Official Luthiers Forum!

Got some Italian and Englemann from Steve at Colonial and some LUTZ spruce from Shane at High mountain. All these tops were just GREAT!. Thanks Guys for a really high quality wood. It is such a pleasure to be pleasantly surprised with wood that you buy in the mail and this was certainly the case with these two wood sellers.

I know what to expect from the Italian and the Englemann but I have never used LUTZ and hear it is good stuff.

Anyway, just wanted to give a big thumbs up to these two guys.

John

I got three lutz tops from Shane a while back myself. Mighty fine looking stuff! Now I just need to get down to the shop and do something with it.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

Thanks for the kind words you guys. I hope those tops serve you well!

Shane

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Canada

John, we think alike. I just ordered Sitka from Doug, Lutz/cedar from Shane and Carpathian from Steve. I have always received top notch wood from our sponsors. However, this time I will label them all as I unpack them. Things got shifted around in my shop a while back and now I have 2 stacks of mystery wood. Anyone have a good suggestion on sorting mystery tonewood? Don A38715.8147453704

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Hi John & others,

I've yet to get a Lutz top from Shane (next time, I promise, Shane) but am currently working with a Lutz top from Bob C. & it is truly DELUXE! Nice & stiff across the grain, excellent color consistency & beautiful silking figure. It taps like the low notes on a marimba.

I know the Zootman is primarily known for his backs & sides (better than being known for your "backside", I guess) but this Lutz top of his is super. Really nice for $45!!

Shane, I've heard REALLY great things about your Lutz tops & will order one or two in the future. For now, I'm really happy to have this particular top for my 1st commission build.

Respectfully,
Skip

Don, I can't help you out with your other woods but the Lutz that you bought from me, if you haven't sanded it yet, will have a distictive triangle with numbers and letters in and around it on the top surface. That might organize a bit of your pile anyway! The triangle is the same used by James Krenov in his cabinetmaking books.

Shane

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Canada

I just got in 6 lutz tops from Shane. Really great stuff. SUPER stiff (which is the most important thing to me). Nice creamy color (only a tiny bit of pink..these are aaa though so perfection is not expected...heck poundcake wood is kinda boring to me). Medulary rays are great, and tap tone is sweet! I know I'll be ordering more!

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Shane...I would tell Krenov to keep away from your wood pile with that pencil and stop leaving his triangle mark on everything

Explain your numbering/lettering scheme, please...(I use triangles also )

Hey Shawn, if Krenov wanted to come and stick his pencil in my wood pile, no problem!! Can you imagine a guitar we would build? Probably along the lines of the recent one that Russel posted, very satin finish, clean mean lines!

Anyway, here is a lower grade top(it has a pin knot) but it has my typical triangle:



The triangle is used mostly to line up a series of boards in a specific order prior to a glue up. It does two things. It keeps the boards in sequence and it allows the woodworker to shift them back and forth into the best position as decided during the dry setup (you know, for grain orientation etc.). When I first started drying tops I used to set them up, tent style, around the basement floor, one pass through the basement by my Bull Mastiff and I had to set them all up again, the lumox! The marks on the face made it possible to get all of the sets back in order.

So here is what they say. The KLG refers to the harvest location and type of instrument, in this case, KL = Kleanza Creek, the watershed where this tree was harvested, G = guitar. The '409' is not a highway but is the number sequence for the guitar sets from this tree, the 409th guitar set cut and processed (I would have cut more but would have discarded some for significant defects). I cut a wide variety of different size sets, from jumbos, to arch and flat top mandos to weisenborns to one piece cuatro sets for Cumpiano. Each different size has their own seqence number. The '1.5.5' refers to the date I processed tops from the billet, that is the day I sawed the top, not the date I fell the tree. I keep a log of all of the wood I cut so I can see what yields I am getting and also just to track progress. It also serves a purpose for those with a more romantic streak who want some stats on their tops. When I explained the system to Cumpiano, and his partner Harry Becker, their first reponce was, ya but how are you supposed see those marks when they are in a stack? They typically mark the ends with a couple of slashes that will line up when you put the tops together. I explained that they could still do that but if a whole stack got knocked over they would be spending a lot of time trying to line up slashes. They were going to adopt this marking system.

