Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello, for your viewing pleasure here two links:

1. The saw, fence and setup:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... sureWheels


2. The resluts:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... dSidesSets

https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... ndSideSets

That's surely a big mean bandsaw and some of the Ziricote sets are stunning. Congrats!

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Build log

Beautiful ziricote Herr Dal Sure would like to find some like that.

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Guten tag herr dalbergia. i am curious about your homebrewed wheels pushing into the bandsaw.What did you use for the wheels , looks like 2 pieces of baltic birch for the arms?/ thanks ernie, Beauttiful ziricote

Love those bookmatches! Your homebrewed hold in looks very kentucky-like- at least like what I cooked up, anyway. I used rubber caster wheels mounted on compression springs- but that was just what I had handy. Like the ingenuity.

Georgeous!

Hello, thank you for your comments.

- I can recommend the CT a lot, still cutting very good, after about 50 Backs of Ziricote and 20 other backs.

- here is a link to my new web-album, which I will update regularly, so if you are interested, check it out.
https://picasaweb.google.com/115793185519493121307

-"i am curious about your homebrewed wheels pushing into the bandsaw.What did you use for the wheels , looks like 2 pieces of baltic birch for the arms"

yes, these are some rubber wheels which I had on hand, nothing special. And yes, the arms, as well as the fence itself is made out of plywood, just what I had around in the shop. The "tension-springs" is cheapest rubber-band, didnt have any metalsprings, but this can be changed.

- the wood is not for sale, perhaps I will become an OFL - sponsor in future and open up a small side buisiness with tonewood, I am not sure yet.

- the saw has been built in 1964 in Germany, is really heavy but also very stable. I bought it for about 350 €, and painted it new, adjusted everything, grinded the tires dead-even....now it works quite precise.

Best regards, Alex

Beautiful photos of those sets! Some very nice wood there for sure. I am jealous of all your Tucarensis.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

More pictures added and better sorted.

https://picasaweb.google.com/115793185519493121307

Danka herr dalbergia , I think your pic, unknown, looks like a wood here called red elm. I like your homebrew/diy philosophy, I have some old table saw rubber wheels with springs , maybe can redo them to push bandsaw stock.Love those beautiful pics zeir gut ernie

Can you give me an idea of how much tension the wheels have against the wood being resawn. What do you use for tensioning. Would expansion springs work?

Thanks
Ken

Now that's a bandsaw.

Hi Ken,

sorry, I don't have any tools for measuring the pressure, or the force, power with which the wheels are pressing against the wood. It is just enough but not superstrong. The wood still has to move trough the blade. I am using cheapest rubber-band for tensioning. Anything would work here, of course also some springs, which I just didn't use because I don't have any, and I hate spending money when I can solve it for free.

Just for the record:

Till now the first Woodmaster CT has cut about 100-120 Backs in total. 10 Osage Orange, 10 Swiss Pear, 3 Walnut and about 100 Ziricote. It still cuts nearly like new. Just with very wide Ziricote boards, higher than 10" the cut gets little more rough.
The Walnut and the Osage still have a surface like planed or sanded, flawless. This blade is really good, in my opinion.

I didn't have to readjust anything. I am just putting the sawblade under tension before working and release the tension when I am done. Till now, the whole system is cutting piece by piece within very small tolerances. I am impressed.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... arElsbeere
https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... etsDetails
https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... sageOrange
https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... raZiricote

Best regards, Alex

You surely have some kock-out slices of wood there.
If you ever start selling, I'm sure your stock will not last very long.

_________________
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.

Hello,

for the records:

My first Woodmaster CT is going down now. After 180 Backs of Ziricote, about 30 sets of differnt stuff, like Osage Orange, Zebra-Wood, Movingui, Olive-Wood, etc I started resawing this kind of stuff:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... tusRiegel#

Really hard, heavy and eating the tips of the CT for breakfast. After about 40 back and side sets, the CT is now much slowlier, the surface-resaw-marks get more and worse, feeding-rate is slow. It kind of still works, but I will change it soon.

Also the Movingui is really bad for the tips, as far as I know Movingui has a really high silicat content, and other minerals.

There is also some black Eucaluypts, pommele, plain and birdseye/pommele. It is not painted or dyed black. It is fumed. Originally it was also as bright as the other sets. If you want to know how this is done, check out the company I am working at daytime for....

www.mehling-wiesmann.de

I havent biult a guitar with Eucalyptus yet, and I havent seen it oven used in lutherie, but I like it, because of the figure and its density. Yes, the taptone is not breathtaking like old quartered BRW, but I think it is not sooooooo bad. We will see in future.

I can recommend the CT a lot. I don't know if the Resawking is better, can not compare, but, honestly, the thinner kerf of the Resaw King would NOT have given me even one more set....

best regards, Alex

Nice setup! The CT blade is really the cat's meow.

Is the acetone for cleaning the gunk off the blade?

Where on earth did you run into so much wide ziricote...??

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

WOW. 180 sets of Ziricote! Wish I had one. Awesome saw.

