Nichael

Think of a piece of red oak about an inch square and a foot long.  Put the lower
end in a glass of water and blow into the upper end and your air bubbles come
out the bottom.  Note they don’t come out the sides.  There are natural pathways
along the grain for the wood to dry through, but the danger is that the wood
closest to the cut will dry so rapidly that it shrinks before the rest and
checks.  So covering the ends (I use canning wax melted with a bernz-0-matic)
forces the wood to dry more through the sides and less through the ends and
therefore more evenly.

With guitar wood, the object is to get the green log split into 1/8th's or
1/16th’s immediately, let it sit for a couple of weeks, then split out (or saw
with the established grain) into usable thicknesses - 3/16” or so.  At this
thickness with stickering, a fan does most of the drying work in less than a
week, then they are ready to build within a couple of months.  This works for
drying because there is soooo much surface area relative to the thin edges that
the wood is drying like mad.  A guitar hanging on the wall can acclimate to a
change in relative humidity in hours (and there is a finish on just one side,
contrary to many established rules)

Check this out - the last picture was added yesterday.  This is one of the few
guys that still cuts Red Spruce for guitar tops, and the one in the last photo
is an $800 top.  24” long X .2” thick X 8” wide = one fourth of a board foot of
highly process wood.  Enjoy:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/19366650659/in/album-72157653339
759523/">https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/19366650659/in/album-72157653339
759523/


Ed Minch




On Jul 9, 2015, at 9:28 AM, Nichael Cramer  wrote:

> 2] At the risk of making it even clearer how little I know about this process:
> 
> What is the purpose of sealing the ends when drying the wood (e.g. with paint,
> or as was suggested earlier with out-of-date wood glue)
> 
> To my non-knowledgeable mind, it would seem this would slow down (or inhibit)
> the drying.  And, so, defeat the purpose.
> 
> What am I missing here?
> 
> Thanks as always,
> Nichael