Posted on July 1, 2024July 9, 2024 by Dale Phillips Questions: Walnut Log Questions: Walnut Log by Bruce Harvie Originally published in American Lutherie #101, 2010 Lee Pendergrast from Etowah, Tennessee asks: I know where a hundred-plus-year-old 20"×12' walnut log is in the river near me. How would it need to be sawn for best use in lutherie? This log has been in a place where the river rises and falls often, leaching out the tannins. I’ve read that the very best wood for instruments has been soaked in water; microbial action and leaching produce hollow cells which are more resonant. Bruce Harvie from Olga, Washington replies: Walnut can be a fine wood for instruments, but unless it’s highly figured (which it probably isn’t), not all that valuable. It has been used historically by many companies, most notably Epiphone for its archtop guitars. An article in Reader’s Digest many years ago contributed to the public’s perception that walnut logs are extremely valuable, but in the world of tonewoods, this is not all that true unless the tree is highly figured, in which case it can be highly sought after. But these figured trees are rare indeed, and usually found in orchards in California, not in the indigenous black walnut forests in the Midwestern USA. Another tonewood myth created by the press (mostly by a few publicity-hungry companies on Lake Superior) is the high value placed on logs soaked in water and the quality of the wood produced. It may or may not be true, but to use it as a ploy to place exorbitant prices on logs hauled from the bottom of lakes is disingenuous, in my opinion. A log soaked in water or floating in a river for a hundred years is just as likely to suffer defects from this sort of treatment.
Posted on November 14, 2019March 7, 2024 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 July 1, 2019February 6, 2024 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 January 11, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: John Sullivan In Memoriam: John Sullivan April 5, 1964 – April 21, 2007 Originally published in American Lutherie #90, 2007 My good friend John Sullivan passed away early on the morning of April 21, 2007. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer less than a year ago, and things progressed very quickly. Where do I begin? John was just a sweet, sweet man who poured everything he had into his instruments, relationships, and golf game. He was extremely generous with his knowledge of lutherie, and many builders have come forward in the past weeks to tell stories about how they called John up to ask a question or two, and wound up with notepads of info or an invite over to the shop/kitchen for some hands-on demonstrations. Although he was well known for his mandolins, John was also a go-to builder for harp guitars, archtop guitars, and fiddles. His last instrument was a wonderful 5-string fiddle that is now in the capable hands of Darol Anger. Had he lived, I have no doubt that he would have built many more 5-strings. He loved to make them, and the ones he made were very good. Photo by David Riggs. Photo by Bruce Harvie. I remember one night we went down to see Foghorn String Band at the local Portland pub. Foghorn’s Caleb Klauder plays one of John’s F-5s, and Jon Neufeld from Jackstraw was there with his Sullivan archtop, another cannon of an instrument. I wound up sitting in too, so there were three Sullivans going off like a bomb. I don’t think I’ve ever seen John so happy, and it’s a memory I’ll always hold very dear indeed. I’m sure everyone who reads these pages can relate. A benefit to help cover John’s medical expenses was scheduled for April 29th at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland — a benefit that became a memorial after the news of John’s death. Forty of his instruments, including his first mandolin, were on display, and bands featuring John’s instruments played onstage upstairs. It was a wonderful and touching tribute to a luthier and friend who left us much too early. John leaves behind his wife and partner Patricia Lackaff, who has just lost her best friend. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her. He also leaves behind a very large band of happy musicians who I imagine at this moment playing “We Bid You Goodnight” at points all over the globe. And all with impeccable tone. Long-time GAL member Bruce Harvey presented a moving musical memorial to John Sullivan at the recent Handmade Musical Instrument Exhibit in Portland, Oregon. Bruce played a Sullivan F-5, set a repeating loop, then soloed over that on a Sullivan electric mandolin. John Sullivan had exhibited at this show many times in the past, and he was deeply missed by the builders in his hometown. All three photos courtesy of Bruce Harvie. Here are a few links: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30844&highlight=John+Sullivan http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31114&highlight=John+Sullivan http://picasaweb.google.com/Mandoniaa/JohnFest
Posted on January 11, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Ted Beringer In Memoriam: Ted Beringer August 31, 1921–September 2, 2006 by GAL Staff, and Bruce Harvie Originally published in American Lutherie #88, 2006 All of us at the Guild office were saddened to hear of the passing of Ted Beringer. Ted was a loyal Guild member for the past twenty-eight years and attended and exhibited at many conventions with his dear wife Pete. His obituary in the Billings Gazette states, “His passion was instrument building. He started with various designs for guitars in the early 1950s and continued exploring until his final days. All of his instruments were innovative, beautiful, and one of a kind. His favorite answer when asked if he would build a guitar for someone was that he built every one of them to suit himself. If he didn’t want you to have one, there wasn’t enough money in the world to buy one; if he thought you were suited to a particular instrument, he would make it easy for you to obtain it. In spite of that philosophy, or perhaps because of it, examples of his art can be found in deserving hands worldwide.” Ted Kellison of Billings wrote in Ted’s obituary guest book, “I always thought that Ted was cut from the same cloth as Leo Fender and Les Paul. The most endearing thing about Ted, though, was that he was driven in his art strictly by the love and the amazing passion that sustained him through it all. He didn’t build guitars because he wanted to be famous nor to get rich. He’d have built with the same zeal if he’d never sold a single guitar! He fearlessly defied tradition and was the first to laugh at his failures (though they were few), but he lit up like a kid on Christmas morning when he listened to someone play one of his successes!” — GAL Staff Photo courtesy of Bruce Harvie. It is with great sadness that I pass on the news of the death of my old friend Ted Beringer of Billings, Montana. Ted built his first guitar in 1951 (!) after seeing a few Fenders roll through Billings, which was a hot-spot for bands touring across the country back in the day. He was a very prolific builder, although when I asked him how many instruments he figured he had made, he didn’t have a clue. It was certainly well into the hundreds. He built solidbody electrics, archtops, archtop basses, flattops, classicals, archtop classicals (!), as well as 4-, 5-, and 8-string mandolins. He also built some instruments that might be unique, namely a nylon-string mandola with a trapezoid body shape and an octave 12-string the size of a mandolin. Both very useful tools indeed. His stories were classics. He liked to tell the story about when Waylon Jennings stopped by the house to look at a guitar, and sang “Good Hearted Woman” saying “this one’s a hit....” Ted’s true love (besides his wonderful wife Pete) was building guitars, but he earned his living as an electrician. He designed and wound his own pickups back in the day when you couldn’t buy a pickup. He also built and repaired amplifiers, and told me a great story of the day that Homer and Jethro stopped by with a broken amp that needed fixing. Ted’s shop looks the same today as it probably did in the ’50s, so it wasn’t hard to imagine Homer and Jethro hanging out with Ted. Now there would be a funny trio. Rest in peace, Ted. Yours was a life well lived. — Bruce Harvie
