Wilson Burnham Guitars

  Few realize the influence of the luthier on the life and career of the artist. Andres Segovia, In Memoriam of Hermann Hauser,  The Guitar Review, 1954 Recently, a classical guitar made by a well known, highly respected Spanish maker came into the shop for evaluation. The current owner had removed all the original lacquer finish from the top and sanded so much that areas of the top were less than 1mm thick.  The first day it was in the shop I spent over an hour scrubbing the top to remove remaining finish remover and other chemical crud that was leftover by “a home repair”.  The top after a one hour scrub with NAPTHA... The bridge with remnants of finish remover... The next day I spent some time with the guitar to learn more about the damage with the hopes that all I needed to do was to re-finish the top. With the aid of an inspection mirror I found a repair completed at some point in the guitar’s life, a “floating brace” was installed to prevent the top from further collapse and an u

A couple of months ago, I posted a photo on Instagram of my air cleaner's filter after I had ripped a piece of East Indian rosewood with a hand saw, the filter was nearly black from the sawdust and I ripped only two small pieces. After I posted it, someone commented on the photo and said something like "What!? I was told that hand tools don't make wood dust! I was lied to!" Yes, hand tools do make dust! Saws make, well, um, saw dust when the teeth cut the wood. The iron of your hand plane, or spokeshave, makes dust as it cuts and lifts a shaving of wood, and you should see the amount of dusting and shavings that a sharp hand rasp can make! Anytime I pull out a rasp to work on a guitar neck I don a respirator, when I rip saw by hand a guitar top or back and sides from a billet I do the same. Even with an air cleaner in my tiny 238 square foot studio space I think about protecting my lungs from dust. Look closely at this photo and find all the wood dust on the handle of

  As far as we know now, the story begins in Roman times. The Romans themselves said the plane was invented by the Greeks, but so far no Greek planes have been found. W.L. Goodman, “The Story of the Plane”. My favorite plane is a Lie-Nielsen (L-N) No.62 low angle jack plane that I purchased from L-N earlier this year.  I bought it because I was tired of fighting tough wood - e.g., wenge, ebony, ziricote - with a vintage Stanley No.5 jack plane set up with a toothing iron and that got swapped out for smoothing iron to finish the work.  I ordered the No.62 with two extra irons - a toothing iron and a regular iron. The toothing iron makes short work of reducing wood down to desired thicknesses, the other iron got a 35 degree angle on it, which, if  sharpened it well enough, will produce a glassy smooth finish. It took a while to make the decision to purchase this plane, the price of the plane and extra irons was a bit of an issue, but after I saw that most used L-N tools sell for the same

The Brahms guitar is a relatively new design developed by guitarist Paul Galbraith and the late luthier David Rubio.  It is a unique instrument in that it is played in the cello position, while increasing the range with an additional treble and bass string.  The guitar features fanned frets and a cello style endpin. Erez Perelman, luthier I am making my second "Brahms" classical guitar, this is a custom order for a young guitarist/composer who asked that I make the guitar from Engelmann spruce and ziricote. I made and used an external mold to make this guitar, I am not completely sold on the idea of an external mold, other than holding the guitar firmly in place when I sanded the sides to accept the back, I don't see any advantage over an open work board. And it is heavy! Perhaps if I had started out making guitars with an external mold I might have a different opinion. The top is bracing with a five strut pattern over a bridge patch and I added a Yuris Zeltin style float

I showed my guitar to the Maestro (Andres Segovia), pointing out that I was not looking for kind words, but rather his most severe criticism to help me to excel in my work. Jose Ramirez III, Things About the Guitar , 1990 About six or seven years ago, I laminated a set of guitar sides, East Indian rosewood with Alaska yellow cedar veneer, using Titebond, an external mode and a seemingly unlimited amount of clamps. When the glue dried I removed the sides and was shocked to discover the sides “sprung in” (the opposite of “spring back”!) nearly one inch at ends of the bouts. It took some pressure and more than a few clamps to hold the sides in place on the guitar top while I glued the kerfing blocks to top and sides. Even if I had used an external mold many clamps would have been involved. I never gave up on the idea of making or using laminated sides, they are stiff and can help improve the sound of a guitar. A guitar is similar to a banjo in that the top is attached and anchored to stif

If you can't build a piece of furniture or guitar from claro walnut or Douglas fir, there's no point in making such a thing.  Frank Black, logger, cowboy, forest ranger, master axeman. In a previous post I asked the question, "Are there any woodworkers living West of the Mississippi River?"  I received comments from several amateur woodworkers, one was Joe from San Francisco who has a delightful blog  and is now on the Norse Woodsmith aggregator, and from one gentleman in Fort Collins, Colorado who isn't blogging judging from my research. Bob Easton chimed in, also, but sorry, Bob, living on the west bank of the Hudson River isn't far enough West for this matter!  As I stated in the earlier post, I know that there are woodworkers living West of the Mississippi, I am aware of all the well known and not so well known woodworking schools here in the West - College of the Redwoods, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Port Townsend School of Woodworking, etc., etc.- and th

The wood of choice was the ponderosa pine which was felled, split, and adzed to a workable thickness and fashioned into larger pieces of furniture, no two of which were alike.  Kingsley H. Hammett, Classic New Mexican Furniture , 1996 I'm not comparing Western style woodworking to Japanese style woodworking in this post, I want to ask this question: Are there any woodworkers living West of the Mississippi River? Yes, I know that there are woodworkers west of the 100th meridian - there are woodworkers and co-op's in most major Western cities, many of the world's best known classical guitar makers live here in the West - but to look at a typical woodworking blog aggregator one would suspect that there are no woodworkers living west of the confluence of the Wabash, Ohio and Tennessee rivers. I know that I haven't been posting on this blog as much as I use to, creating a decent post takes time, whereas posting on Instagram is as simple as taking a photo and telling everyone

I made this Welsh style stick Windsor chair fifteen or sixteen years ago for my wife when we were living at Cedar Grove, outside of Paynes Creek, California. At the time, chair makers like Don Weber, Drew Langsner, etc., referred to these as Welsh style stick Windsors, and if you look at the research they did back in the late 1990's, early 2000's, you will see why they used that term. I had read all the available books and magazine articles on chair making, then I went out into the forest that was my backyard, selected and felled the trees that would become this chair.   The seat is ponderosa pine that I milled from a tree on our property with a Husky 385 chainsaw and a Granberg Alaskan mill attachment and carved out with a gutter adze, planes and spoke shaves. The spindles and arm rests are black oak (quercus kelloggii) from a tree on the property, the legs are red oak dowels my father acquired when he worked for Kimberly Clark paper company sometime around 1970.