quickly and Stewmac no longer offers this wonderful tone wood.

White spruce - aka, cat spruce, skunk spruce, western white spruce, picea glauca - is very similar to Sitka spruce and even smells like it when you work it. I have found one source for it on the internet, I am sure there are others, but I am not looking too hard.

This five strut bracing pattern is adapted from ones used by Marcelo Barbero, Hernandez y Aguado, and Antonio Torres. It's a experiment for me, I want a looser top with a quick response and perhaps a few more overtones.

Click here for Juan F. Fernandez's wonderful page full of computer simulations of vibration modes of different guitar bracing patterns.

I used a beautiful rosette handcrafted in Russia by a father and son team.

Notice the medullary rays present in this guitar top.

This guitar will have a three piece back - bubinga with a Macassar ebony insert.

Bubinga is harder than East Indian rosewood and has a brilliant, glassy tap tone to it.

I think the Macassar ebony really compliments the bubinga.

The headstock overlay for this guitar echoes the three piece back...


The Guitar Foundation of America 2016 convention is just six months away. I already registered for a table at the vendor expo, I have so much work to do to get ready for the show!

A Guitar Maker's Christmas Wish List

One Christmas Eve, I was told, certain payments due did not mature, and grandfather found himself unable to pay his men's wages. At that time the daily fare of the village was home-cured bacon: and when it was suggested that, for the family Christmas dinner, a piece of fresh meat should be brought from the butcher, he forbade it, on the principle that such a luxury was inconsistent with the non-payment of wages. And on that Christmas day the family sat down to nothing more than the everyday bacon.

Walter Rose, The Village Carpenter, 1937


Dear Santa:

This December I listed every step in making a guitar and identified every tool for each step.

I inventoried all of my tools and discovered more tools are needed to increase my efficiency, efficiency increases speed, speed means I make more guitars for sale, which means more money to pay off the mortgage.

I searched and searched tool catalogs, websites and at last I found every needed tool.

The list is a long one, but Santa, today when I was walking through the beautiful forest and all the snow that has graced these Rocky Mountains these last two weeks, I realized what it is I want most for Christmas.

What I want for Christmas is...

Peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

Please exchange all those gifts for me and my wife for love, cheer and kindness and deliver those three things to everyone in the world.

Thank you, Santa!

Wilson Burnham

P.S.

Say "Hi!" to Mrs. Santa and your hard working elves.

P.P.S

The heater in the horses' water tank is on and I opened up several bales of alfalfa hay for your reindeer!

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

Snow, Snowshoeing and Hide Glue

Once again we are in the grip of that grim old gentleman familiarly known as Jack Frost.

D.C. Beard, The Field and Forest Handy Book, 1906



The first day of winter is only four days away and we got two good snows this past week.

It's been wonderful for me to trail after the dogs on my snowshoes for their morning and afternoon up the gulch to Forest Service property.

There are great views such as this to enjoy...

and the gulch is cozy with snow.

A dead standing Douglas fir makes for a good photo opportunity.

Josey and Rufus treed another chickaree (tree squirrel), Pete was off chasing a different chickaree.

Today, I am trying to finish up the interior of a Conservatory model guitar so I can glue on the back.

Chores and other obligations have slowed down my progress some, but now that I glued a dutchman on the neck foot I am one step closer to closing up this guitar.

Hide glue and Lee Valley fish glue on my standard glues these days.

I appreciate how easy it is to reverse hide glue, just get out the heat gun, heat the spot for a few seconds and whatever I glued on pops off. To re-glue, I heat up the piece I took off, brush on some more hide glue and glue it back in place. Pretty simple. It's a forgiving glue and it dries harder than most polyvinyl glues.

John Tuttle extols the virtues of hide glue in his website on player piano repair, click here to read his hide glue question and answer page.

It's back to work for me!

How Many Guitar Making Hours in a Day?

Life is for doing things slow, like trees.

Makoto Imai, Japanese shrine builder



I recently read an interview with a well known classical guitar maker, and in the interview he stated that he worked twelve hours a day to make his guitars.

The first thing that came to my mind as I read that was - does he works three days a week or five days a week? 36 hours or 60 hours? Another question was, does he make time to live a life?

I can barely get in an eight hour day at the work bench.

There are chores around the house and property that need attention; the dogs demand two walks a day; and I need to get in my daily run of two and one-half miles. Oh, and I cook dinner for my wife since she commutes four days a week.

