Official Luthiers Forum!

Nice top Roy!!! Where did you get it??

Thanks for all the compliments but as stated above my top was similar to that picture. That pic is from the thread that I linked to in my previous post and not of my top. I used it because my top closely resembled it. But now having learned what I have from this thread, I wish that too was one of mine.

Thank you Shane and Carlton for the good info.

_________________
Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

"As Bruce (spruce) said you can definately introduce runout with poor
cutting, but I don't agree that that is the significant cause of runout."

Maybe not in your shop...   
But I can assure you that many a straight-splitting tree has produced tops
with significant runout.

"Lloyd Loar used woods from entirely different trees in some of his
mandolins, a tight grained section for one half and loose grained section
for another"

The wood you see in a lot of the Loars appear to be end-to-end
"bookmatches", produced from 30" x 5.5" x 1" Red Spruce lumber...
This can produce a top that appears to be from 2 different trees, but
is actually cut from the same board...

A big concern with how those tops were lined up was getting the
sunburst to look right. A "flip" on an end-to-end bookmatch helps in this
regard....

"The only reason you don't mix and match, again in my most humble
opinion, is asthetics."

You see a lot of what I believe is intentional miss-matching in
old violins, with wide graining in the bass side of the plate, and tighter
grain on the treble side...

But then again, you see it the other way around too...   

Judging by the total lack of runout in Strads and other violins of the
period, I think tonewood cutters might have supplied hand-split
single plates to a lot of makers.

Yeah, it's wasteful, but it's easy and effecient (especially in a day and age
without power tools and powered sawmills), and the proof is in the
pudding.

You rarely see runout in those instruments....