GGGG

I am imagining my net guitar.  I got a fabulous piece of redwood from a friend
who is renovating a 1954 ranch house that was designed by an architect.  On the
wall there was 1800 linear feet of redwood 1X8 tacked with 6d finish nails every
32 inches, so very little damage.  I got a piece that has 35-40 grain lines per
inch and is absolutely vertical grain, and it will make a grand top.

Most of my design influences come from the period 1890-1940, and at that time,
ivory was used for many parts - the binding (small strip around the edge of the
top and back, Jeff) the bridge (where the strings end, Jeff) and even an entire
fretboard (where you put your fingers, Jeff).  The pictures of these instruments
always pique my interest, and I thought that an ivory bridge would look pretty
interesting on that redwood.  Here are 4 shots:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/29635566727/in/dateposted-public/

I can get the proper size piece of fossil ivory for between $300 and $500, so
that’s out.  Poking around I came up with this for $20:

https://guitarpartsandmore.com/productCategory.php?Resin-
Ivory-S-trade-S-Grade-Knife-Handle-
Blocks-125">https://guitarpartsandmore.com/productCategory.php?Resin-
Ivory-S-trade-S-Grade-Knife-Handle-Blocks-125

I wrote them and they wrote back and the name was David Warther with an address
of Dover Ohio. We lived a couple hours away from Dover and I remembered my dad
taking my brother and me to the Warther Museum there in the late 50’s.  It was a
building about the size of a 2 car garage and it was full of hand carved steam
locomotives and cars in walnut, ebony and ivory.  He flipped a switch and all of
the wheels started spinning with all of the drive gear working away.  He said
they were all done with a knife, no power tools or even a lathe for the boilers
- and one of the boilers was probably 3” diameter and 24” long.  As a 10 years
old, my jaw hit the floor and is still not fully back in place.

There was a funny looking tree type of thing and he started to explain it.
While he was talking he pulled out a little piece of wood about the size of a
clothes pin and made a pair of pliers by stabbing and slitting, opened and
closed them, and then gave it to my brother.  There were no chips or shavings.
He explained that the “pliers tree” started as a big piece of wood that he split
and stabbed and opened, then split and stabbed and opened the jaws, then split
and stabbed and opened those jaws until everything got smaller and smaller and
looked like a tree - the whole thing could be closed back up again to the
original size

I asked the current Mr. Warther if this was the same family and he said he was
his grandfather and that he watched him make thousands of pliers and give them
to people, mostly kids.  Here is a good story about the place.  There is a
picture down the page of the “pliers tree” , and also of the knife works that
they have going

http://here4now.typepad.com/here4now/2012/09/dover-oh-warther-museum.html

In the story it says he made 750,000 pairs of pliers.  I gave this same story
about 15 years ago here, but the coincidence of running into it again struck me.

Does any one have another idea for a piece of faux-ivory 1” X 6” X 3/8”

If you are on the East Coast, good luck this week, and stay dry.

Ed Minch