Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm going to build some cam clamps and thought oak would make a good choice but the last few times I've worked with oak, I've gotten skin and eye reactions. What's a good alternate to oak? Ash?
Thanks in advance,
Mike

I think I would go for beech.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Mine are made out of maple.

The ones I made I used maple too.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The traditional timber to use is Hornbeam. Mine are made from Aus. blackwood (higher density stuff) and work fine with aluminium shanks. I didn't use pins on the sliding part and they still work perfectly some 15 years on.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Just a vote for hickory. Made some I like, strength to weight is good.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

I've made quite a few and mostly from maple. I have few long reach ones from my early archtop, parallel brace days that have a 9" reach and are, without running down to measure, 1 1/2" by 1 1/2" wooden bars with 1 1/4" x 1/8" steel flatbar that can put some serious clamping pressure down compared to the average cam clamp.

I used oak (leftover flooring I glued up). Price was right - - - zero. Waste not, want not. And I figured the time spent was worth it, I didn't grudge the time.

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Peter Havriluk

I've used several woods over the years. I'm not a fan of Ash. The best wood for me has been Birch and Hard Maple. In fact, I have some that I used Hard Maple for the bar instead of metal.

Brent

I made mine out of maple, they work great.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I recently made about 50 clamps to go completely around a guitar body when gluing on the back or top. I went a different direction and made the clamps from 3 layers of 1/4" Baltic birch plywood so I didn’t have to cut mortises. They’re not super strong but are up to job they are intended for.

Do you prefer cam clamps to a go bar deck Barry?

Yes I do, for this specific operation. Go bars work great for bracing but did not work that great for me when clamping tops or backs to the rim. I built a body for an old Martin 00-17 that has no body binding and I discovered that I was not getting a completely closed joint line due to the go bars not applying pressure in exactly the right spot along the outside of the joint. Cam clamps do a better job of closing the joint especially if you position them so that the flexible clamp pad can shift and follow the slightly tilted edge of the arched rims.