Stuart Campbell has started working on the handmade guitar he is donating to Folk at the Salmon Bothy, which will be raffled to raise Club funds.
Tickets £10 each available from Bob Philips or at any of our forthcoming events. Maximum of 250 tickets available. Draw will take place at the Haal in June.
Here’s the first update from Stuart as he starts the build.
Every story has to start somewhere, the story of this guitar begins with wood and a plan…
There are many plans available on-line for all types of guitars. I draw my own, mostly because I’m aiming to make a unique instrument, not a copy of some commercial brand. A plan is just a good intention (though we all know what road that can take us down); my destination is a guitar that sounds good and looks good. Slavishly following somebody else’s minute measurements is no guarantee of success. So if this plan looks a bit vague or unfinished, that’s because I’m more interested in having a conversation with the wood, listening to what it’s telling me so I can adjust things as I work. It’s an organic process. Beyond this guitar having a nominally OM / 000 body size and 648mm scale length, things like the exact position and dimensions of the braces, for example, will depend on what the wood is telling me.
All the instruments I’ve built lately have been made from mostly Scottish, and some reclaimed, timber. I like the idea of the instruments being ‘home grown’, but it’s environmentally friendly too; there’s no good reason to transport wood from the other side of the world, when we have perfectly good timber in our own back yard. I have been fortunate to source my timber from Logie Sawmill near Forres. This means I can select particular cuts of wood directly from the yard – and the staff are now very familiar with what I’m looking for. Their timber comes from within a 50 mile radius of the mill. These boards were cut from a Walnut tree that was blown over in a garden in Forres.
So, this guitar will have Walnut for the back and sides – the photo gives you an idea of how the figuring can work with the shape (the exact cut wiil depend on what I see when it’s inspected under magnification). Apart from the fact that Walnut is aesthetically pleasing, as a ‘tone wood’ it’s characterised as giving bright trebles and warm bass notes, with a balanced midrange and harmonics, all of which get better as it ages.
There are thousands of articles extolling the virtues of Alaskan Sitka Spruce and why it is so sought after for guitar soundboards. Much of that is unquestionably true, but it’s not the only wood that works. Douglas Fir (grown locally) shares many of the same properties as Alaskan Sitka Spruce. For one thing, Forres and Sitka (in Alaska) both sit at 57° north and share a very similar (maritime) climate. All of which means the trees grow slowly, resulting in quarter-sawn boards that have the optimum 8 to 12 growth rings per 25mm. Douglas Fir’s physical properties are also very similar to Sitka Spruce. For example, Sitka Spruce has a Janka Hardness of 2270 N, an Elastic Modulus of 11.03 GPa and weighs 425 kg/m3, Douglas Fir is comparable at: 2760N / 12.17 GPa / 510 Kg/m3 (for comparison, Adirondack, another favoured top wood, is 2180 N / 10.76 GPa / 435Kg/m3 ). In short, Douglas Fir is pretty much in the ballpark – and, more to the point, I like the tone it produces, but…
… but these boards are quite special. Logie Timber have milled thousands of Douglas Fir logs, but when they slab-cut one trunk they came across a grain pattern that nobody had seen before. It has similar markings as prized ‘bear-claw’ Sitka Spruce (zoom in on the photo and you’ll see lines radiating out, a bit like a fern pattern). Unlike ‘bear-claw’, it seemed certain it had occurred as part of its growth, although what had caused it was unknown. Research suggests that the pattern is ‘silking’, meaning the grain was structurally cross-bonded. This means the timber is stiffer and stronger than usual – and extremely rare. From a guitar building point of view, stiffness is very desirable – the top can be thinner and provide enhanced projection and sustain, which I think are some of the characteristics of the guitar I debuted at the November Folk Club. The photo shows the template just to give an idea of what the top will look like – I’ll decide on the exact cut when I get to that stage… later (watch this space).
