Posted on August 11, 2021March 5, 2024 by Dale Phillips Floyd Floyd by Nicholas von Robison Originally published in American Lutherie #37, 1994 KERplunkit! I reduced speed hoping the noise would go away, but no such luck. I had been traveling up US 395 from Los Angeles, and for the last half-hour I had not seen another vehicle, village, or even a gas station. Just dust, sage, and a few billboards. Then, RANDSBURG — 35 MPH. I dutifully slowed and glimpsing a hand-painted GARAGE sign, pulled over and shut her down in front of the big double doors. I squatted behind the left rear wheel and saw that the rubber bushing on the shock absorber had deteriorated and come off, so that the shock was metal-to-metal on the stud. Sensing a presence beside me, I turned, and was about six inches away from a pock-marked face with three days of salt-and-pepper stubble. He grinned — no teeth and purple gums. I caught a whiff of unwashed socks and potato skins. Another nanosecond and the potato smell registered as vodka. 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 11, 2021March 5, 2024 by Dale Phillips Wood Bibliography Wood Bibliography by Nicholas Von Robison Originally published ?, 1994 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1998 The literature covering trees, wood, and wood technology goes back many years. Unfortunately, much of the information one desires on a certain wood or species is scattered about in the form of articles or abstracts in obscure scientific or trade journals. What follows is an annotated listing of the major works from which gleanings in the notes or bibliographies of these will enable one to delve into the literature more fully. Many, possibly most, of these books may suffice in answering any questions one may initially have. Many are out-of-print (OOP); many are unique and have no current replacement. They may be found in libraries, used book stores, or by having a search done by a specialist bookseller. Prices change frequently so the following categories are used for those books currently in print: inexpensive (up to $10), moderate ($10–$25), expensive ($25–$50), very expensive ($50+). This list is not exhaustive, but I believe it to be fairly comprehensive and it will aid anyone who wants or needs to learn more about woods or the trees they come from. Finding some of these books is very difficult but half the fun of it. Nomenclature Bailey, L. H. and Bailey, Ethel Zoe Hortus Second. New York, NY: Macmillan Co., 17th printing 1972. A concise dictionary of gardening, general horticulture, and cultivated plants in North America. While this 800-or-so page book covers plants other than trees, it’s a useful reference for spelling, checking families, and looking up archaic plant names. Hortus 3rd now out. Very expensive. 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 11, 2021March 6, 2024 by Dale Phillips Acid Rain Acid Rain by Nicholas Von Robison and Perry Thomas Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly, Volume 12 #1, 1984 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1998 See also, “Acid Rain Update” by Nicholas Von Robison “World Forest Outlook” by Nicholas Von Robison and Parry Thomas Introduction Enjoy is the word for this afternoon; a hundred kinds of enjoyment. If a wood sculptor had been along on this hike he or she would be having a field day — gnarled roots and trunks on the forest floor; cracks and twistings of naked stumps deceased and debarked; rolling, convoluted patterns of aging limbs. Perry and I stop and investigate engravings made by beetles on some logs. The wood, now bleached, has been hewed out and channeled in designs so intricate they can hardly be retraced. There is a simple artistry about this free-form flow, and it captures the imagination. The creatures whose paths crossed here were of a system of life completely different from our own, yet linked to it. The higher we ascend toward the Angeles crest, the richer the forest seems to become. Patches of Indian paintbrush and columbine increase in size and density. Berries grow in thickets. Alders enclose the streams. Mosses clothe the rocks. Lichens festoon the branches of trees and occasionally glow with a brilliant chartreuse when touched by a spot of sunlight. And everywhere there are trees. We reach the crest, stop to look around a bit, and give each other congratulatory smiles. Our smiles are touched with a bit of whimsy; neither of us are as young as we used to be, and we know the price in sore muscles we’ll pay for this excursion tomorrow. We continue on, the Los Angeles basin five or six thousand feet below us; we adjust our gait for descent rather than ascent. We come to a stand of lodgepole pines and discover a spring gushing out from an outcrop of granite. We plop down and share sausage, cheese, chocolate, and top it off by draping our snouts in the spring; water so cold it hurts the teeth. 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 1, 2021March 6, 2024 by Dale Phillips Twenty Ancient Dyestuffs and Eleven Mordants Twenty Ancient Dyestuffs and Eleven Mordants by Nicholas Von Robison Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Data Sheet #236, 1983 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Dyestuffs 1) Madder (Rubia tinctorum) is one of the most ancient dyes, and its color fastness ranks among the best. It is such an excellent source of red that its name (rubia) means red in several languages. In Holland during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, it was the principal source of wealth. By 1792, encouraged by Charlemagne, France was the top grower. We are told that the French Revolution ruined the farmers. They were later revived by a decree of Louis Philippe, who made red caps and trousers mandatory for his army. In England imported madder was also used for army uniforms (redcoats). Before the “Madder Disaster,” England’s total imports came to one million pounds sterling. When alizarin, synthetic madder, was synthesized in 1869, a yearly world madder production of 70,000 tons declined to nothing. Historians speak of untilled and abandoned madder fields and of thousands of starving farmers (Schaefer, The Cultivation of Madder). Today madder can be hard to find; and sweet woodruff, one of the madder family that produces a less potent red dye, may be substituted. If you prepare the dye from roots, be sure not to use too much heat or boil it too long as the color may shift to a muddy brown. 2) Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), also called eastern hemlock or spruce pine, is an important tannin dye. The bark, either fresh or dried, produces a wide range of colors from rose to slate gray. The nice thing about this plant is that it grows over a wide area of North America so it is easily procured with very little expense. I get mine from a landscape gardener who always saves me a bag of trimmings from one of his pruning jobs. A sharp knife will easily strip away the dark outer bark to reveal the red-purple streaks inside. It is not entirely colorfast. 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 April 29, 2021March 6, 2024 by Dale Phillips In Defense of the Amateur In Defense of the Amateur by Nicholas Von Robison Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume11, #4, 1983 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1998 This is an age of specialists, and I am by nature as well as habit an amateur. This is a dangerous thing to confess because full-time luthiers are likely to turn up their noses. “What you really mean is,” they say, “a dilettante; a playboy of the art and science of lutherie.” I’m afraid they are at least partly right. When once asked if I had a claim to fame, the best I could come up with was: I think I know more about lutherie than any other horticulturalist and more about plant life than any other luthier. I could put up a solemn defense of we who choose the overall view. “Amateur” literally means lover, and an amateur of lutherie very often loves the wonderful world of musical instruments in a way that the specialist builder probably did when he or she was young but maybe has forgotten while trying to keep up with all the knowledge that has unfolded in the past ten years. The important thing is that amateurs are lovers of whatever they are amateurs of. At least that is the excuse I give myself. I think what I have wanted most out of life is to find living itself rewarding. I’m sure that I have wanted that more than I wanted wealth or fame. As Thoreau said, “I don’t want to feel when I come to die that I have never lived.” Like Thoreau, I am inclined to say that I came into this world not primarily to make it a better place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. And that is part of the amateur spirit. I haven’t always been happy. Who has? But I have usually been interested and involved. 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.
