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I have been working on building my first guitar, but I am in a garage, a nice one, but it stays 52-54 degrees in there and it has been raining and snowing for the past few weeks. I have my plates and sides all ready to glue together but have been waiting. The break in the weather is until Sunday, most of the snow has melted and the puddles are mostly gone, this weather break is less then what I would consider ideal. Living in Norther California, the summers are really dry, so I would prefer to be working on the lower end of the humidity spectrum.

So the question, what should I do to prepare the parts prior to gluing, bake them in the oven, leave them out in the sun for a while, blow drier, nothing, wait for a longer dry spell, build it and make sure it stays well humidified?

I don't have high hopes for this guitar, not expecting a masterpiece, but I really don't want it to explode or implode when the summer comes.
Thanks,
Rob

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If I were in your circumstances, and I pretty much am, I like to wait for a nice long spell of moderate to lowish humidity weather to glue the box together. Same thing for bracing. In fact, I get everything staged with respect to the non-critical steps and then build in a bit of a flurry when humidity is under control. I do humidification in the winter and the opposite in summer, but I build in a typical Midwestern basement with a concrete floor and feel much better when I am not working too hard to try to get my work environment in the building window.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Try heating it if you can... Heating will dry things out quite a bit -- and then you can work without having too many humidity problems....

Historically, it has always been much easier to dry air by heating it then by cooling it off....

Thanks

John

I also have a garage-based workshop so to handle the humidity issue, I store the wood in a room in my house with a de-humidifier. I take the wood out to the garage to work on it and then back to the humidity-controlled room it goes. I always do the critical glue steps in the HC room and have never had a problem. This works for me as I only build one guitar at a time and I don't have a lot of extra wood on-hand. Not ideal, but it works for now until I can build a larger workshop.

Dan

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Dan

Build a dry-box. Basically an insulated box with a light bulb inside. There is a lot of info on this in the MIMF Library.

Thanks all for some good tips. I don't really have a good place for a de-humidifier controlled room, but the dry box idea and the info on the MIMF was helpful. As it works out at the moment, there is a large, empty, working refrigerator in my shop. Needs some cleaning but plenty of room for my parts. Not sure which way will be better, putting a light in there or turning the fridge on. I still do not have a hydrometer, so my next step will be to get one, then try the fridge both ways. I think turning the fridge on may be too much and hard to control, but we will see.

This is yet another advantage of our very cool home, we live in a storage unit yard, our building has our apt. on top, offices below, and two big garages below that. I am using one of the garages for my shop, and the owner of the yard is using the other to store the worthwhile stuff that people have abandoned in unpaid units. Just in, a big refrigerator. I do have access and permission to use and sell the stuff, but the fridge will likely sell fast, so I best get going. Fortunately, the big score is a Shopsmith, brand new, most still in the original box, don't know how some one can leave that behind, but he did not pay for his unit for 6 months or return any calls, so lucky me, it is a really nice drill press, and can work as a pin router which I am yet to try.

I will update with some info on the fridge on vs. a light in it. I do really want to glue on Sunday, the parts have been ready for a while and short of starting on the next guitar, I am running out of stuff to do. I don't want to start on guitar 2 until I assess the mistakes on this one.
Thanks again, any other ideas are welcome,
Rob

_________________
http://shastaguitar.com/
http://www.kalimbakit.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/comfyfootgr ... ature=mhee
http://www.facebook.com/robert.renick.7

Fellers-I am in a Midwestern basement shop too and have a rough work shop in an unheated/uncooled garage. Steve-I don't know if you had what Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities had for last Summer and this Winter. It was a constant desperate battle to dehumidify in May, June, July, August and September and then the opposite for up to about March 28th 2010. I had a pie-style all fully dried beech banjo resonator just literally make noise as it came apart-Not at the glue lines(West Epoxy) in February and a side crack on a "Boat" that has been together for two years. Everything that was a working instrument went into a case with all kinds of humidifiers.

During that last Summer, every stinkin' one of my Iron/ Malleable Iron hand planes ended up with a line of tiny pits where the toe of each overhung the edge of a table covered with treated green felt.And, I had wiped all of them down with camellia oil, to boot. We are talking L-N's and real Bedrocks and Veritas; Records, Bailey Stanleys and more. I became nauseous. I had two front-line dehumidifiers going all of the time. I picked up surface rust on so much else. One would have thought that I was charging many car batteries in that basement.

For the last 7 or so months I have not been able to negotiate my basement shop stairs safely and did not get down there as often as usual. Actually until I have a "cutting edge" surgery up in Minneapolis fairly soon, I am not supposed to do stairs.


I have now built a sealed wooden box that encloses a smaller dehumidifier and installed a feed port for a humidifier-3ft x 3ft x 4ft tall-I used good sealer and many coats-inside and out. Then, after reading Hesh's Expose`I bought a sling psychrometer to check open- working- environment.

I do recommend the box for anyone who cannot control large area RH. It makes a great drying box for oil finishes. Two four inch computer fans with filters mounted by small doors in the box- sides flow air when desired. Note: the lightbulb works, but you can end up just heating already humid air if not helped with some kind of fan- at least, from the gunstock days, I am a proponent of moving air in many circumstances.mt