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Hi

I visited a Taiwanese guitar supplier who supplies veneers and plywood for various manufacturers in Taiwan. I went and checked out some awesome machines and stuff they got (including two HUGE timesaver) and this planer that planes curly maple like it's normal wood. I picked out a scrap piece of flame maple (I think it's European bigleaf... it's quite soft) for bindings and a scrap block of spruce (it had a huge split that ran all the way down the board, therefore useless as veneers) for braces. The problem is that the wood is wet, and it had some end checking as well. The board is longer than neccssary therefore I can still get several guitar worth of good braces out of them, but I gotta figure out how to correctly dry these woods so they don't do funny things when assembled. Can anyone offer some tips? I plan to sticker these pieces and just leave them alone. The boards are "flatsawn" (I will obviously make quartersawn braces out of them) into the proper width of top and back braces to save me time ripping them into the proper width, I can jigsaw them into the right shape later on. The pieces are as perfectly quartered as I can possibly make it (I asked them to saw it on the same plane as the split)

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Heres what I did.....Had a fan to the left blowing to have some air movement. The moisture content dropped about 15% in a day or so.

Isn't that a little fast? the wood might check.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Did I get this right, you are using hardwood for braces?

Most every luthier I know uses conifers or softwood bracing.

Big Leaf Maple braces? Try some Sitka or Adirondack spruce.

While mostly unseen, the braces are a big part of what a guitar does.

Good luck in your building and procurement process.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

The bigleaf maple is used as binding. I know better than to use that as brace. The bracewood is sitka spruce. The only problem is that it had some end checking and it's a little wet.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Putting a fan in front of wet wood to remove moisture for instrument building (or anything else for that matter, except maybe firewood) is not a great idea .... more often than not, you will case harden the wood .. ie, it will be dry on the outside, but still moist on the inside. Once you then go to cut the piece, the wood will move all over the place as the case hardening usually induces tension into the wood as well. Sometimes, usually in hardwood (at least as I have seen) the wood may honeycomb as well as it then dries .. pockets will open up inside that are unseen from the surface

You really need to just sticker it, and wait. The seasoning of wood means just that .. going thru the seasons of the year.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Tai Fu, I missed the word spruce in your post. Reading too fast. You got it right.

I resaw and dry wood all the time. I don't know if the flue is hot in the above picture, if not that is okay.

However, I've always used stickering and fan, no heat, to dry wood quickly. I usually leave it going three days for hardwood, less for spruce. What amazed me was that guitar wood was resawed green at all when I started. But it's quite common to see water run out of it as it's sawn.

Sealing the ends helps keep things from drying to fast from the raw green ends. Case hardening can occur when wood is kiln dried. I've never experienced it from air dried wood as suggested here. Case hardening and the resultant cupping is a hard issue to deal with and a good reason to air dry tonewoods.

www.alliedlutherie.com used to have a tutorial on air drying brazilian rosewood using fans and plastic sheeting. So if Todd does it on the most expensive wood out there, it's probably okay to do it on big leaf and spruce. When cut to 3/16 inch, these woods dry incredibly fast. In the case of maple and spruce, they are sometime dried in RH lowered storage using air conditioning in addition to fans. This keeps lighter woods you mentioned from staining, and growing mildew, and gets the job done fast.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Thanks for the advise. I think I prefer to have the wood season a bit than risk trouble using a fan. I am in Tainan right now and will go to Taipei tomorrow so I had the wood wrapped in saran wrap for transport. I do not want the wood drying on me before I get a chance to sticker it. The wood is about 3/8" thick for the X and other top braces, and 1" thick for the back braces (the two lower long braces) but I am in no hurry and I keep my "shop" air conditioned during the summer because I have low heat tolerance. I am not worried about the bigleaf maple drying on me, they are in 2mm x 10mm x 1000mm pieces for binding, it should dry (if not already) without issue and stability is not a concern. Really got them for a steal anyways since they were scrap it was given to me.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

You are correct Bruce .. I was thinking of kiln drying too fast causing case hardening .. but unless you are in a hurry to have the wood dried, I wouldnt bother with a fan anyway. Sticker it and leave it be.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I do it just like Bruce says, fans across stickered wood. If the wood is wet when sawn, especially spruce, then you need to remove that surface dampness fairly quickly otherwise mildew and mould will start. On bracewood, I re-saw to 3/4" thick and then sticker. I don't want this to dry too fast because it will check so I run a fan across for 2 or 3 days at slow speed just to remove that surface dampness and then leave them stickered in a warm area for as long as I can. I don't bother sealing the ends and typically don't have much waste but I leave the pieces long, like 26", so any checking typically gets sawn off. For tops, I sticker and then put a fan on higher speed for about 10 days and more. I do the same with maple back and side sets but add weight to those stacks.

Shane

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Canada

Hi Shane, Any Spring Thaw happen'in' yet?

We are supposed to have hummingbirds any day now!

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

These tops were resawn by me from a billet that was air dried for several years. It was moistened and wrapped in saran wrap for shipping. I've had no problems with the wood...no checks or splits from drying it like that.
If it had been fresh sawn green wood I would not have dryed it in that matter.

I've done completed one guitar using that wood and have another I'm building now. I'll let you all know if the tops fall apart at some point in time.....and I'll say " ya'll told me SOOO! LOL