Posted on July 1, 2019May 27, 2025 by Dale Phillips Woodchopper’s Ball Woodchopper’s Ball by Bruce Harvie from his 2004 GAL Convention Lecture previously published in American Lutherie #90, 2007 How many people are here because they are thinking about processing their own wood? I highly encourage it. It’s very satisfying to build instruments from wood that you’ve cut. You can get a spruce on a firewood permit. It’s a great feeling to be out in the forest. When the Guild was first starting out over thirty years ago, the word “tonewood” was not in common usage. Back then there were maybe only three or four suppliers. Now you can Google “tonewoods” and get a hundred suppliers. There’s still a lot to be explored in the world of tonewoods. Englemann spruce didn’t really come on the market until 1978, and Red spruce not until ’89 or so. I can think of four or five species that are virtually untapped in the world of tonewoods: Noble fir, California red fir, and true white fir are all great woods. In Europe, you have places like the Ukraine opening up right now. They have beautiful spruce. I’ve seen quite a bit of it. We have wood here at this convention from the Balkans. That’s nice to see. It’s amazing how much wood is here. It’s just great to see all the guitar tops and woods for sale. And don’t miss the auction. If you look at the woods that were used in guitars in the first part of the 20th century, you see some scuzzy looking wood. On some of the best-sounding prewar Martins, the tops are mismatched and the grain is running every which way. You see tons of runout because that wood was supplied in the form of lumber, not split billets. I see some wonderful-sounding old guitars that were built with wood that people would throw away nowadays. But a typical guitar store today has walls full of Breedloves or Martins with tops that were milled correctly, probably by Pacific Rim Tonewoods up in Concrete, Washington. They do an incredible job of milling guitar wood. 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.
Posted on June 24, 2019May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Grading and Resawing Lutherie Wood Resawing Lutherie Wood by Bruce Creps previously published in American Lutherie #91, 2007 See also, “Sharpening the Stellite Teeth on the 3" Hitachi Blade” by Bruce Creps “Grading and Curing Lumber” by Bruce Creps Harvesting, milling, and processing tonewood can be a wasteful business. Much of the wood used by luthiers comes from large, older trees, elders worthy of respect. As someone fortunate enough to work with these rare, high-grade woods, one of my top goals is to minimize waste by processing this valuable resource efficiently. This article concerns the Hitachi CB75F resaw, though much of what follows is general enough to be applicable to other resaws. Luthiers who buy resawn sets might glean information about how their wood is processed and what to request or avoid when ordering. A note on nomenclature: A resaw is an upright or horizontal bandsaw set up to make uniform rip cuts. The front of the saw is where you start feeding a cut. The face of a board is its wide, longitudinal surface; the edge is its narrow longitudinal surface; the end is its crosscut surface. The resaw blade is made up of its band and its teeth (terms not necessarily interchangeable). I refer to vertical-grain wood in place of quartersawn wood to avoid confusion, since a sawyer can get vertical-grain cuts without quartering a log. 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 20, 2019May 30, 2025 by Dale Phillips Glossary of Basic Wood Terms Glossary of Basic Wood Terms by Hart Huttig (1975), updated and expanded by Nicholas Von Robison (1994) previously published in Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1994 See also, “Taxonomy and Nomenclature” by Nicholas Von Robison “Top 40 Wood List” by Nicholas Von Robison Guitarmaking of necessity requires not only a supply of various woods but also knowledge of their origins and methods of cutting and storing. A good luthier should have a considerable fund of information about the history of wood procurement. Lutherie is an ancient craft, and it is a requirement that the luthier should be well conversant in the entire spectrum of wood cutting and classifying. To this end I have made excerpts in the form of glossaries and explanations. This information has been compiled from several sources which will be listed in the “Wood Bibliography” (pp. 23–29). Some of the terms are now archaic but should be of interest from a historical standpoint. Trees used to be felled with axes and the logs snaked to a work area and cut into baulks with adzes and broad axes. Planks and boards were made by the sawpit method. They were also rived from the logs, that is, split from straight-grained pieces with froes (or frows) or sometimes with power wedges or go-devils. Rails were split with oak wedges or gluts, driven by a beetle or burl maul. Trees were cut into logs and rafted to mills in remote locations when rivers or streams were near enough. Until the 15th century, lumber was sawed by two men equipped with a large hand saw. The log was mounted over a great pit. One man stood below it and was showered with saw dust. The other man stood on top and had the heavier task of lifting the weight of the saw with each cut. Around 1420, near Breslau in Germany, the first saws were driven by water power in mills on river banks. These saws were made to move up and down the same as hand-operated saws. In 1781 Walter Taylor, a saw miller in Southampton, England, began to saw wood with a circular saw, the blade being driven by a water wheel by the River Itchen. In 1808 William Newberry of London patented a saw with teeth formed on an endless metal band revolving around two wheels. He was unable to make a satisfactory commercial bandsaw because the steel available for the blades at that time would not stand the strain. Practical bandsaws were first made by Perin of Paris in about 1855 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 10, 2010May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Victor Gardener In Memoriam: Victor Gardener April 1, 1909 – April 7, 2006 by Chris Dungey Originally published in American Lutherie #92, 2007 Victor Gardener, a fellow violin maker, tree cutter, and friend, passed away last year, April 7th, 2006. He was a giant person in so many ways. I have struggled now for a year to write this letter, in honor of a man that had a tremendous impact on numerous violin makers, players, teachers, and most of all, his most gifted apprentice, Michael Kline. In fact, to honor Victor Gardener, Michael has established a very successful violin making program in southern Oregon