Official Luthiers Forum!

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sweat the small stuff.

Bummer about the crack.  Did you check the moisture content of the wood itself before you started building?  I would suspect that you may have started with wood that was over optimum.

I live in the pacific nw and work out of a detached garage.  Everything is insulated and I run heat 7 or 8 months a year keeping it about 65 degrees.  Seems to keep everything in check.

Doug

nobody wants to play with me

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sweat the small stuff.

Heath-
Probably the first step is to get a humidity meter aka hygrometer so you can get some data about your conditions, and follow your efforts at control.. The Caliber III is reasonably priced and available on ebay- cigar fans use them in humidors. I've got one and it seem to work OK.
There's nothing magical about humidity control. Some areas (like the PNW) have more constant humidity throughout the year, so control is easier. If you could find some (fine) woodworkers/luthiers in your area they would have the best advice.
One strategy involves using a smaller humidity-controlled area and moving guitar parts in there before assembly.

re: your coffee table. Many good table designs 'float' the top so that it can contract when it dries. You may have run into a design problem which caused the cracking when the humidity dropped.

You are actually lucky to live in a (I assume) dry area. It's much easier to build a guitar dry and have it survive humid conditions than the opposite. It's also easier (and cheaper) to humidify than to de-humidify, though either will be difficult if you don't seal the garage doors.

Cheers
John

thanks for the response guys. yeah i was kinda thinking the garage doors would pose a problem. guess i'll just have to take out a third mortgage on the house to build a real shop . i'll be doing some research on humidifiers i guess. are there any central CA builders out there?

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sweat the small stuff.

Hopefully many more people chime in on this. I know that most builder try
to keep the humidity level between 40-50%. I use a hygrometer that I
bought at a decent cigar shop. I had to go to a few before I could find a
good one. I have a dehumidifier and a digital humidifier. With minor figiting
with the controls once a week, keeping it within 3% is easy. I hope this helps,
I also would really would like to hear other peoples meatho