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

Hello,

@Eric: Yes you are totally right, I use the Aceton for cleaning the "gunk" (new word for a german...) off the blade. With Ziricote it is actually not necessary so often. The Ziricote is quite dry, dusty, not oily, so the blade stays pretty clean for a long time. The Eucalyptus is worse, but I really need the Aceton when resawing Cocobolo, Madrose or these kind of oily woods.
You can also, feel, hear and see the differnece in performance after the blade has been wiped clean with the Aceton. But in general, cleaning the blade was much more often necessary when I was still using "normal" sawblades, not hard-metal tipped ones.

I got the Ziricote from a lumber company here in Germany, but I had to buy about 1,5 m³, about 53 (????) ft³, so there is still a lot of Ziricote for the Sides and lots of fingerboards and neck blanks or perhaps 4 piece backs, I am not yet shure what to prefer. for shure the next step is to resaw about 200 side sets for matching the backs. i bought all this Ziricote because the price was unresistable for me. Most of the pieces are not wide enough for 2 piece backs. It is saw lumber which is about 1,28 inch thick. The company is mainly producing veneer, but they are also in the lumber buisiness, if you want I can ask if they have more. It is not cheap, but worth the money.

Somehow I am drifting from guitarmaking to wood processing...but I like it a lot;)

best regards, Alex

Has still been resawn with the frist CT, actually nice tap-tone, quite dense, very stable, the darker ones are fumed.

Best regards, Alex

https://picasaweb.google.com/1157931855 ... edMovingui

Nice. You mentioned that the darker ones were fumed in the set I looked at. They were nicely darkened -- looked very natural. I would like to get some bocote I have just worked back toward its aged darker color. Care to mention a bit about the process? Thanks...

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Chuck Kish

Hello, thank you for your comment, and of course I don't mention to tell a bit about the fuming process.

Let me start at the beginning:

Fuming / Smoking wood is absolutly nothing new for human mankind. The reaction of acids in the wood with ammonia is very old. Since centuries people are just, for example, putting oak lumber next to where the horses pie, sounds strange, bout the pie of horses contains lots of ammonia, then the oak gets darker, more durable.

Of course I am not doing this...

Beside building guitars and resawing wood I am working as a veneer-sales man for this company:

http://www.mehling-wiesmann.de

We devolped a CLOSED, industiral way for fuming wood through and through, so not only at the surface, the complete lumber gets darker, depending on the acid concentration in the wood. Basically it works with vakuum and overpressure, the only waste-product is a furtilizier which we sell to lokal farmers. We aslo won eco-friendly and design prieces with this method. And it also helps a lot keeping the natural resources, because we can provide dark wood (mainly oak, but also larch, chestnut, acacia, eucalyptus...) without having to cut down rosewood or ebony. We are not doing tonewood as our normal daily buisiness, it is just me, as a wood-fan, somtimes taking this or that certain borad and resawing it. At the moment I have a hughe pile of wood sitting in my driveway which has to be resawn, lots of differnt nice stuff, fumed and natural.

The fumed wood doesn't contain any ammonia anymore, because it has been , at the end of the fuming process, totally neutrilized.

The Movingui gets just a bit darker, but not like dyed or painted it totally keeps its natural appearance. Chestnut gets quite black, oak has a wide range, and so on, just check out the homepage and the sample pictures.

best regards, Alex

For the record:

A work-college of mine, quite experienced in sharpening BIG bandsaw-blades had a look at my dull Woodmaster CT. He said resharpening would be tricky, but at least he would like to try. Of course I immediately gave him my dull Woodmaster CT, and today he showed up with the blade resharpend. He said it should be possible to resharpen it about 2-3 times.
Home in the evening I immedtiately put on the resharpend blade, adjusted everything and gave it a run: Works like new!!!!

best regrads, Alex

Do you order your Woodmaster CT from the US or does someone in Germany sell them?

Is it really worth it to buy big chunks of wood and resawing it myself (after getting the equipments and stuff of course)? I haven't seen too many wood in Taiwan worth resawing but would it be worth it if I bought big chunks from suppliers or am I better off buying processed back and side blanks?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Hello Tai,

I ordered my blades from a German company, they are buying from a stock in the Netherlands, there Lenox has their european distributor.

If it is really worth resawing wood? I don't know, for me it is lots of fun. Also lots of work. For sure it is easier to buy sets from LMI, Allied etc, especially if you don't need so much.

And there is somthing very interesting for me: resawing is a very good teacher for learning about the wood proberties, I learn quite a bit about how wood is behaving etc. For me it starts at the bandsaw and ends with the tap-tunig...kind of...

And of course it depends a lot on how much space you have, if you can get good pieces of wood at a reasonable price etc...

Best regards, Alex

I have been using Highland Hardware Woodslicer blades. I have found them good value since the Aussie dollar reached parity with the USD...It makes a great difference...there was a time when the AUD was worth 48 cents.........but I digress....

I recently acquired a plank of BRW. I was looking to get sides for two backsets that I had without sides. There was a fair bit of planning that needed to be done to get what I could out of it. My set up for sawing these Brazilian backs and sides is just a point fence on a ply base. The blade was brand new and the saw is an old Australian made Woodfast 18 inch Bandsaw. The saws kerf is less than 1mm and the finish off the blade is really fine. I was very happy with the results.... I got 5 sets of sides and 3 back sets from the plank to go with my 2 back sets that I have been searching for months for some sides for.

John