called the Giardinari Violin Making Program. Victor did not want a memorial service when he passed away. This did not surprise me. He was always the first to refuse any thanks for all he had done for others over the years. I always remember Victor talking about wanting to take violin lessons when he was a boy. But his family was so poor, they could not afford to buy him an instrument or lessons. He made his first violin in his lap with a few tools from Sears Roebuck Co., and went on to make 405 violins, violas, and cellos. Among his completed instruments are 108 cellos. He was never able to fulfill his dream of becoming a violin player. Instead, when he became a violin maker he made a point of practically giving away his instruments so the student or family would have the opportunity of playing and enjoying the violin in a way that he never was able to. Photo courtesy of Michael Kline. Growing up in the mountains of southern Oregon, almost all his spruce, maple, willow, and mountain mahogany was from trees he found, cut, hauled, milled, and air-dried himself. His ebony he bought in lumber form. He made everything for his instruments, including the purfling, fingerboards, pegs, end pins, tail pieces, and chin rests. I have never known a violin maker or read of a maker anywhere who was so prolific and worked from the tree to the finished product. Giardinieri’s talent was discovered by Hans Weisshaar, a notable master maker and restorer. A fire broke out in the University of Oregon and the instruments were taken from the Music Deptartment and laid on the lawn until the all-clear was sounded. During this time, as Weisshaar waited outside with everyone else, he spotted a viola. He was impressed by the bold artistic carving but did not recognize the name, Victor Gardener. Weisshaar took some time and located Gardener in the mountains of southern Oregon and for the next several years he would invite him to come and visit his shop and home in California and there he would teach him. Weisshaar had worked with Simone Sacconi for Wurlitzer in New York. It was finally Weisshaar and Sacconi who talked Gardener into using his Italian name, Vittore E. Giardinieri. Weisshaar and Giardinieri became good friends and corresponded for many years about violin making and the art of carving. Giardinieri would not forget the help that Weisshaar gave him. Victor would return that help by getting ten apprentices started, many of them becoming award-winning makers and enjoying successful careers. Victor was born July 1, 1909, in Lake Creek, Oregon, the youngest of six children of Rafaele Diodatto Francesco Gardener and his wife, Luisa Maria D’Francesco Gardener, immigrants from Cavalese and Bolzano, then in Austria and now in Italy. Victor was a logger, dairy farmer, and rancher; he was a designer and builder of earthen dams and irrigation systems; and eventually he became a violin maker. He married Harriet Short in 1936 and lived in Jackson County throughout his life. I first met Victor when I was a first-year student at the Newark School of Violin Making in England. Since I had grown up in the southern Oregon area, I had known of Victor for a number of years prior to starting my violin making career. I had heard stories of this man who lived in the hills outside of Medford, Oregon (where I had grown up as a youth), who had piles of wood. Maybe I would get lucky and he would agree to sell me some of his wood! As a first year student, I was on the hunt for obtaining piles of my own wood for future instrument making. At that meeting Victor was very open and friendly, but, “No, I don’t sell my wood” was his reply when I asked to purchase some. “But,” he said, “if you would like to go cut a tree, I would be happy to show you how.” I jumped at the chance! Little did I know how involved the whole operation was to become. He did show me how to find a tree, and helped with obtaining the proper permits to cut the tree. At which point he said, “Have fun cutting!” Yikes, I was on my own to figure out how I was going to cut, chop, peel, move, wax, stack, and transport this material back into town for storage. With the help of numerous friends and family (several of whom were loggers at the time) the project did come to pass. The next year I came back to visit Victor again and asked if we could go get another tree. He agreed, and from that day forward he was an active participant in what was later to become ten or fifteen various wood cutting-trips that we collaborated on together. That first tree, as I found out later, was his way of testing how serious I was in wanting to obtain my own violin making wood for future years of supply. I guess I passed the test by returning year after year for more! It was on one of those last trips that Michael Kline and I had the chance to cut one of the last couple of spruce trees that Victor was to be involved with. The areas that Victor knew contained high quality wood have since become off limits to cutting. Victor had a memory that was amazing! Several times when I would go to visit him and talk about those wood expeditions, he would be able to name every person that was on that trip. He wanted to know what they were doing now, where they lived, and so on. I struggled to even remember the trip itself. I could easily write a short book about all of the wonderful times I was able to spend with Victor and his wife Harriet. Unfortunately time and space will not permit me to do so. But I would like to acknowledge that without Victor’s help, guidance, tutoring, generosity, and openness (and Harriet’s fantastic pies), I would not have had the good fortune to be where I am today in my career as a cello maker. I keep a picture of Victor near my workbench today, in honor of a gentle giant that I shall never forget. My only wish was that I could have written this article sooner rather than later in remembrance of a dear friend and a man who was like a father to me. (I would like to thank Michael Kline for his generous contribution and help with this article.) I would like to include a partial list of all the violin makers that Victor shared his tree cutting help with in the past. List of Makers involved with Tree Cutting with Victor (As memory serves me, 7/2006) Weisshaar shop employees-prior to 1976. Not sure who they were. Carla Shapreau Michael Weisshaar David Burgess Mark Norfleet Kevin Smith Andrea Mages (not sure of spelling) Jonathan Woolston (Lydia at the time was wife) Gavin Macalister Gerry Pare Michael Kline Howard Sands Anne Cole Robert Cauer Roland Feller Chris Dungey Nancy Rohn Paul Stevens Pam Anderson Michael Fischer Paul Wiessmeyer David Van Zandt Steve Banchero Tim Bergen Janet Toon Bill Scott Stephanie Horton?
