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.