Yesterday, I did bend two sets of guitar sides. One set of Claro walnut...

and the other was bubinga.

This set of Claro walnut bent like a dream, but I have noticed that walnut tends to have more spring back than any other wood that I have bent.

Bubinga is hard to bend, meaning you have to take your time when you work it against the bending iron. I found that the iron needed to be at least 415 degrees Fahrenheit to really bend the bubinga, the wood didn't want to cooperate at temperatures below that.

It may be hard to bend, but bubinga had much less spring back than the walnut.

Today, I need to attach this top to the cherry neck I made for this guitar.

I also need to take the trash to the transfer station (no trash pick up in this part of the Rocky Mountains), check for mail at the post office, drive into Estes Park to pick up a few things for dinner, go for a run, take the dogs for another walk...

I haven't mentioned the fact that I need to build a new shop, re-insulate the ceiling in our house and build a whole bunch of bookcases.

One thing at a time.

Building an Antonio Torres SE 117 Guitar: Full Size Drawings to Start

What I can never doubt, or help admitting, is that the guitars constructed by Antonio Torres are the achievement of the highest degree of guitar lutherie.

Manual Rodriguez, The Art and Craft of Making Classical Guitars, 2003


I have a soft spot for small guitars, the first two guitars I made were based upon an 1816 Jose Martinez guitar which isn't much bigger than a baritone ukulele. Though small, these guitars have a loud, lyrical voice and are quite fun to play.

Two guitars made by Antonio Torres, his SE117 and SE151a have always intrigued me - they were both made with the same plantilla, or shape, both have bodies that are 17 inches long. SE117 has a 604mm, (23.750") string length and SE151a has a 610mm (24") string length. Compare that to the 1816 Martinez guitar which has a 616mm (24.25") string length and its body is just over 16 inches long!

The Martinez is a great sounding little guitar, I figure that with a larger body the Torres style guitars should be even louder. I will find out if that is true.

The reason to make a guitar based upon the Torres SE117 guitar, plans for which are available here and here, is that I purchased a piece of gorgeous curly Oregon walnut from Lewis Judy at Northwest Timbers.

I had originally bought the piece to cut up into bindings, but the wood was so pretty I had to make something else out of it.

One thing that I have learned about guitar making is to make a full size drawing of the instrument before I start. I already had the template for this guitar made, I got it from Jose Romanillos's book, Antonio Torres: Guitar Maker - His Life & Work, I used that to make these drawings.

By drawing out this little guitar I discovered that in order to get the proper string height above the fret board I will have to dome the top as much as a full size guitar, nearly three millimeters, or one-eighth of an inch.

This is good to know.

The curly walnut board was only five and one-half inches wide, too narrow for a standard two piece back, the drawing also helped me to figure out how wide of a filler piece I needed to make the back the required width.

I made the filler piece tapered on a 1 degree slant, copying what Torres did on his guitars where he used a third piece for the back.

Here are the three pieces of walnut with the two strips of curly maple for contrast. You can see the nice curl in the wood.

The three pieces being glued together.

I set a deadline for myself, I have until tomorrow afternoon to finish preparing all the parts for this guitar - sides, back, neck, top and bracing - if I am not finished then all parts go onto the shelf.

On Monday, I need to start assembling one of my Conservatory guitar models so I can have a less expensive guitar on hand to sell.

Wide Cherry Boards

Black-or wild-cherry trees do not like competition for sunlight from other trees.

Roy Underhill, The Woodwright's Shop, 1981



This morning I took a trip to a local Home Depot to see if I could find some nice Douglas fir to use in the rehabilitation of my old workbench. (More on that in other post!) I found only four boards that were really usable, I wanted more so I thought I would head over to Lowe's to check out their inventory.

On the way to Lowe's, I stopped at a local flea market to see what hard wood they had on hand, all I wanted to find was some nearly quarter sawn cherry for a guitar neck or two.

I walked back to the stacks of walnut, cherry and oak and when I saw what was there I knew I'd never get to Lowe's...

...this is what I found!

I have never run across cherry boards this wide here in Colorado.

The first one was fifteen inches wide, the second one, in the above photo, was sixteen inches...

...the third one was 18 inches wide! Another was at the very back of the stack that was 10 feet long! Now I wish I had taken the time to move the thirty or so boards that were in front of that one.

