I have two problems writing here: I can’t always find the time and when I do I don’t always have a good idea for something you all will enjoy. Sometimes I get ideas from something I see on the makers’ forums like a recent post about guitar necks. When I started out I used the only cedar I could find which was dry enough and I didn’t have the luxury of rejecting the blanks that had the “wrong” orientation. Then came a period where I only wanted perfectly quartered blanks which had been split to avoid any runout.

Shortly thereafter I began to find what I really wanted in cedar for my guitar necks. Strength and stability are paramount for a neck and mostly that comes from the species of wood – cedar is fantastic. Splitting the neck from a larger piece assures a good strength and so I insist on that too. What has changed is that I will often prefer pieces which are up to 40 degrees off quarter because the perfectly quartered ones from the same piece are not flexible enough. I require my necks to bend just a tiny bit to give me the perfect relief once fretted and strung up and sometimes a neck is just too stiff. You can control this by testing the neck and subsequent thinning and controlling the fretting process. Some makers make a very stiff neck and then work the relief into the fretboard so there are lots of options. Where possible I try to start with the wood that will give me the best result right off and especially will make it easy to play.

This CD was released some time ago but I just got my copy this week. I always love to hear my guitars played by great guitarists and Andrea proved with volume I of this collection that he is up to the task. This second volume is just as impressive. He uses a Santos Hernández copy which I made in 2018. You can buy both cds from Da Vinci Classics.

This is one of the stages of building which gives me satisfaction. When I fit the shaped sides into the slots in the neck it starts to look like a guitar. There is still an awful lot of work to do but if feels like progress. Also, as I have often stated, bending the sides is one of my favourite tasks in the workshop. Except when you get a set of sides which will not bend no matter what you do. I don’t know how to recognise those beforehand but I would sure like to be able to. Below is and example; this just happened last week. A break can happen at the waist if you are inexperienced or in a rush but this sort of thing on a larger radius bend is surely due to a quality of the wood which just makes it impossible. Having your sides too thick can cause problems too but these were 1,6 mm so it’s not that either.

Many of the dark woods we use for guitar-making have light-coloured sapwood which is usually lost in the cutting process. It seems also more prone to fungus or insect attacks so it can have holes or a spalted figure. In any case it can make for a dramatic look in a finished instrument and if it is relatively healthy we like to use it. This is the most typical configuration with the sapwood in a more or less defined central space but you can find it in very interesting patches on a flat-sawn piece of timber. If you can find sides with some sapwood too it adds nicely to the effect.

Which rosette do you like for your next guitar? I make my rosettes one at a time in a channel and then later install them in the top. My first attempts at installing rosettes directly resulted in considerable warping of the top and a few disasters as the wood swelled because of the moisture from the glue. These days things go quite smoothly. Bone makes a nice change from all wood rosettes and using shapes of solid wood is also a different technique. You can’t see it here but because the diamond shapes are not end grain they are very bright and shiny. I don’t often use coloured wood in my guitars but here you can see a green which contrasts with the natural red in the mosaic.