Shawn, I guess that is the long version!

Hope that helps

ShaneShane Neifer38715.9189351852

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Canada

Thanks for the description Shane...I was already aware of it as we have talked about it but I asked to make a point. Thanks for helping to explain how you track and control the wood you provide.

These are individual trees that yield what is sometimes remarkable results...you never know which wood it was that gave you an instrument that gave you your best results until you document it.

Two years ago at the A.S.I.A. Symposium while Alen Carruth was doing his Chaldni "Glitter" tuning workshop session he described how he keeps detailed build notes on each instrument so that if he needs to refer back to it that he has a frame of reference and details to draw on.

It was a lightbulb moment for me and since then I document far more in each build than I used to so that if I look back it doesnt just look like top: White Spruce, it will say date acquired, source, set # of # (that I have stocked) and any impressions I have as to qualities.

Now when I sort through my tops or I use a similar marking scheme in which I rate the tops as to appearance, tone, and any other qualities. When I am looking for a top for the guitar at hand I will still go through my stacks and re-evaluate them to see if my past judgement was different or if my subjective way of comparing has changed or is different. What at one time I might have passed by for color or width of grain upon future inspection might stand out as being better sounding or something I missed.

Famous builders such as Torres and Hauser had stashes of wood that were all from the same billets, cants or trees that they religiously guarded and used only for their best instruments.

It is too easy for us who have greater access to wood globally than ever to not appreciate wood and all of the effort and process went into it getting it to a point where we can then use it. I am very appreciative that when I buy a top from a supplier that I trust (as I do with our sponsors) that their standards for grading are as stringent as mine.

Speaking of which I have yet to try Fiemme Spruce and appreciate Gg bringing it to our attention but what I found very interesting is that the way that they price their tops is that for each additional year that they keep the wood in inventory it is sold as aged and the price increases by an average of one euro per year.

This points to the fact that our stockpiles of wood besides being an addiction are also an asset that if kept in a controlled environment only gets better as the wood ages.

These are excellent points Shawn. I have read that Dana Bourgouis (SP?) likes to process from sequential sets from the same billets. His thoughts, probably from experience, were that if he tuned one top from the set then he could just make all of the dimensions of braces etc pretty equal for all tops in that billet. While it may be OK to do that for a 'close enough' result (and how close do you really need it to be) but I have noticed that each set does indeed change as you move around a tree. I don't have years and years of experience mind you but I certainly see the difference in the 1500 or so sets I haved pawed through that I have cut and paid attention to. I process my wood by billets and they all get close examination as groups of tops before they are stickered and dried. Then the numbers show the cosecutive sets once they are stored.

Nothing like good notes though to help you learn and get better at what you do and defend why you do it.

Thanks Shawn

Shane

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Canada

[QUOTE=Shawn]
(...) Speaking of which I have yet to try Fiemme Spruce and appreciate Gg bringing it to our attention but what I found very interesting is that the way that they price their tops is that for each additional year that they keep the wood in inventory it is sold as aged and the price increases by an average of one euro per year.

This points to the fact that our stockpiles of wood besides being an addiction are also an asset that if kept in a controlled environment only gets better as the wood ages. [/QUOTE]

Ciresa grading and pricing is quite complicated and mainly suond based indeed (Fabio Ognibeni spends months tapping and retapping the boards before grading) and I agree that any year of proper air drying is an added value for the tops they produce. I've seen many times how they prepare and stock wood and learned lots of things about. Above all, never saw a freshly cut billet; this spruce dryes 1 mm circa per month when properly stocked so 1 year air drying at least for a 12 mm board. Then begins the real seasoning and the final resawing into bookmatching halves is always just before the plate jointing.

On Shane's Lutzii I would say that the boards I received are simply fantastic; beautiful, well choosen, very well dried and guys all of them sound like a gong. Shurely some of the best tops I've ever had my hands on, including those from other Lutz sellers. This said by a strong Euro supporter.
Luigi
ggdelazzer38716.210150463

Hey Don,
Thanks for the mention. I hope you are pleased with the top.