Posted on May 21, 2020March 6, 2024 by Dale Phillips A Laminated Neck Design A Laminated Neck Design by Tim Olsen previously published as Guild of American Luthiers Data Sheet #50, 1977 and in Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1997 The most obvious way to make a neck is to start with a chunk of wood big enough in every dimension to engulf the entire completed neck, then simply chip away at the block until only the neck remains. The advantage to this is that there is no joinery to perform and no joints which might fail or look sloppy. More importantly, those who distrust the integrity of laminations, whether structural or acoustical, will opt for this procedure. The disadvantage is, of course, the considerable waste. The waste can be reduced by using a block of wood which will accommodate the widest portion of the fretboard, then adding wood to the peghead through the use of “ears” as in Fig. 1. 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 17, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Leo Bidne In Memoriam: Leo Bidne June 20, 1954 – March 6, 2019 by Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #137, 2019 Unless you have been a Guild member for a very long time, you may not remember Leo Bidne as a GAL staffer. But he was, back in the long-gone days of the mid-’70s when it was a strictly volunteer position, and we would sweep the chips off the workbench to paste up the copy, then hand-collate and staple the newsletter. GAL staff members in 1975. From left: Bon Henderson, Leo Bidne, Bob Petrulis, and Tim Olsen. Deb Olsen was holding the camera. These hippies posed in front of our current GAL headquarters, which is the same building as Tim and Deb’s house. At that time it was the location of Tim’s lutherie shop, where Bob and Leo joined Tim in lutherie pursuits. (This photo was part of the slide show, The Making of a Newsletter, which was prepared in 1975 for the 2nd GAL Convention held in Evanston, Illinois, which Leo attended with Tim and Deb.) Both photos by Deb Olsen. From left: Tim, Leo, and Bob at the 2014 GAL Convention. Bob continues to serve the Guild as a member of our Board of Directors. Leo was a guy who could just do things. It seems like anything that caught his interest, he would simply do: repairing and building guitars; writing and arranging music; playing most any musical instrument. And then, as he grew older and our paths diverged, he moved into audio and video recording and production, and became the proprietor of a music store. He was a family man with children and grandchildren, for whom he would build amazing things like a full-sized R2D2, and produce elaborate Star Wars fan films starring the neighborhood kids. I guess he never lost that naive belief that by doing the fun and create stuff that came naturally to him, he could make the world a better place — which he did, for American luthiers and for many others.
Posted on January 16, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Frederick C. Lyman In Memoriam: Frederick C. Lyman March 7, 1925 – July 20, 2011 by Ken McKay and Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #113, 2013 Fred Lyman wrote a column in the Journal of the American Society of Double Bassists for several years. I was given twenty or so back issues way back in 1988 by my bass teacher Paul Warburton. I wanted to make my own double bass, and I devoured every article. I finally got up the nerve to write to Fred. I hoped he would maybe give me a few pointers, but he started an extensive series of handwritten letters. He was a practical man, more interested in the outcome than any one process, and he always encouraged my ideas, no matter how off-base. He would write things like, “That is as good a theory as any, but make sure to keep enough wood in the top so it doesn’t sink, years down the road.” I loved those articles and letters. They were nearly the only thing available at the time, and they turned out to be timeless. I found out later that he was even more generous with his time and knowledge than I had imagined. We met only one time in 1993 when my wife, my year-old son, and I drove from upstate New York down to New Jersey to meet up and get some wood. I traded him an old church bass that I had restored which really had no value at the time for as much wood as I could carry in my station wagon. He even asked if I had ebony for the fingerboard. He just wanted to help me get started and have success. We stayed all day while he showed me his shop and jigs, and taught me what he could with the limited amount of time. We corresponded throughout the years that I made my first instruments. I really feel that a little bit if him lives in every instrument I have made since. Rest in Peace, Fred Lyman. — Ken McKay Fred Lyman at the 1980 GAL Convention in San Francisco, where he lectured on bass viol design. Photo by Dale Korsmo. Fred Lyman was a constant and gentle presence in the GAL from the mid-1970s through the 1990s. He was a generation older than most of us Lutherie Boomers, being already an accomplished self-taught bass builder in his 