Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

I thought this was quite good. Don't know that I agree about dying art form, though: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-06/s ... rs/6678602

I would not be keen on feathering out these two ends to nothing before the lining I've actually done that a few times. Doesn't seem to adversely affect either the structural integrity of the guitar or its tone. Here's a photo of one of the back braces on an instrument that I made in 1976 - still in...

Actually, there are a couple of timber/pioneer museums worth a look on the way from Perth to Albany. One at Manjimup and one at Pemberton, and both have a fair bit of information about the timber business in pioneer days. And if you're in Pemberton, you might as well go for a quick scamper up the Gl...

Lumberjacks cutting redwood trees in California:

I've driven across and back several times, and ridden East to West by bicycle once. Everything out there will cost you several times what it does near a city. I'd suggest taking a 20L water container and enough food to get you from Ceduna to Norseman without having to purchase on the way. I can reme...

Here's another interesting use in the field of medicine:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-03/3 ... ts/4666886

The penis enlargement industry will be salivating at the possibilities...

He must have been a Buster Keaton fan:

At the last Timber & Working with Wood show in Canberra last year, one of the booths was selling fabric-backed sandpaper in 650mm wide rolls of various grits. I bought a couple of metres of 150 grit for about $30, as I recall.

Just came across this - Willie Nelson's favourite guitar - a nylon string Martin that he bought in 1969 and is still playing. He named it after Roy Rogers horse. Apparently, he says that when the guitar dies, he'll retire. Looks like he's a bit reticent about getting repairs done on it: http://4.bp....

PU glue was first produced in the 1950s, but it certainly wasn't widely used. I did a lot of boatbuilding in the 1960s, and I can't remember PU glue being an option for boatbuilding as it is these days. The choice then was to use either resorcinol or epoxy.

There's a wonderful video shot at a Japanese university showing the effect of the cap iron and its angle and placement on the performance of a plane blade. Well worth watching. I'm pretty sure a link to this video has been posted somewhere on the forum previously, but here it is again: http://vimeo....

The first classical I built, in 1976, I sat down with a set of French curves and played around until I had what I thought was a pleasing shape for the headstock. It wasn't until a few guitars and quite a few years later that I saw a photo of a Bouchet headstock and realised that the shape I had arri...

There's supposed to be an organ music enthusiast somewhere in Canberra whose listening room is designed as an acoustic horn. Here's a couple of pics of someone's home setup in Italy. On the right is the subwoofer acoustic horn under construction (it's under the floor of the listening room), and on t...

A does it for me...it's a stronger pattern than B.

I had a good look around a few months ago for decent Mac spec analysis software and couldn't find much at all. Audacity is available for Mac. I haven't used it there (don't have a Mac), but I've used the Linux version of Audacity for plotting the spectrum of a tap test. I use either a Zoom H2 recor...

I just purchased a couple of pairs of machine heads for $30 each from an eBay seller ( http://stores.ebay.com/Taisamlu-Musical ). When they arrived I was quite pleasantly surprised by the quality. A nice thick sideplate, the posts that hold the shaft for the knobs and worm drive are actually cast as...

I remember reading somewhere that the old Spanish luthiers would store their timber in the ceiling to expose it to a wider range of temperature and humidity...

In the first guitar making book I ever bought (Classical Guitar: Design and Construction, by Mcleod and Welford, published about 40 years ago), they say at one point that the bindings improve the sound of a guitar. They base the claim on having strung up and played a guitar without bindings, and the...

Congratulations. I'd never listened to mandolin very much until I recently heard some wonderful Bach arranged for the mandolin on ABC FM, and chased down the CD - a Deutsche Grammophon release on which Avi Avital plays his arrangements of some Bach concertos and sonatas. DG have put a trailer for th...

I've read that Fleta guitars commonly have problems in conditions of low humidity, as Ignacio Fleta built in conditions of reasonably high humidity in Barcelona, and didn't have/use any means of humidity control.

Don't forget that this instrument was made at a time when the guitar was very popular with both royalty and the aristocracy - Robert de Visée, for example, was one of the favourite musicians of King Louis XIV of France, and another guitarist whose name escapes me held a similar position at the Engli...

Back in the early 1970s I spent a very happy afternoon in the Victoria & Albert Museum, looking at their musical instrument collection, and came away from the museum shop with a book of photos of their collection, titled "Musical Instruments as Works of Art". One of the most amazing instruments in b...

Anyone had great success with thermal lining in tin/ steel sheds? I recently saw a garden shed built from Kingspan panels (both walls and roof). Kingspan is panelling made from layers of colorbond steel bonded on a foam core, so no additional insulation is needed. The owner of the shed claimed that...

With a bit more hunting I did find a smaller quantity available: http://biomedcafe.com.au/cartpage/viewp ... 20-%20250g.

On a somewhat related topic, I was looking for some potassium carbonate in order to calibrate my hygrometers at something close to the humidity I want to maintain (potassium carbonate is ideal to use for calibration as the saturated salt RH value is 44% at 20C). The smallest quantity I could find wa...