Posted on March 3, 2020May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips The Red (Spruce) Scare The Red (Spruce) Scare by Ted Davis Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Did you ever feel that Murphy (you know, the one who wrote Murphy’s laws) lived close by and visited your work area every time you opened the door? He seems to be a permanent fixture in my shop. Anytime two things can go wrong, the worst one always does! But that rascal must have taken a vacation recently. Let me relate the events of the last few months and see if you don’t agree. One Sunday while visiting a friend, I picked up the Sunday paper, a luxury I long ago gave up for financial reasons. An article on acid rain in the Great Smoky National Park struck my eye. As I read, I learned that a young PhD candidate was studying the effects of acid rain on the red spruce (Picea rubens) in the park. I reflected on how often I had coveted these magnificent spruces. A single log would give me a lifetime of tonewood. I had even visited park headquarters and inquired about obtaining a piece of a fallen tree. The answer was not “no,” but emphatically “no!” All trees must stay in the park and be left to decay naturally. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 2, 2020May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Harvesting Engelmann Spruce Harvesting Engelmann Spruce by Dennis Coon previously published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume 10, #1, 1982 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1998 Visualize for a moment a fine handmade guitar, the essence of precision and elegance. Behind it picture the raw beauty of an immense tree, cloaked in scaly bark, bristling with blue-green needles and gnarled cones. The contrast between guitar and tree is striking. And yet, the link between the two is powerful. As a luthier’s skill and appreciation for materials grows, a deeper respect for wood inevitably develops. Often the luthier begins to take a greater interest in the chain of events that provides his or her materials. Perhaps the luthier buys a billet or a log, visits a saw mill, dries and splits a local wood, or finds out exactly how the wood he or she uses was prepared. The gap between tree and instrument narrows and quite often, a life-long romance with wood is born. It was just such a romance that carried me to the arid highlands of New Mexico to visit Santa Fe Spruce, a company specifically geared to preparing wood for musical instruments. My tour of Santa Fe Spruce was conducted by Tom Prisloe, president of the company. Tom, a musician (classical guitar and lute) with a background in forestry, shares the work at Santa Fe Spruce with partners Suzanne MacLean and David Bacon. As our discussion of timber and instrument making unfolded, it became clear that these three are dedicated to providing premium quality wood, prepared in a way that few other suppliers are willing or able to duplicate. The work demanded by their approach is formidable. Nevertheless, I believe their methods, successes, and problems are instructive. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on November 14, 2019May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips North American Softwoods North American Softwoods by Ted Davis, Bruce Harvie, Steve McMinn, Byron Will, and Dave Wilson, moderated by Joseph Johnson from their 1990 GAL Convention panel discussion Previously published in American Lutherie #31, 1992 and The Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Three, 2004 Why don’t each of you tell us who you are, where you’re from, and a little bit of what you’ve done. Ted: My name is Ted Davis and I live in Tennessee near the Smokey Mountains. The Smokeys have red spruce in them and when I found out this wood was useful, I started pursuing it. In the last two years, after a ten-year search, I have managed to find and cut a small amount of red spruce. It was the wood that was used by Martin and Gibson around the turn of the century, up into the 1940s. Bruce: My name is Bruce Harvie and I have a company called Orcas Island Tonewoods in the San Juan Islands of Washington. I have spread myself very thin cutting all the Northwest species — western red cedar, Port Orford cedar, Sitka spruce, Engelmann spruce — and I’ve just returned from cutting some red spruce. Byron: I’m Byron Will and my interest is more from an instrument maker’s point of view. I started building harpsichords in 1975 when I moved to the Pacific Northwest from Wisconsin. I wasn’t very satisfied with the woods I had been using. After seeing these gorgeous Northwest trees I started wondering about their physical and acoustical properties and how useful they’d be in my work. I decided to try some of the local softwoods and learned quite a bit through the years. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on August 30, 2019May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Forester: Andrea Florinett Meet the Forester: Andrea Florinett by Greg Hanson previously published in American Lutherie #93, 2008 In the summer of 2005, I took a step that many an amateur luthier eventually must — I ordered European spruce tops from a European source over the Internet. The Internet has become a vital vehicle for commerce, but when it comes to selecting tops for acoustic guitars, nothing can replace hands-on inspection, even for those of us with less than full-time professional experience. The tops that showed up on my doorstep two weeks after I clicked the “Submit Order” button exceeded my expectations, but I liked some better than others. How, then, to solve this problem other than trekking off to Europe to test, tap, and touch the so-called Holy Grail of the Mother Continent, Picea abies? As a professor of German and a fluent speaker of the language, I threw caution to the wind and wrote to Andrea Florinett of Tonewood Switzerland in Graubünden, Switzerland. I took advantage of the three main reasons many teachers become teachers — June, July, and August — to ask Andrea if I could work for him for a couple of weeks on a volunteer basis. I can only imagine what reservations the Florinett family might have had, but a week later I received a very welcoming e-mail from Annette Florinett, Andrea’s wife, accepting my offer. Tonewood Switzerland is largely a family-run operation with one full-time employee, and they were glad to gain a helping, albeit inexperienced, hand. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 27, 2019May 26, 2025 by Dale Phillips Top 40 Wood List Top 40 Wood List by Nicholas Von Robison previously published in Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1994 See also, “Taxonomy and Nomenclature” by Nicholas Von Robison “Glossary of Basic Wood Terms” by Nicholas Von Robison The contemporary luthier can be said to be either in a bind or in a unique evolutionary position, depending on one’s point of view. In the following list of lutherie woods, many will be noted as banned, extinct, prohibited, embargoed, unavailable, and/or expensive. In many cases I have listed viable alternative woods to replace the traditional species based on my own knowledge, education, experience, and on the advice, suggestions, and experience of respected, reputable wood specialists, dealers, and luthiers. While many species can be freely exchanged or adopted in place of the traditional woods of beauty and adornment, those that fall into the category of replacements for traditional resonant woods must be tried without any assurance or guarantee that musicians will accept these alternative woods. The acceptability of a wood species for the production of stringed musical instruments is largely dictated by the traditional practices and materials handed down through centuries. Many of the favored wood species are those that were available in commerce not only to the luthier but to the European furniture craftsmen as well. It can be very difficult for the luthier to obtain acceptance of new materials by the end user, the musician. The musician expects to hear a certain sound from an instrument, and any variation from that sound, as well as any variation in physical appearance, is suspect. In view of this, the chances of obtaining musical acceptance for instruments built with nontraditional woods has been slim in the past. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
