Official Luthiers Forum!

Here is something to help start the new year off right.
The newest Luthier Tips du Jour instructional video is on Youtube. The topic is Tonewood. Subtitles are available in both English and Portuguese and you can translate them into any other language by using the CC option on Youtube.
As always, comments and discussion are welcome.
Enjoy!

another interesting video, thanks Robbie, I've learned a lot from your videos.
I also agree that luthiers, like everyone else ,should be conscious of the environmental and social impact of what they do and try to reduce negative impacts.

Keep the videos coming

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

That's a nice overview Robbie. I appreciate your discussion of environmental issues. One quibble: early on you mention that grain gets tighter near the center of the tree. Isn't the opposite usually the case?

I believe I said the grain lines get closer together toward the center of the tree. If you look at a piece of soundboard material this is uaually the case. Of course there are always exceptions. Is this what you were referring to?

Well, we agree that there's variability, but I think you're mistaken about the trend. The narrower grain lines are nearly always on the outside of the tree. At least, that's how the trees around here grow, and that's the pattern on the guitars, and the top wood in my shop. Maybe one of the sawyers here can weigh in, and straighten me out.

Soundboards are usually joined with the tightest lines in the center of the soundboard. This would be true regardless of where the tight lines appear in the tree. Maybe that's what Robbie meant?

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Annular rings? Or grain?

Eric is correct. That's why you sometimes see sapwood in the middle of a guitar top.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

Liked some of the info on tonewood. The rest of the vid was a promo for LMI and the environmentalists, which I did not care about.

I don't know about American trees, but up in Canada, heartwood is in the centre of the tree and the sapwood is the outside layers. Maybe we could get Shane to weigh in on this.