MIMF

Review the gas laws (from high school physics) and you'll find that, as steam cools, it condenses into water. The steam generated by whatever method cools as it travels through a hose and that is the source of the water at the nozzle. By first getting, and then keeping the hose hot, water at the noz...

I keep it simple. I use the Stewmac cutter/bearing set in a laminate trimmer and just let the router base follow the curve of the back (and top). After that cut, I follow with a purfling cutter and clean up the cut by hand. That corrects the uneven depth of cut caused by the curve of the back (and t...

Mark, I once had to finish a walnut burl banjo resonator. There were lots of small voids that needed to be filled in order to have a smooth surface. I filled the larger ones with the dust/epoxy filler and the smaller ones with stick shellac. I saw that resonator some time later (couple of years?) an...

Where is the joint and what do you plan to do with it? I don't clamp center seams for mandolin tops and backs at all (rubbed joint) so I don't have to take any clamps off. Joints that -fit well- need no clamps, like a rubbed center seam, a cleat or a tentelone. If clamping is needed to hold somethin...

As I understand it, it is best, when making filler, to use mostly wood dust and minimal glue/adhesive/epoxy. I mix the dust into the glue until it will except no more dust. At that point, the filler is more wood than glue/adhesive/epoxy, and I feel like it becomes less important what the glue/adhesi...

Iron + moisture + tannins = blue/black. Koa (among other woods) contains a pretty high concentration of tannin, so it needs to be kept away from iron and moisture at the same time. That is almost surely the source of the staining. For this one, a remedy is needed, next time prevention is the key.

So... red is unread and read is unred...
Guess I'll get used to it.

Hydrogen peroxide may help, if the straining isn't too bad, but you may loose some natural color too in the process. Charlie is obviously correct that you should test on scrap.

For archtops, with the carving that goes on that exposes end grain to one degree or another, I feel like quite a bit of twist is acceptable as long as the wood is cut for minimal run out at the center seam. That results in more waste and obviously less yield from the tree. I'm having trouble visuali...

Craig, I can see how my first two statements can seem contradictory, but what I'm saying is something like: You can get similar stiffness to mass ratios using spruce bracing alone or with CF laminated braces, but they must be carved differently. If braces are made similarly, the CF laminated ones ar...

...Wouldn't this indicate (suggest?) that there is no practical difference in the strength of the one vs the other for the purposes of stringed instrument building? Is the paper not saying that a properly prepared joint will fail only under conditions that would crush the instrument completely? The...

The purfling will almost surely have to be made (by you or someone you "hire") from strips of matching wood. Finding a commercially made match is most likely impossible. The ivoriod material can probably be gotten from Axiom (http://www.axinc.net/). It would probably be easier to replace t...

Some thoughts: According to my friend Dr. Dave Cohen, (who has done some laser Interferometry and various other research on instrument tops, backs, and boxes) he recons that a brace, and therefore a braced top can be made to the same weight and stiffness as laminated braces by carving more-or-less t...

I have diamond stones, Japanese water stones, and Arkansas stones. I use water for the diamond stones and water stones, sometimes with a little detergent or "Windex", and I use honing oil on the Arkansas stones. If I had new Arkansas stones, I would use water with them too, but they are oi...

I have seen countless people claim that tighter grain wood is stronger than wider grain wood, and that wide grained conifers are practicaly useless as musical instrument wood. Is there any scientific evidence to back these claims up? Has anyone tested large samples of wood of the same species, with...

Just guessing here, I don't know "jack" about electricity and motors, but if runs well cold and doesn't run well hot, perhaps it isn't cooling well. Perhaps cleaning the fan and it's surround of dust would help it cool properly.

I've made scrapers from saw blades with varying degrees of success, saws are not created equal. I use different scrapers for different purposes. For rough work, and for maple and other hardwoods, I use a standard "cabinet scarper", actually a hand scraper, sharpened to 90 degrees at the ed...

They are different tools. If you need to reduce thickness a lot, the planer is the tool. If you need thin, figured wood, the sander is the tool. If you have a good way to reduce thickness (bandsaw with re-saw fence, for example) and if you regularly need to make veneers from figured wood, you can ge...

Charlie Schultz wrote:Speaking of Strads, an interesting article here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecaden ... -the-strad

I guess those 'new' violins were scraped, not sanded, or they surely would have heard the difference.

I usually seal with a thin coating of blonde shellac before using the Behlens, and it looks fine to me; I see no 'veiled' look whether on natural wood or dyed wood. The varnish has plenty of adhesion, however, so a sealer coat is not necessary. I seal, mostly, to "lock" my dyes in place be...