The gentleman who helped carry the boards to my trailer told me that he was a retired furniture maker and that I was very fortunate to find such wide boards at a great price. Each board was under sixty dollars.

When I spoke of my regret for not getting all the wide boards, he smiled and said,

"Come back in a couple of weeks, there will be more."

Yep, I'll go back!

What I've Learned About Woodworking - Hand Tools and Machines

Modern technology, with its vast capacity to produce cheaply everything needed by a burgeoning world population, has replaced the hand tools and the hand craftsmen which have attended mankind since its earliest days.

Alex W. Bealer, Old Ways of Working Wood, 1980

Perhaps I could cut out the back of the bubinga/ebony guitar faster with a bandsaw, but the coping saw makes me be aware of the wood and when I am done with this task the coping saw will hang on a peg.

A bandsaw makes noise, requires more space and electricity. I get to burn a few calories using a coping saw.

Now, if I were making doors and sashes for a living I would have shop full of power woodworking machines, I see their value in speed and efficiency for that kind of wood working.

I don't make doors and sashes for a living, I make guitars in a small shop.

Hand tools best suit my work...

...because they allow me to be intimate with the wood.

A guitar is a very intimate instrument, especially for the player.

Yes, I know that these days the sound of a guitar must be able to bounce off the back walls of a 3,000 seat concert venue, that is because the majority of people are use to loud noises and have lost the ability to listen well. I wonder, is that inability to listen well due to the noise of modern technology?

For me, woodworking is about taking my time to understand the tools and how they work with the wood...

...which means I learn how to work with the wood.

Another Use for Cam Clamps

There is quite a variety of clamps to meet the needs of the various kinds of work to be clamped.

Harry F. Ulrey, Audel's Carpenters and Builders Library No.1, 1965

There are days when I dislike using my Shop Fox vise to hold thin pieces of wood and today I needed to taper down a piece of ebony that is going to be inserted into a bubinga guitar back.

I used a technique that I figured out a while ago to hold the wood, a cam clamp front and back on the piece.

The clamp in the front gets butted up against the bench stop and the clamp on the back helps steady the piece while I plane away with my no.7 jointer plane.

This is what the back will look like, I still need to joint all edges before I proceed with the glueing process.

Yes, I do use exotic woods, but Auburn Hardwoods, where I got the bubinga and Luthiers Mercantile International, the ebony, both assured me that both woods were from sustainable sources.

Now, turn off the computer, get into your shop and do some work! I'm going for a run!

A Monumental Tree

You have heard people say, "He cannot see the woods for the trees." Meaning, that he cannot grasp the meaning of the big thing because a part of the thing holds all of his attention. This could apply to the average man's understanding of the importance of forests. The average man does not see the forests except as so many trees.


Ned H. Dearborn, Once in a Lifetime: A Guide to the CCC Camp, 1935



I enjoy collecting photos of a photographer who worked out of Susanville, California in the early decades of the last century. I am always looking for postcards of the logging scenes that he captured with his camera, especially those that he took near where I was born and raised in Northern California.

I recently acquired this postcard, it's a great shot of two loggers preparing to fall a huge ponderosa pine.

The logger on the left has a Puget Sound style double bit axe, the logger on the right has a "misery whip", a two man crosscut saw over his shoulder and is holding an axe in his right hand.

If you look at the base of the tree you can see a sledge hammer with wooden falling wedges. The one thing I don't see is a bottle of "coal oil", kerosene, a lubricant for the saw.

The photo was copyrighted by the Red River Lumber Company, which owned a huge sawmill and plywood plant in Westwood, California. Click here to see more photos of the Westwood mill.

This is a photo from my family's collection, it was probably taken by Bob Stinson, a photographer from Red Bluff, California, who traveled to the local logging camps and took photos of the loggers and logging operations just after the turn of the last century.

These three gents are making a face cut on what appears to be a sugar pine that has a rotted out heart, if you look real hard you can see a void in the tree just behind the crosscut saw.

The man on the far right is in a photo that Stinson took of the logging crew at Ed Byrant's camp, which was near Lyonsville, California, I assume this tree isn't too far from where that camp was.

This sugar pine wouldn't have been considered a big tree in that area...

...since loggers were bringing out monsters such as the sugar pine in 1890...

...or this one in 1905, again, near Lyonsville, California.

Why do I bring up these big trees?

There aren't many left.

