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At what point in top wood is too far off quarter? 45 degrees? That is, /...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Any deviation to perfectly 4sawn, all other things being equal, and the plates lose cross-grain stiffness. A few degrees may be OK, it depends on the particular piece. 45º is way off…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

It's not hard to find well-quartered tops. I would not use a top that was 5º off; preferably much less.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Sergei DeJonge in his last year presentation at the Montreal Guitar Show, indicated that he goes up to 10 deg off quarter. He also mentionned that between 5 and 10 deg they are less prone to cracks.

A top even 5 degrees off quarter will be floppy and loose.
you can get stunning low grade tops that are quarter sawn but have wide grain or color that make wondefull guitars but if a top is off quarter dont bother with.
i would rather a top with run out rather than off quarter.

if you think of a perfectly virticle top as being 90 degrees then 45 degrees will rift sawn and will not be suitable.
if that was a back however it would be more exceptable as stiffness isnt so much of an issue (you can allways leave more wood on a back) in fact alot of lumber companys will sell "quarter sawn" wood that runs from corner to corner on a 2"x6" piece of wood.
in reality this is rift sawn but the radial movement will still be much less than a completly slab sawn peice but it wont be as strong as a more quarterd peice.

the same is true of neck blanks the movement will be less with a rift piece rather slab but you will loose strength against a perfectly quartered neck allthough in reality i think the difference between rift and quarter is neglageble in woods like mahogany.
This is why many dealers will offer necks of up to 45 degrees of quarter (i.e. corner to corner grain) a the difference is quite small with stable strong wood and because they can a very good yeild form bulk stocks.
otherwise they would only be able to sell half the wood from a wholesale batch making the price of suitable wood go sky high.

sorry i went off course there but i think it is important realise the quality,s of quarter sawn wood in different aplications.

joel

I think if there is a relationship to stiffness it may have to do with the size of the tree that was being split for stock in most cases. I find it easier to split wood perpendicular to grain than parallel to the grain (refering to actually Splitting blocks of wood). So I believe very well quartered wood may be more prone to splitting, however that is easier to fix than a top that was flat sawn and had shake (you couldn't get to the seperating wood very easy). Since a soundboard is very wide in relation to depth it would make sense that you would want to reduce expansion and shrinkage in the widest orientaion(makes perfect sense to use quartered, as it would generally move about half as much). There is little difference in stiffness from what I have found between really well flat and quartered wood.

If you look at a split bolt of wood. You will see that it takes a very large tree to be able to cut a wide billet to resaw into sets. I have bolts that are from a very large tree (actually hand split a couple 15"+ one piece tops from split wedges, and that is free of sap wood and well off the core), but I am only able to make 5-6" billets max. if I want the wood to be well quartered. Smaller trees produce wedges that will allow maybe 1.5"-2" billets. It takes time to square billets on two sides to produce billets to resaw, as well as you lose material when you have to cut more billets. So I suspect there is a relation to cutting smaller split billets(from smaller trees), trying to cut faster and maintain higher yields, and how well quartered soundboards wind up. All said and done though, If I compair the stiffness of a set that was cut from the outer edge of a billet(slightly farther off pure quarter), and the dead center(dead on quarter). I feel very little difference in stiffness.

I am speaking to hand split wood here also. I know for a fact some sets sold on ebay are not cut from split wood(got that info from a couple horses mouths). So if you are compairing sets cut from "lumber", well your dealing with a wild card(A well quartered bit of lumber with wacky runnout could produce a much weaker set). Lumber is cheaper, and of course you don't have a fraction of the losses you have with split wood.

That is just what I have experienced, FWIW.

Rich

its very common these days for euro spruce to be cut from sawn billits instead of of split becoue as you say you need a very wide tree to be able to split the logs.
also most of the large old growt trees are gone now so there are much fewer trees to cut tops from.
this results in suppliers cutting billits from trees woth twist etc to be able to supply the demand.

i recently got a large batch of transylvanian spruce that was wonderull quality and i had a lot of tops that were consecutive.
on some of the billits the first few sets were perfectly quarter sawn and the last one might be up to 5 degrees off.
the diference in stiffness was noticable with the off quarter to s being noticeably floppy.
this doesent seem to translate as much to hard woods but obviously you want as little movement as poss at joint to avoid stress on the joint this is wher quarter sawn hardwood is essential.

joel.

The problem with sawn vs split (and that could include billets cut from split wood, if you trust the source) is that it can be tuff to tell what you have. I took a couple pictures to try to illustrate.

This billet appears pretty good.


Pretty well quartered.


Visually not too bad, with fairly high ring counts.


The problem is that this billet was cut from wood with an issue, and heavy runnout, and right next to a big old knot.


I intensionally did not cut away all the evidense.


Now the closer you get to the nasty area, you can see a play on the reflection that is going to give you a clue, but it is hard to tell how severe the issue actually is. This billet would yeild stiffer sets the farther you get away from the extream runnout, but sets closest to the side with the issue would be significantly weaker. Overall the billet would appear pretty good, and without being able to see the split wood you would never know what you had.

Peace,Rich

Unless its some sort of special sounboard that you can't pass on there is no reason to use an off quarter top.MO

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com