50s when we met him. I learned from his obituary that he earned a Purple Heart in WWII, graduated with honors from Yale, and became an art painter. So he was too old to have been a hippie, but perhaps he had a beatnik phase; I don’t know. Sometime in the 1990s he sent me a long dreamy CD of free jazz by his band The Squealers, a quintet that included two bass viols. Right from the start it was a constant stream of quiet generosity as he wrote letters and articles for our publications and attended GAL Conventions, sometimes as a presenter. Back in the ancient times when we offered paid lifetime memberships, he was one of the first to sign up. I never visited his shop, but I came to imagine it as a sort of Wonka Chocolate Factory of a place, based on the evidence supplied by the stream of artifacts that flowed from it to the GAL Benefit Auctions, starting at our first auction in 1984. Boxes began to arrive from Port Murray, New Jersey — lots of boxes. I thought we must have cleaned him out. But the Oompah-Loompahs must have been busy, because that proved to be only the beginning. Several more Benefit Auctions benefited from Fred’s generosity, the last being a record-setting trove of lutherie treasure at the 2008 Convention, when Fred was already in his 80s. Fred and his wife Charsie were true friends of the Guild in tough times, and the GAL staff remembers this with deep fondness and gratitude. Fred will surely be missed. — Tim Olsen
Posted on January 12, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Questions: Bass Scroll Questions: Bass Scroll by Guy Rabut, Roman Barnas, and Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #89, 2007 ■ Paul W. from the Internet asks: Do you have any advice for someone who is carving his first bass scroll? I have read instructions and seen pictures, but I’m having trouble figuring out what to do after the first turn of the scroll is blocked out. 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: Nicholas Von Robison In Memoriam: Nicholas Von Robison Passed June, 2000 by Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #63, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 How well I remember the first letter we got from Nick. He told of being introduced at a party as a “Master Craftsman.” At first he was flattered, but was quickly brought back to reality when the local birdhouse tinkerer was also identified as a “Master Craftsman.” That was in 1982. Nick and I kept up a lively and voluminous correspondence for the next eighteen years. Nick was a GAL member for twenty-three years. As a kid, Nick was in a rock band with his big brother called The Hatfields, and they actually put out a single in the ’60s. He also did a stint in a hippie combo modeled along the lines of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. His later musical taste ran to playing Japanese flutes. He worked as an amateur luthier, and then began the enormous project of singlehandedly building a good-sized wooden sailboat. He had completed a lot of the fittings and had a good start on the hull when a fire at the space he was renting deferred his dream. He often wrote of his plan to sail to Bora Bora and Tahiti. But he did get around. He spent a summer hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and recently he had discovered sea kayaking. He was an avid fly fisherman and had some articles published in fishing magazines. And remember the big hoo-ha about the Mojave Phone Booth a year or two ago? Nick was the discoverer of the Mojave Phone Booth. It’s a long story, but a well-documented one. Photo by Dale Blindheim. Nick was a GAL True Believer. We published many of his articles over the years, and he served for a time as an Associate Editor of American Lutherie. His academic and practical knowledge of botany and wood anatomy was particularly valuable. He was our go-to guy for all wood identification questions and was the major contributor to our book Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars. He had a special commitment to the Guild’s benefit auction, spending hours tending the preview at conventions, as well as donating many items and paying ridiculous prices for others. The Guild owes Nick a particular debt of gratitude for talking me into getting e-mail, then hounding me into agreeing to try out a web page for the Guild. Back in the primitive 14.4k days of 1995, he developed the page, got it up on the web, and proceeded to maintain and improve it for another couple years, all as a volunteer. To date we have had more than 170,000 hits on our page, and half our annual income flows through it. I only saw Nick a few times, at GAL Conventions and once when he came through town on a vacation. Still, he was a close friend. Our correspondence covered everything from God and Man to rock ’n’ roll. They tell me Nick took his own life in the first days of June. I really can’t believe it. It just does not fit with the rest of the story. It seems a lot more like he’s finally off on that long journey to Bora Bora, and some day he’ll tell me all about it. I’m going to think of it that way.