This tree was "discovered" near Hayfork, California in 2008, it is 240 feet tall with a diameter of 8 feet! Click here to read the article about how this tree was found.

The world's tallest ponderosa pine, not the tree on the right of the photo, but the one to the left that the rope is attached to, at 268 feet tall, was located in 2011. Click here to read that article.

Thank goodness there are national and state parks that have preserved other large conifers!

I did some more research online and found several on-going studies that identify and age old trees.

It makes me think more about this thing called sustainability.

I wonder how many other woodworkers are concerned about having great lumber to work with in the future.

I know I will be looking for wood from sustainable sources to build my guitars, I need to practice what I preach.

What about you?

When the Wood Tells You What to Make

I always think of wood as being alive.

James Krenov, A Cabinetmaker's Notebook, 1976

I ordered one piece of West African Ebony from Luthiers Mercantile International to cover the headstock on a Spanish cedar guitar neck, it was going to be a great contrast for the bubinga back and sides.

The headstock veneer fell to the floor and cracked, not a large crack and I was able to glue and clamp it together. When I was getting ready to dry fit the piece onto the headstock the ebony split full length when I was drilling a hole for one of the registering pins.

I guess this piece of ebony didn't want to cover the entire headstock.

I took one step back from the bench and recalled some advice that my father said to me when I young...

Sometimes the wood tells you what you should do.

The back of this guitar is going to have a tapered fillet of ebony down the middle, it seemed best to me to match that with a mirror image in the headstock veneer. This photo shows a piece of West African ebony between two jointed pieces of bubinga. Notice that I use a cabinet maker's triangle on the pieces.

I really enjoy using this old technique of string and wedges to glue wood together!

All parts lined up with no gaps.

The headstock after I drilled holes for the tuning machines and cut the slots for the tuning machine rollers.

I have yet to decide on what crest design I should use, this photo shows one design I like which is a blending of designs used by Domingo Esteso and Santos Hernandez.

I'm not sure the double ogee is the best way to show off the end of the ebony strip.

Here are some sketches that I made yesterday, the one with the asterisk by it is the crest design that my wife liked the best and I have to agree with her.

Now to practice making this new crest a couple of times on some pieces of pine to make sure I get it right before I work on the real thing.

Classical Guitar Necks: Black Cherry and Spanish Cedar

I believe in tradition as long as it doesn't interfere with some of my ideas. First, I differ in the kind of wood that I use to make my guitar necks.

Arthur E. Overholtzer, Classic Guitar Making, 1974

I was busy last week.

First, I joined a western red cedar top, inlayed the rosette and then thinned the top down to about 2mm thick.

I want to experiment with the so-called fan/lattice bracing that is very popular right now amongst classic guitar makers.

The idea is to have a very, very thin top that is reinforced with an ultra strong, ultra light style of bracing, the concept is similar how the drum head on a banjo works.

These days young classical guitarists who compete in guitar competitions are playing the loudest guitars they can get their hands on. Some folks call these guitars "uber guitars", others call them "Australian guitars". These guitars are very loud and some don't sound like a guitar at all, they are very controversial right now in the classical guitar world.

Click here to how one luthier makes this style of guitar.

More on my cedar lattice braced guitar in upcoming posts.

Left, cherry neck. Right, Spanish cedar neck


Second, I started making two necks: one is of Spanish cedar which is for the lattice braced guitar; the other is of cherry, which is for a Conservatory model guitar that will be made of North American woods.

The cherry neck was a little too narrow, to make sure I have enough wood to make the head stock I added an "ear" to each side. Most of the excess wood will be cut off when I make the head stock and won't be noticeable when completed.

The heel block has been slotted to receive the guitar sides which will be held in place by wooden wedges, take a look at the photo on the top of this post to see the angles that I used.

I use a traditional "Spanish heel" on my guitars.

The saw in this photo is a Disston, it started out as a crosscut saw and now it is a rip saw!

An Atkins panel crosscut saw is just the thing to start the cut for the heel profile...

...which is completed with a shop made bow saw.

The necks awaiting the head stock veneers. The cedar neck will receive a Macassar ebony headplate and the cherry neck gets a walnut headplate made from cutoffs of the walnut back that goes with this neck.

Oh, so much work to do this week!

A New Tool Rack

A tool rack gives every tool a place to call home without enclosing it inside a box.

