The Luthier Community

I have been reading an article in the latest Fine Woodworking Magazine on the furniture of the late George Nakashima. He built much using huge slabs. His daughter is still running the company and the article showed some tables with tops made from live edged slabs, with cracks and other "beauty marks" included.

Got me thinking about some of the wood in my stash and I went digging

I was thinking of some cocobolo that had "voids" similar to some of those in the Nakashima table tops, and how I might work that into a guitar.

So I found a cool billet and cut these sides

I plan to bend these and clean up the edges of the voids so they will function as soundports

A closer look


Now for a back. I went through all my stacks of resawed cocobolo backs and did not find anything that would work. Seems like when I am looking for flawless stuff, I find lots with "defects", but..... So, anyhow, I dug through a bunch of uncut boards and planks, but still nothing that I was satisfied with. So I remembered this stack of back billets from logs I bought 9 or 10 years ago. I had resawed many of the better ones, but there were about a dozen and a half 3" or so thick ones that had flaws in one face. Checking these showed most of them to be better than I had remembered, but I found one that when I cut 4 slices off, the last 2 seemed workable.

So here is the back set that I plan to use


And a closer look to better show the voids

Don't panic over the colors of any of this wood. I just resawed all of this yesterday and it has not begun to oxidize .

I will be using a few butterfly keys across some of the voids as needed to stabilize, playing things mostly by the seat of my pants as I go along. Should be interesting.

Oh, and so far here is the top that I might use.


Stay tuned, and, no, I have not lost it

G

Grant, I would really be interested in something like that. Let me know if you might have some you would part with. Tim

Well, to see Grant Goltz try this should give the rest of hope in trying to "fix" wood. The sides are wonderful!

Actually, though, I think you've really lost it

Jim

timo wrote:Grant, I would really be interested in something like that. Let me know if you might have some you would part with. Tim

Tim, I do have 2 sister sets of sides to this one.

As I type this the cutaway side is cooling in the bender. I will take it out in about a half hour and will post a photo to show if it made it or not

G

Wonderful idea, Grant! This should be really cool! It's going to be a guitar that looks like it was made from... wood!

Dennis

First side, the cutaway, bent. Came out perfect





And from the inside


So I have no doubt that this is going to work out fine.

Now, how is it going to sound with sound leaking out everywhere

G

well I seem to recall something from another article on bass ports in speaker cabinets suggesting that if calculate the area of your standard sound hole then work out the area of your natural soundports and reduce the main soundhole area by the same amount the sound should remain constant with a standard guitar with the standard sound hole. ..... I can't remember the science behind it as it was about 15 years ago and it was based on making massive sound from small speakers in purpose built cabinets..... one other thing that stuck though was reducing the port size increased the lower frequencies ie bass response which to me seemed counter intuitive to me at the time ......anyways best of luck with this build

I love the sides and I think the top is wonderful
This is going to be cool
Mat