Official Luthiers Forum!

I was watching a DVD today and the feller was talking about "Flitch".

Being new to guitar building I'm unsure what these terms mean and how and why they apply to guitar building.

Terms like flitch, billet, flitch matched, bookmatched, rift sawn, slab sawn, quarter sawn. Or flamed maple, birds eye, or spalted and how they came to be called that. What part of the tree do these terms apply.

I'm sure I've left out other words and terms, but I just thought it would be nice to have a "Dictionary" as it were with pictures. We love pictures....lol

What you think? We could research on our own, but being explained by experianced luthier's would have much more meaning.

Thanks for your consideration,
Chuck H

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Great idea Chuck buddy!

I thought that wood came from OLF sponsors and didn't know about the tree part......

OK as for flitch that Webster dude defines it as "a longitudinal section of a log." So I guess that when it's used for our purposes such as calling the sides and back of a guitar set flitch matched they came from the same longitudinal section of the same board/log.

Sorry about this in advance:

Billet – the amount of wood in your stash that would make a car payment
Flitch – the small bird that sits on your windowsill and reminds you of your deadlines
Flitch matched – two of said birds that remind you of two conflicting deadlines
Book matched – what you might have been with your spouse if you had stayed in school
Rift sawn – any wood cut in California near the San Andreas
Slab sawn – any wood that causes an allergic reaction when you are far from a hospital
Quarter sawn – amount of wood less than what you would like to have in your stash
Flamed maple – what you have after breaking a side on your bending iron
Birds eye – what you need to detect the tiny gaps in the binding that you see only after the finish is applied
Spalted – the kind of beverage only luthiers drink

Steve,

I think you owe us another apology after the fact!

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

As atonement:

Spalting is any form of wood coloration caused by fungi. Although primarily found in dead trees, it can also occur under stressed tree conditions or even in living trees.

Flitch is a longitudinal cut from the trunk of a tree.

Billet is a generic term for a hunk of raw material.

Flitch matched is wood taken from the same piece of raw lumber so that the resulting grain, figure and pattern are very similar. A really good luthier can make a flitch-matched top look much like the more desirable book-matched version, in which a single slab of wood is slit down the middle, then opened like a book.

Bookmatching refers to the cutting of the wood used to make a guitar top or back. When wood is bookmatched, two pieces for the body are cut from the same piece of wood, and then placed in a manner that creates mirror image grain on either side of the instrument.

Slab sawn (Plain sawn) is when the growth rings are more parallel to the width, then the plank is said to be slab-cut. While slab-cut planks are seasoning, they tend to cup in a direction so as to "straighten" the growth rings.

Quartersawn boards are created by first cutting a log into quarters and then creating a series of parallel cuts perpendicular to the tree's rings. The yield is not as substantial as in plainsawing but much greater than in riftsawing. The grain in quartersawn wood is relatively consistent, and therefore the end product is stable and often preferred by woodworkers and furniture-makers. Quartersawn wood may include medullary rays and wavy grain patterns that some people prefer to the figures that are revealed with alternative sawing methods.

Riftsawn lumber is much more stable than plainsawn lumber. As shown in the drawing, each board has the same relation to the log, and therefore each board will have the same grain pattern. Furniture made out of riftsawn wood has more of a uniform appearance due to the similarity of grain patterns among different boards. Unfortunately, rift-sawing provides very poor yield and as is evident in the drawing, lots of wedge-shaped scraps are produced. The low yield has ensured that riftsawn wood is a rarity at the lumber yard.

Flame maple, also known as flamed maple, curly maple, fiddleback or tiger stripe, is a feature of maple in which the growth of the wood fibers is distorted in an undulating pattern, producing wavy lines known as "flames". This effect is often mistakenly said to be part of the grain of the wood; it is more accurately called "figure", as the distortion is perpendicular to the grain direction.

Bird's eye figure is a phenomenon that occurs within several kinds of wood, most notably in maple (bird's eye maple). It has a distinctive pattern that resembles tiny, swirling eyes disrupting the smooth lines of grain. It is somewhat reminiscent of a burl, but it is different: the small knots that make a burl a burl are missing.