Sandor Nagyszalanczy, Setting Up Shop, 2000




A couple of years ago I needed a tool rack in my shop, it was hard to make the time to build what I really wanted, so I cast around on the internet and found this design (click here) which I adapted. It went together quickly and I used it for several years even though I didn't like the design, the tools kept tipping over in the open rails.

You can see the aforementioned tool rack just above the right hand side of the work bench. As I said, it worked.

On a recent Saturday I made the time to disassemble the old rack and built what I really wanted from the remains!

I laid out all the tools I use on a daily basis onto the old rail board, figured two inch spacing between each tool and then went at the board with a brace and bit.

Every tool has it place and I don't have to worry about one falling through an open rail.

It's nice to have a little bit of order in my new studio, the floor is strewn with tools waiting for a cabinet with drawers.

One of these days I will build such a creature.

Lufkin No. 386 Four Fold One Foot Ruler

Here is where it all begins. It is a fine thing to be able to plane square and saw straight but these skills are lost on work that is measured and laid out incorrectly.

Aldren A. Watson, Hand Tools, Their Ways and Workings, 1982


I try not to collect hand tools anymore, my tool chests are full to over flowing with wonderful antique tools that I don't necessarily need anymore, but I do have a soft spot for four fold one foot rulers.

I picked up this nice Lufkin ruler in Leadville, Colorado, on my birthday, my wife and I were on our way to Crested Butte and Kebler Pass for a short vacation.

This ruler was at the Western Hardware Antique Mall, in a case along with a gorgeous Stanley No. 1 plane ($1175) and a few other nice Stanley and Winchester tools. I picked it up so I can use it to measure the thumb to pinky length of potential customers to establish what string length will be best for them.

This unmarked one foot four fold ruler belonged to my maternal grandfather, Rufus Wilson (1880-1952), my mother told me that he always had it in the small pocket of the bib of his bib overalls. I am very grateful that she passed it along to me.

Three rulers.

A one foot two fold Stanley on the left and the four folds on the right.

How fun!

A Pepperwood Antonio Torres Style Guitar, SE 117: Re-sawing Back and Sides

...like the classic Laurel or Bay..., it[Umbellularia californica] 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, 1950

Just north of Manton, California, on the back way into Shingletown, there is a series of springs that flow out of the volcanic mudflow ridge which are surrounded by pepperwood trees. This grove was a classic grove of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada, no under growth, gray to tan trunks whose bark gave out the same peppery smell of the leaves. It was a good place to stop when I would help my uncle gather cattle because of the luxurious shade. Here we would loosen the cinches on our saddles, lift saddle and saddle blanket off the back of the horse to air out his back some. After we and the horses had a drink of water, we'd cinch up, swing into the saddle and I'd grab some leaves off the tree and crush them under my nose as we rode off. The smell invoked pictures I had seen of Tuscany, it reminded me of great classical music, great paintings, and that I would dance all night with a gorgeous brunette cow girl who could ride a horse better than me.

I love California laurel.

Re-sawing California Laurel with a Disston rip saw

About 10 years ago, a guy I worked with gave me a board of California laurel, it was kind of a junky specimen, flat sawn and every thing, he thought he was going to dupe me, but I made over the board like it was kingwood. His face fell over my apparent joy.

Here's this wood opened up. Not bad, other than some bird pecks and flame it is a very plain piece of wood.

A little bit of Naptha brings out some of the color.

Seventeen years ago, I salvaged a nice 2x6 stud from a hotel remodel that I was working on thinking that it was a piece of quarter sawn Douglas fir only to find out that it red fir (abies magnifica) once I opened up the board.

Since it wasn't wide enough to make a full size guitar, I four pieced a top together and then I decided to add an all wood rosette to it. I was still fairly new to guitar making then and I screwed up the rosette. So I shelved the top.

That top has always been in the back of my mind because I often wonder what a guitar made from it would sound like. Today, I decided that the top needs to be paired with California laurel, laurel is a fairly hard wood, according to the United States Forest Service data sheets, laurel is a might bit hard than black walnut.

Laurel makes a great sounding guitar. Look else where in this blog to see a posting on a laurel guitar that I made.

This photo gives you an idea how small this guitar is compared to a standard size classical guitar outline.

Just the tiniest bit of bear claw in this top.

Once made I will offer this guitar as one of my Conservatory guitars. It will have a Port Orford cedar neck, flamenco tuning pegs, royal ebony finger board and a rosewood bridge. The price will be $1800-$2000.