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Do your guitars also see periods of very low humidity?

Stephan,

We have high humidity in NW AR this time of year. It's usually 60% inside the house in the AC. I'm working on my first build and I've been afraid to glue the X brace to the soundboard while the humidity is this high.

Good or bad, this is my work around. I placed my soundboard and braces inside a large ziplock bag and put silica gel in small bags inside along with the wood and sealed it up. I placed a meter inside and the humidity gets down between 35%-40%.

Last night I glued the X braces to the soundboard while it was inside the bag. Only down side I've noticed so far is once the go bars are in place you don't have room inside the bag to remove the glue squeeze out so I will have to do it when the glue is dried. Here is a pic:

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

John's question is an important one, Jyme. You can build in a high humidity environment, as in your case where the guitar spends its life in that environment. But if you carry one of your guitars to a very low humidity environment, it will likely be a disaster waiting to happen.

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

I found this thread with the search, but my issue may be just the opposite: I am concerned about storing wood for the winter when the air is dry and the heating system will make it drier.

I have a home humidifier built in to the unit that controls the first floor, but my Zoot collection is now in a guest room closet upstairs. I have kept some back and sides and a glued up neck blank under my bed for a couple of years with no issues. But this year I found some nicer woods in the OLF classifieds and moved the collection to a closet shelf. Now that I have more woods (and more expense), I am more concerned.

I am wondering if the large plastic bag with a humidity meter inside would do the trick. Where do you find the large ziploc bags?

Any other ideas? Adding a humidifier is probably not an option.

Thanks, Greg

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Greg Hatcher
North Carolina

This may be the single most important bit of advise ever posted on this forum. If you build anything out of wood in high humidity and it goes into a environment with low humidity... it's gonna fall apart!

I have gone through many dehumidifiers (probably on the average of one a year) to be able to work in my basement shop. The combination of dust and the fact that they almost never shut off, is fatal to most dehumidifiers... I recently purchased a Sears unit with an extended warranty that says they will come to my shop once a year to clean and inspect the unit and replace it if it fails for 5 years!!! The extended warranty cost $65.00 USD !!! I'll keep you all posted if this is really as good as it looks...

long

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"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” -Heraclitus of Ephesus

Mike Mahar had it right. It comes down to the kinds of glue ups. In higher humidity, cross grain glue ups are a definite no-no. Parallel grain glue ups are okay any time. This applies to furniture projects and cabinetry just as much as it applies to musical instruments. With furniture and cabinetry, most builders try to design components that are free to move (such as floating panels in doors). We don't have that luxury with instruments.

You can glue things up in extremely low humidity, and probably avoid joint failures when the humidity rises, but there will be some playability issues--neck moving, box swelling, etc. Then things get better when the humidity drops once again. I've run into that.

And, by the way, I have also wondered how the instrument factories of yore dealt with humid summers. My hunch is they just pressed on and met their production quotas. Yes, there are a ton of vintage instruments out there with repaired cracks....and I inherited one of them.

I wondered if one of my guitars would hold up too after being built close to Galveston so I took a weeks trip to Oklahoma to see some old musician friends and brought my dreadnaught. Very dry there and every one played it and played it some more, I build really good guitars cause I sold it and told the person everything bad I could about humidity and lack of. I told him to call if anything at all happened then send it back and I would fix it better. How do you all think the Japanese and Chinese are able to build such wonderful furniture in super high humidity and then ship it to the states any where with few or no problems? You have to know how to build, this ain't for the faint of heart gentlemen. I have asked plenty of older luthiers what they have done and even violin makers, they have the secrets most of us haven't thought of.
cheers.

I built my first guitar at school in BC where the shop was not humidity controlled. I think it was around 65% when I braced the top and glued up the box. I brought that guitar home to AZ, where I tried to keep it humidified. The top cracked. I also own an old cracked Yairi, and a cracked Hirade that now lives in a case with a humidifier. And a cracked Baretta tear shaped instrument made by Takamine in the 60s, and a cracked Bazouki. I think you get the picture. If I knew sooner what I know now about humidity levels, none of these instruments would be cracked. The guitars that I have built in my shop here, maintained at 45%, are fine. Granted, AZ is a little extreme, but I think what is important is that you have to build at a humidity level that will allow your guitars to be sold or played elsewhere in the country. 45% is a good middle ground that can travel most places.

To the builder above, down here around Houston and Galveston the humidity ranges from 22 to 78% as such in the summer its far too hot to build out side so I build indoors with a/c. The humidity is between 35 and 45. The summer during one day I noticed an engleman top had a crack half the way up and I was puzzled till the next day when it was gone. I knew what had happened. I glued the area back together. You live and learn. Guitar building is a huge learning process and I surely don't know enough yet, but I am certainly open to any suggestions on everything. I use a humidifier on carnivorous plants in the winter and have also red a lot of good info for their use in guitars.