Official Luthiers Forum!

A customer of mine is a great fan and has several I've built. A few months ago he moved to a freshly built house. The builders did not use dehumidifiers and warned him there will be excessive dampness for a while. He did not take any action and instead of keeping the guitars in cases (which might have reduced the damage) he kept them as usual on a rack near a wall. Bottom line is that 2 fingerboards which were glued with fish are starting to come loose from the 11 to the 19. Also one fish bridge has come off. The guitars are so swollen that the bridges have turned concave from the huge bellies developed left and right. The backs are so puffed they looked like a carved cello belly. The sides have expanded as well as a result there are about 1mm gaps between top purfling and endgrafts. The ebony fingerboards are now 1mm wider than they were (fret ends are about 0.5mm within the board). Also the fingerboard are incredibly concave, exactly the opposite of a noticeable radius.

The fingerboard and bridges which I've glued with hide glue look fine. Another guitar he has built by a Spanish luthier is losing the FB as well (synthetic glue).

The fingerboard and bridges which I've glued with hide glue look fine.

The backs were attached to the rim with fish, and there might be some braces here and there glued with fish, I am really concerned all this might have compromised the structure. I am really amazed no braces have popped yet when looking at the incredible swelling on the plates. I can't see anything loose but I am worried. Also I might have used fish in some back lining laminations. The guitars have lost their taptone completely. The bridge is 3 grams more than what it was when i glued it.

The guitar with the least end graft separation has a spruce endblock, the others cedrella (all with parallel grain like the sides) As a result I will only use spruce in the future as it moves more and matches the side movement better.

I still don't think fish is a bad glue but I decided to replace it with Titebond for the few parts where I'm not skilled enough yet to use hide (attachment of back mainly, for pretty everything else I am confident with hide now)

I have no clue about what I will be able to do about the FBs, and how they will look. For the moment I picked the least dry room in my house (55%), put a wet towel on the radiator (that should raise it to 60) and will keep them there until they return to normal. I hope they won't crack in the following days.

Photos for your pleasure. It's really hard to put in words how I fell about this. At least if it was just 1 guitar...

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Build log

Ho-Lee Cow!

horror story, really.
Alex, i glue the back with hide. I´m sure that while i glue a back you could glue twenty.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

strange time of year for excessive humidity in the northern hemisphere...?

wow! what a shame. I can only imagine how you feel about this... so sorry. I've never heard about this problem (excessive humidity) - rather the opposite; building in too humid an environment, then what happens when the guitars are in a dry environment.

Do you have an idea of what the relative humidity was when you built, and what it might have been in the house?

I would be more upset with the client then the fish glue. I think that guitar would have suffered problems regardless of glue used. Unless those braces are seriously fouled up then I'm not sure what the glue has to do with that indentation. Unless maybe you are saying that the joint softened, slipped and re-hardened?

Sounds like extreme conditions with the Guitars being subject to those extreme conditions for a fairly lengthy time. If the building was recently plastered the moisture can be retained in the plaster and walls for weeks. If it's a modern build done to high specs then the air exchange between rooms and the outside environment will be relatively slow. That kind of damage (to Fish and PVA) can only be down to extremes. Don't be too hard on the glue.

PS. I think you will find it very difficult to get things back to where they were without a serious rebuild. You might get them close by placing them in the original RH build but I have my doubts that the wood will recover completely. That might take clamping between boards etc.

Sorry about your guitars I remember seeing something like this before on another forum

http://www.luthiercom.org/phpBB3/viewto ... =97&t=1748

Hope this is of some interest

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Formerly JJH

I learn more from my mistakes than my successes

The guitars were built in 45-50% and last time he checked, his hygro read 80% (not sure how true it reads). In my house I am struggling to keep it at 45, have to put wet towels on the radiator and in truly hot houses it should be under 40.

The house was finished 3 months ago and he moved in immediately.

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Build log

There is the answer. New build with fresh everything. That's a lot of damp. Not unlike the cellar (basement) of the old house that I live in. I don't venture down there much (damp, musty smell) but only yesterday I was looking at a small table that I had put down there some 5 years ago. The legs are missing 2 inches off the bottom, all rotted away. It's not as though it was stood in water either, it's just that it was in an environment that is always damp.

Wow! Alex, that's a total bummer. It's clearly mistreatment of a fine guitar. I hope he's not expecting you to fix it for free. It's nice though that he has several of your guitars.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

4, all messed up. I wish he liked me less.

