Official Luthiers Forum!

I would suspect I know my end of the deal when it comes to tonewood Ken.
And from all accounts, lingo, description and pictures this guy seemed to
know what he was doing as well ..obviously he didn't. And yes I've got some
great deals on ebay too...I was just sharing a bad runout experience to cheer
the OP up.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Is Run Out only a problem on tops? What about backs and sides? Are certain wood more susceptible than others. I thought if the billet was hand split it eliminated the occurrence of run out. Good Information here.

Thanks

Peter

[QUOTE=John Mayes]I would suspect I know my end of the deal when it comes to tonewood Ken.
And from all accounts, lingo, description and pictures this guy seemed to
know what he was doing as well ..obviously he didn't. And yes I've got some
great deals on ebay too...I was just sharing a bad runout experience to cheer
the OP up.[/QUOTE]

I appologise if my earlier comment came across as instructional, brash or smart-ellick. I assure you that was the furtherest from my mind when I wrote it. I most certainly didnt mean to imply that any of you didnt know your woods either. This thread is proving to be educational to all of us, including myself, and I am glad it was brought up for discussion. While I am not new to woodworking, I am rather new to guitar building. Runout has never been an issue for me in any of the woodworking projects I have accomplished, but I have first hand experience on how important it is to pay attention to it now.

Being a small time sawmill owner and lover of woods, I know how hard it is to market and sell wood when you are in a remote area and lack the resources to have a major storefront. I just hate to see all dealers on ebay get a bad rap when most are honest and hard working people doing their best to sell top rate products at competitive prices.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken,

Part of my personal confusion with grading is related to what you say in this responce.

"For instance: I bought 5 sets of Englemann spruce tops from a dealer about 6 months ago. For what ever reason, nobody else bid on them and I got the 5 sets for $10. Shipping was extremely modest and quick. He had advertised the sets as AA grade. Because of the cheap price I paid for them, he could have easily given me sub-standard top sets. Instead, I got 5 sets that are excellent... no runout, beautiful creamy white, close growth rings, no color and no blemishes. To me, this was master grade stuff!!

Now I have just bought 50 sets from the same dealer and paid his price for them (still a bargain). I know in advance that this guy knows his woods and will give me excellent woods at an extremely fair price."

So to the fella selling (who you feel really knows his tonewood) grades the sets as AA. Yet you would grade them as Master Grade. If he is really paying attention to the wood he is selling and grading then what made it AA or was he not looking at the wood that close and you recieved higher grade(which does not speak well to his stock control)? If he was paying attension and it is Master Grade to you, who knows there stuff him or you? I can understand when people say they looked through a stack of AAA and found a couple sets that would meet their criteria for master, or dig through a big stack of AA and come up with a couple that they feel are AAA. I know I would probably grade down a notch if I wasn't sure about a set. I doubt I would round a master grade set down to AA though(AAA maybe).

Just curious about your thoughts. What do you expect the 50 soundboards will grade out at(AA or a mixed bag of unsorted sets)?

Peace,Rich

His reasoning for grading lower is based on color as he says all of his wood is cut from split billets that have little if any runout..

The color he is seeing is not evident to me... who knows, maybe it dissappears after it has been sawn for a while? All I know is that I got better than expected wood from this vendor. Color isnt all that important to me and I dont mind having a little in my tops as I feel it adds some charachter to the guitar.

I will agree that the grading process is sometimes not real clear sometimes. If I were grading tops, runout would be an automatic low grade... at best an A grade no matter how good the other aspects are. Pin knots and worm holes would be in the same catergory as runout.

Way back in the day, the S.P.I.B (Southern Pine Inspection Bureao (sp)) was created because of the differences in grading construction lumber. All construction lumber is now stamped with their initials, the inspector's number, the moisture level and how it was dried. Now most municipalities have adopted their grading system as the standard and you cannot build with lumber that has not been inspected by them and with their stamp of approval. Does this mean that sub-standard lumber doesnt exist any more? NO!! You still find lumber with large knots, weak spots, etc.... even with their stamp of approval on it! I feel that this is why some tops get by with containing runout, pin knots, etc and graded as a higher grade than it ought to be graded. I will also add that having lumber inspected adds to the cost of the lumber you buy. In fact, it is so expensive to have an inspector come out and approve your lumber that it has forced the small independent sawmill owners out of the construction lumber market because they cant afford it.

