Official Luthiers Forum!

Iv'e gotten my 1st commission! The recipient lives in Denver. Any suggestion for building a guitar that will live in low RH?

Thanks
Richard

...build it in low RH? The ones I've done in 30-35% seem to handle anything from 20% to 65% no problem. Haven't had an opportunity to experiment with higher, since last summer was so dry. It usually gets up to 80-90% at least, so I should be able to do some stress testing here in a few months.

If you build with woods like cedar and redwood, they don't poof up so much with added moisture either. Lower expansion rates, but more brittle... which means they crack from about the same percentage drop as spruce, even though they don't actually shrink as much. But adding moisture is a different scenario, since the glue is what gets stressed, so smaller dimensional change is a big advantage.