Bird's eye maple is usually a sugar maple (Acer saccharum) found in mature hemlock stands. Hemlock dominated forests create unfavorable conditions for other plant competitors by increasing soil pH and consuming a high percentage of available sun light. The swirling grain and "birds eye" features found in bird's eye maple can be attributed to hormonal responses within the maple. In an effort to capture more light during the elongation/ bud breaking period, the maple will desperately produce new shoots. Low soil pH and a sugar deficit within the maple cause the tree to abort the new growth. The aborted new growth leaves tiny knots ("bird's eyes") in the tree which become covered up by the next year's growth ring.

Bird's eye maple is most often found in Acer saccharum (sugar maple), but millers also find bird's eye figure in red maple, white ash, Cuban mahogany, American beech, black walnut, and yellow birch. Trees that grow in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States yield the greatest supply, along with some varieties in the Rocky Mountains. Although there are a few clues in a tree's bark that indicate the lumber might have bird's eye figure, it is usually necessary to fell the tree and cut it apart to know for sure.

Sources: various, mostly Wikipedia

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

I have to take exception to the drawing labeled as quartersawn, and riftsawn. In my mind, those two drawings are mislabeled - the labels are switched.

Quartersawn lumber in the trades is lumber between 90° vertical grain and (depending on whose manual you consult) about 15° on either side of 90° vertical. In practicality, if a species of wood has been chosen because of the display of "medullary rays" or "flake" that shows on the well-quartered face, then the actual range hovers much closer to exactly 90° vertical grain - maybe 5° either way. If you look at the drawing labeled "Quartersawn", the widest board taken from each "cant" (1/4 of the log) is quartersawn, and the other silices on either side of that are riftsawn.

From an architects standpoint, if the desired look is very straight grain but the architect does not want the medullary rays to be a prominent feature (in species like Oaks that show prominent medullary rays), riftsawn wood or veneer is specified. Riftsawn wood has grain erupting through the face at a 45° angle, and the range is generally about 15° on either side of that.

Flatsawn or plainsawn wood has the grain (theoretically) at 0° to the faces, and about 15° either side of that.

That first drawing, labeled "Plainsawn" is also not accurate. That label should read "through and through", and it is the most common way that logs are sliced into lumber at lumber mills. The reason "plainsawn" is an inaccurate label, is because the slices are all parallel to the first slice, but the rings of the tree are curved. So, the first and second slice are plainsawn, the next few are riftsawn, and a few slices that go approximately through the center of the tree are going to be quartersawn. As the cutting continues past those few quartersawn slices in the middle, you get back to riftsawn, and the final few slices are plainsawn.

That first drawing shows you why you will find so few quartersawn boards at your local lumberyard, and that second drawing shows you why Shane Neifer is delivering all quartersawn soundboards.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Dennis, now that I look at the image, I agree that it is not correct.

This one might be better although the "plain sawn" is still not all plain sawn. Your definition is clear. Thanks for the clarification to my hasty post!

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

I'm not going to take too strong a stand here, but neither explanation matches what I've come across definition wise over the years.

Rift Sawn - Steve's first picture of Rift Sawn looks almost correct to me but rift sawn planks are actually wedges. I saw on TV once a "rift saw" used for cutting clapboards (and other things). i.e. the saw cuts are perpendicular to the blade to create perfectly "quartered" wedge shaped planks. The machine is like a lathe and a circular saw merged together. Rift saws are still being manufactured - I bet that contemporary ones don't make the wedged planks though

Quarter sawn - I've always seen the configuration labeled Rift Sawn in Steve's second picture referred to as quarter sawn. If you think about how it's done at the mill it makes sense too - cut the log into quarters - then flip 90o back and forth with each cut.

At the end of the day I don't think the difference is all that important to luthiers or even furniture makers. I think we all understand the concept of quartered wood and evaluate wood as being "well quartered" or "poorly quartered" or somewhere in between. Don't matter what kind of saw they used to cut it.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I once attended a sawyer cutting red spruce tops. He would cut of quartered log faces, either side. When it got off-quarter, he would slice off a wedge to get back on quarter.

These wedges would then be converted into smaller violin wedges or cut up for brace material, very little waste.

I too have seen PBS type display of a saw cutting logs into clapboard wedges. Just a circular saw making passes the length of the log on a carriage, then the log setup is rotated for the next pass. The wedges are not cut free however, that comes later.

Those wedges were perfectly quarter sawn wedges, but not exactly what a guitar maker wants or is thinking when he uses the word.

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