<sigh> WAS I ON A RANT??? oops, SORRY !

Then again, if it were me doing the grading, I would have a totally different standard for setting grades than what I have seen so far. That is another thread though...

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Reguards,

Ken H

Peter...

Runout can affect backs and sides also...backs can tolerate runout more but in sides runout means that the chance of a side breaking while bending is much higher. In highly figured where the grain itself can curl up like a potato chip as there is no long grain to hold it together. While a really amazing piece of twisted colorful wood looks great for a back, it will not be nearly as stable as well quartersawn wood.

I thought I would do a little test. To see how the bevel method of checking for runnout would work. I split a chunk of spruce on two faces and surfaced one face and beveled one side. The spruce had straight long grain on the split edge, but the split face has about a 3/8" hump. I figured that would be pretty easy to see. I darkened the grain on the beveled edge with a pencil to make it easier to see in the pictures.

Here is what I found.




What do you fellas make of this? I thought the runnout would be a little more obvious on the beveled face. Am I doing something wrong here?

Peace,Rich

A flip side...

One of my earliest jumbo guitars (1997) has an Engelmann top with pretty obvious runout which is quite visible now that the top has yellowed nicely. The guitar sounds fine; I could have gone thinner on the top and lighter on the bracing, but I'm proud of the guitar and it was the sound of that one that got me the commission to build the Antarctica guitar for Henry Kaiser. I'll have both at Healdsburg.

And what is an archtop but a whole mass of grain runout? OK, so run-out over an inch or two may be excessive on a flattop, but there are thousands and thousands of just fine vintage guitars out there with a lot of top grain runout.   I used to repair them all the time, dealing with all the usual stuff.   It may be too easy to blame a supplier for results that are less than you desire...

After playing around with this board a little it occured to me that two things could effect the look of the grain when I bevel it.

1. if the spacing of the growth rings varied, which makes them appear to rise and fall.

2. When I bevel the board at a light angle to the growth rings I can make them rise or fall

when beveled square to the growth rings the lines run straignt down the side(given spacing is fairly even. I am not sure this method is as a good indicator of face runnout. Again I am just observing here, and I may be doing something wrong. I would appreciate someone correcting me if my method or thinking is off.

Peace, and good night everyone.
Rich

Rich, could you try to put larger pics, or take macro shots and crop? From what i can see there, it seems that the wood is twisted. On the beveled side there doesn't seem to be that much runout, but the other side seems to have a lot more. 

Rick, may I ask, how is the runout more visible in the aged top ? More color variation between the 2 halves?

Also I need to remind I have used the wood on a classical, which is a very different animal. Having no experience I have tried to steal whatever possible from the big boys.  The data offered by Shawn and J French regarding the Romanillos method and data offered by a luthier who studied with and follows Greg Byers' approach have been both invaluable for me. Both methods are based on stiff and light tops, with NO runout and they are taken as thin as possible.... Maybe it is still escaping me why they do not accept runout. Is it a type of snobbery? Does it matter for the stiffness or only for the integrity of the guitar in case of a shock ?

Shawn ?

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Build log

From what I have read, it is a matter of consistently getting what they want from the wood, i.e., if required, Romanillos would prefer to have a 4 piece top with consistent stiffness and grain than a two piece top with inconsistencies.  It seems that I also read that he doesn't like the grain too close - fewer lines to the inch, but very even spacing.  It allows him to make a better assessment, through feel, of how the guitar will sound, rather than having to deal with the questions left if there is runout and/or uneven grain spacing.

Couldn't think of another word. Consistent! 3 x 2 sentences.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Alex,

   I re-sized the photos to keep the bandwidth down, and marked the grain so it would be easier to see in a smaller pic. I can crop a section and post it tonight after work. What would you like to see a close up of?