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Build log

Ebony sucks. OK, the really curled one is maybe more rift than quarter, but still better than average. And 12 years old too. The others are really quarter and look a bit better. Imagine how it would have looked with flatsawn. I send back or discard more than half of the ebony I buy because it comes flatsawn...

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Build log

I usually have the opposite problem. I struggle to keep my build environment below 60% RH as I am right on the water. Average RH for this area in summer is 80-85%. I have had one guitar go to an area that averages 40% RH at best. I happened to spend Christmas where that guitar now lives and had to fix fret ends, neck relief etc. Fortunately all else was fine. My concern is that in winter they have the whole house heated and RH drops to about 20%. I have warned the owner but I don't think he took me seriously. I do give warnings in writing about RH and general care for the guitar with my builds and point out it is the customers responsibility.

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Martin Taylor
http://martintaylorguitars.com.au

I feel your pain, but I'm not sure why you would attribute body distortions to the choice of fish glue.

I can't say that I've ever noticed any movement in fish glue joints due to humidity, which gets close to maxing out here in the summer.
Fish glue is pretty much all I ever use, except for epoxy for the fretboard (and I'm not sure why I hang onto that).

Beautiful guitars in pain. Yuck! Could they be subjected to big simultaneous temperature and humidity swings?

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Yeah the body distortions are swelling of the plates from excessive humidity or the owner was feeding the ax estrogen.... To my mind this qualifies as abuse on the part of the owner. We see lots of dry guitars especially this time of year but I have never seen one swell up like this one.

We stopped using fish glue for anything structural after having a bridge or two let loose during a humid time in the summer. These days it's HHG and/or the Paslode nail gun for us....

Sorry this happened to you Alexandru my friend.

Is there some repository of tortured English that this could be submitted to?

Ah, I've been pre-empted by an edit. But the evidence remains! I hate typing on devices smaller than a full-sized keyboard - they scramble the brain.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Hesh - I've had some fish-glued bridges let go as well, and I think I've come to the conclusion that it was gluing technique. I suspect that, with it's long open time, it's relatively easy to starve a fish glue joint by over-clamping, just as you can have happen with an epoxy joint. I've learned to lay off the last couple of twists of the wrist, and things seemed to have improved (no recent dangling fretboards - had that happen twice - and no flying bridges).

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Looks like a good time to ask this again... will sealing the inside prevent something like this? Sounds like it's pretty common.

While i never have had anything like this happen to my personal guitar ($69 yamaha i bought 35 years ago and that has been everywhere including backpacking around the country for a summer)

I am petrifed with my first build...

There's no way your guitar should be subject to this if you treat it in a reasonable manner.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I don't get it. Clearly, this fellow did the wrong thing by exposing those guitars to a harsh environment. Why is this your fault? Or the adhesives' fault? Should you repair it? Sure. But not at ur expense. At the very least, repair at a reduced cost because he is such a good customer.

I don't think that Alex is being blamed for this, but rather as a responsible luthier he wants to take this as a learning example and future proof new guitars so that it does not happen again.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

It's really hard to protect yourself from someone else's poor judgement!

That said, I'm sure he feels bad for his babies that he worked so hard on.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I have had same problems , and came to the same conclusions as Jim regarding bridges and an occasional brace. Don't tighten the clamps so much.
I have used Fish for repairing antique baseboards and other trim that is now subjected to extreme humidity swings with no problems.

Bob

Alex,

You have my sympathies. As John Hale pointed out in his post I had the same happen to me on my daughter's guitar and posted about it at that link. My daughter was in a flat that sounded just like Michael N's basement and it was there for some months. Basically the fish glue let loose and the guitar started unzipping itself under string tension and wood movement (maybe what happened on yours to the end graft areas?). I counted my blessings in that the wood distortions didn't end up cracking anything important which could have happened if hide glue had been used and held firm, and that taking things off was easy so that when the wood had come back to "normal" humidity all I had to do was re-build - tricky in some areas but it certainly kept my brain active. I counted that as a blessing. Would an all hide glue jointed guitar have faired better? I think it would have had major cracking issues but the only way to find out for sure is to make one and let it live in Michael N's cellar for a year or so and see what happens to it.

It's prolonged exposure to very high humidity that will do that to fish glue I suspect - not changes in humidity over a large range - but any guitar that has to live in those conditions permanently has my sympathies and would probably need to be built in those conditions to survive there.

I still use fish glue a lot but use hide glue as first preference.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010