Posted on July 31, 2026July 31, 2026 by Dale Phillips Effects of Grain Orientation on Brace Deflection Effects of Grain Orientation on Brace Deflection by Greg Nelson with Benjamin Nelson Originally published in American Lutherie #127, 2016 I have always taken it on faith that perfectly quartersawn wood had to be superior to diagonal- or plain-cut wood when it comes to bracing. I never felt the need to question this common wisdom until when reading The Responsive Guitar, I discovered that Ervin Somogyi had done a test that created doubt about how accurate this assumption might be. He invited further testing, and that is what inspired me to spend some time and material to check things out. I come to lutherie work without any formal scientific training. This sort of testing demands a scientific method, so I invited my son, Dr. Benjamin Nelson, to participate. His field of expertise is astronomy (mostly extrasolar planets), but having grown up in our house, he is not unfamiliar with wooden instrument construction. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips The $75 Guitar Challenge The $75 Guitar Challenge by Doug Hunt and Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021 Mark: A couple years ago, I was walking around a big home store and started to wonder whether it would be possible to build a guitar only from things I could buy there. Obviously, they didn’t sell tuners, fretwire, or truss rods. However, I thought it might be possible if one had those three things. I decided that, given those parts, it might be possible to make a guitar with $75 to spend at the home store. Thinking it might be an interesting challenge, I suggested the idea to Doug Hunt. Doug and I have been guitar-making friends for years, having met as part of a project aiming to teach technical subjects to high school students through guitar making. (Check it out at guitarbuilding.org.) He was interested, though not looking for one more thing to do at the time. A while later, he suggested that a better idea would be to start with a budget of $75 that could be spent anywhere (he’s a big fan of eBay, as it happens). As long as the money could be spent anywhere, he thought that it might be possible to do the whole instrument for $75. Over some months of occasionally revisiting the idea, we did a little negotiating and settled on the following rules: Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 7, 2026July 7, 2026 by Dale Phillips First Build: A Lumberyard Ukulele First Build: A Lumberyard Ukulele by Steve Dickerson Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 When you’re building your first instrument, there aren’t many options. You can buy a kit, join a class (if you can find one), or build from scratch. Kit building can be enjoyable, as well as educational, but (to me, at least) it doesn’t produce the same satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that comes from starting with nothing but the raw materials. My first instrument, many years ago, was scratch-built, but with a twist: I bought a tenor ukulele kit from StewMac, complete with plans and a how-to DVD. I watched the DVD, studied the plans and manual, but set the kit aside. I then bought materials from Home Depot and made a uke, using the kit’s plans and instructions. I still have my “Lumberyard Ukulele” (Photo 1), and it’s a good reminder of some of the things I did wrong. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on May 5, 2026May 5, 2026 by Dale Phillips Norwegian Spruce Norwegian Spruce by Leonardo Michelin-Salomon Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 In 2017, the Norwegian Crafts Institute and the Norwegian Luthiers Association came together and held a seminar about spruce — and specifically Norwegian spruce — as tonewood. Different panelists explored the topic from different angles: Violin maker Magnus Nedregaard presented us with a historical perspective on the quality of the spruce seen on old violins, also in light of dendrochronological analysis; a retired biologist and forest researcher talked about wood technology in general and about the growth conditions in Italy’s Val di Fiemme area and how it might translate to Norwegian conditions; Roald Renmælmo, Assistant Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, introduced us to traditional Norwegian practices in selecting and harvesting spruce in small scale and for specific purposes; and we also heard the accounts of Karl Otto Mikkelsen, a biologist and violin maker used to looking for and harvesting Norwegian spruce for his instruments. Later, material samples were gathered so interested members could test them at will. As part of my fellowship research I wanted to make several copies of the same guitar. One of the reasons for this was indeed to test some of these different spruce samples and compare them to commercial grade spruce from the Alps, the kind we are all used to seeing and using. My work merely scratches the surface of the possibilities. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part One Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part One by Trevor Gore Originally published in American Lutherie #118, 2014 see also, Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part Two by Trevor Gore In 1993, Bob Benedetto built an archtop guitar from construction-grade knotty pine with a back of weather-checked maple. In 1995, Bob Taylor used top wood cut from a 2×4 (“pine, fir, or hemlock”) and back wood from an oak pallet salvaged from a dumpster to build a guitar. Roger Bucknall (Fylde Guitars) routinely uses top wood of Oregon pine from distillery washback vessels and back and side wood salvaged from oak whisky casks for his “single malt” guitars. C.F. Martin & Company builds guitars with backs and sides made from high-pressure laminates with composite fretboards, materials of a type more commonly found surfacing kitchen workbenches. On its website, Martin claims that its wood-topped HPL guitars have the “sound of a highly collectible Martin,” presumably invoking comparisons to red spruce/rosewood instruments. The claims made by these makers for the sound of such instruments make the point that building a good guitar depends more on the skill of the luthier than on the quality of the materials that are used. In 1862, the great Antonio de Torres proved his point by building a guitar with papier-mâché back and sides so, as one legend goes, to demonstrate the primacy of the soundboard in guitar construction. I, too, have built a guitar using reclaimed wood from a building renovation. It had a five-piece radiata pine top and meranti back and sides. It sounds better than the majority of guitars that you can buy in a main-street store. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