   It is not twisted. I split both edges of this piece of wood. The long grain is straight on both sides and it is well quartered. The split face shows the face grain(I am not sure if that is the proper way to say that, but I think you get the idea)is not straight(fairly straight on one end, but has a rise and fall at the other end). What is making the piece look twisted to you is the split face being thicker in parts. The side opposite the split(cut side) is flat and the side bevel is true to the cut face.

Peace,Rich    

Boy I wish I could just add this to my last post .

Waddy, Growth ring counts are another thing that is interesting to me. I have a piece of Port Orford Cedar with maybe 2 RPI(if that). I was amazed by its crossgrain stiffness. It is actually pretty much as stiff in the cross as the long grain. I passed three equally sized(length, width, and thickness) pieces of wood(1-this Port Orford, 2- a very nice bit of Engleman, 3- a high grade stiff bit of Lutzi) around to several people who know nothing about making guitars and asked them to flex the three pieces. They all picked the POC without hesitation to be the stiffest cross grain. They hesitated on the long grain but picked the POC as the weakest on the long, and Lutzi was quickly picked as stiffest in the long grain. I have found many instances where fewer growth rings produce high crossgrain stiffness. I wonder if any of you fellas have found this to be the case also?

Rich

The beveled image is good enough, the lines seem to be more or less parallel witht he long/face grain.

But the other "height" of the billet, the split one, seem to exhibit runout at the center, and I have marked the direction with the red line.  This can be verified by trying to split the billet again, from left to right.  If I am right, then there must be some twisting in the internal planes of the wood.



For comparision here is a bracewood billet.
At first it sure looks nice and perfect:



I then made a central split along the grain. Does not look encouraging:



And then I make a new split, perpendicular on the first.   dang, firewood.

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Build log

That looks like my first brace billet.  I bought one from one of our sponsors, and tried splitting.  All I got was firewood, and it looked perfect when I started.  I could not get one straight split, even with the grain there were twists that I didn't see.   Got some from another sponsor, and it was near perfect.  Got all of my fan braces out of the first inch.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Alex, The area you are pointing out on that split side didn't cleanly pull apart(I split with a wedge, not a knife to make sure I am not cutting through the fibers). The top edge ripped apart cleanly. I will split it again though and make sure it pulls cleanly apart.

In the picture of your center split. Are you looking at the dark growth rings to determine potential face runout, or are you looking at something else? When I cleanly split wood(side not face) I see no growth rings to speak of(you may be able to zoom in on the side split before it didn't split cleanly and see the surface is pretty homoginous). If I slice through the wood as I am splitting(say I tapped through the wood with a thin blade) I can see growth rings on the side, but slicing through the wood is not a clean split. Maybe I am thinking incorrectly here, please correct me if I am wrong.

Peace,Rich

Way too many post here for me to read them all, so this all may have been said:

Yes, grading is largely on appearance. But that assumes as a starting point that the wood has been milled and culled for function, of which runout is a significant part. That it looked like AAA on the surface is no excuse for giving it that grade.

Many dealers ( and builders) did not pay much attention to runout until the past 20 years or so. But the importance of minimal runout is now a well-established grading criterion, as well as the importance of milling from split billets.

I buy back and side sets on Ebay, and have rarely been disappointed. The few times I have tried to buy tops that way, I have sent them back. There are a few dealers I will trust for top grading, but it's chancey even with the best of them. Even with runout, appearance, etc. taken into account, there's no substitute for getting your hands on a top.

I think saying something true about wood you received from a dealer and naming the dealer is OK, if done objectively, and including the dealer's response.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

What kind of wood is "Healdsburg Exhibitor," anyway? Is it covered by CITES?

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Rich, if you talking about the black background pic, actually there is absolutely no color difference.  You are actually seeing what is between  the growth rings, or maybe it is better to say cylinders?
The darker lines are shadows, the split wall is not smooth.  That is exactly the problem with a smooth cut edge, you can't tell pretty much anything out of it.  But when you split it, the texture will show the run out perfectly:

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Build log

And here is a twisted plane example.  I admit I never seen it before (tbh I have only split 2 billets to which I paid attention so far)  but in theory I think it is well possible especially with a natural material. Localized runout.

nb the plane is checked to evidence it, no "grain" there.

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Build log