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This was my 1st attempt at home-resawing, or better stil, micro-resawing. First-time enthusiasm kept me from not-posting this, which shold be quite mundane for most of you .
OK, so it took me quite a while to get the wood through my underpowered 10 inch / 370 W hobby bandsaw but i finally managed to turn a stick meant for a coffee table leg into something, er..., guitar-able. The stick was pretty dark on the outside, around 50 cm long x 5 cm wide x 4 cm thick. The photo colours are a bit off, the colour variegation has a pink/orange tint to it, but should oxidise to a darker hue.
As usual, photos are in reverse order. Keeps the narrative interesting... maybe.

thanks for looking.
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I can smell it from here!


May your sails be full & your glass never be empty!

That is some beautiful figure

Pretty wood. Would make nice fingerboards too. What are you going to do about the sides?

Even the shavings look tasty!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

That will be a very pretty multi-piece pattern - sort of like a romantic guitar. Of course, now we have to call the CITES police on you. Too bad. Better dispose of quickly (address upon request).

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Miguel, that wood looks really nice, it's going to make a lovely guitar.
Know what you mean about the micro-resaw - I have a similar bandsaw, and used it to split 6mm x 120 mm mahogany sides.
Must have been tricky with BRW!
Good Job.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Sides can be made the same, a stick cut in 6, with 2 butt joints around bridge level instead of the usual 1 butt joint at the butt. Miguel provided me with some of these wonderful table leg blanks (they are like 60 years old BTW) and I've resawed 2 for a set myself. It is the finest Brazilian I ever saw, only that I cut it by hand and it took me from 40min to 1h per each cut....

The funky spiders and ink lines are not actually following the growth, which is ruler straight, quartered and free of runout or waves, just like the finest spruce brace wedge. This is not the coffee table wild grain that will crack the next day.

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Build log

That is gorgeous...

That is some lovely wood. If you resaw several different sticks you may be able to match things up so the finished back looks like two book matched halves, similar to what they are doing with multipiece Madagascar rosewood backs. On Alexandru's piece I would be inclined to center the dark streak if possible.
For sides I would look around for some BRW veneer and do a double side thing. I bought a bunch of sequence matched veneer offcuts from someone who originally used the veneer for making up architectural paneling. It was pretty cheap (scrap value).

Was my first choice but I won't have matching orange for the wings. Or I could enlarge the center with other black Brazilian. Sides will be the 6 piece thing since I have the same tree wood.

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Build log

Sweet baby Jesus! That's nice!

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Nice wood, and resawing!

Alexandru, I agree adding a center wedge of black would look good on that one. Alternatively, you could keep just the 4 center pieces and make everything outside that black. Possibly flip the center two vertically as well, making it look sort of like eyes

That was my 3rd option. The nice part is that the spiders now mirror the waist shape. I kind of liked the eyes to be low when I took these photos, now I'm not so sure. I'm so undecided I might never build with it

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Build log

I mean like this

:0 You might have just saved my butt!

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Build log

Oooo that is some very beautiful BRW!
I like Miguel's MJF plane too

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Sen CL Goh
http://senguitar.blogspot.com

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

Goodin: I´m still uncertain about the sides. I find gluing them and bending a bit daunting, TBH.

Colin: this bandsaw is the cheaper/smaller model from Axminster. A bit underpowered, but it wasn´t specially tricky - just sloooow...

Dennis/Alex: that last one looks nice, very organic. also a bit spooky.

I should´ve said that i was following Alex´s idea. Initially i thought of these blanks for bridges, but it´s too tempting to have this wood lying around and not trying to get a back out of it - specially after seeing his attempt. It´s also way fun to toy with grain symmetry at this level.

This is just two strips held together as an hypothesis for the center bookmatch, although it may loose some power after Alex´s images. Just scraped and no shellac. Oh boy, i could look at wood like this all day long - yup, that´s how nerdy i am.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Wipe some shellac over, it will blow you away. Mine is indeed quite flashy but yours is classier.

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Build log

Wow! That looks like some gorgeous fretboard stuff to build as many guitars around that you can get!
Of course, the pics speak for themselves in the "Back" department. Good score!

Hi Alexandru,
Won't you be using the waist cut out to add the wings to the lower bout?
I would still pursue the veneer /double side thing even if I couldn't find the exact color match and had to tone the finish to pull things together. But then I'm pretty comfortable building guitars that way.

soemthing else you just learned....it is more difficult to find good material for sides as for backs!

cheers, alex

I have the same. Good saw for the money and my shop size.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

[quote="Alexandru Marian"]Sides can be made the same, a stick cut in 6, with 2 butt joints around bridge level instead of the usual 1 butt joint at the butt. quote]


Alexandru, are you talking about using more than 2 pieces of wood for the sides because they aren't long enough?

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

Colin, after some getting used to the saw (had a bit of problems getting the blade to track properly) and with a blade from tufffsaws it now cuts rather straight. i´m happy with mine - even if a slow cutter.

Joe, i´m not Alex (who´d have told?), but the pieces are not long nor wide enough - you need 6 pieces to get it done: 3 lenghtwise and 2 to get the full height. I´ll leave Alex to do that first, though.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes