In 2017 the Badalona Guitar Associacion organized an excellent event centred around the figure of Antonio de Torres Jurado. Events included a competition for young guitarists, an exhibition of copies of Torres’ guitars, concerts and some very interesting presentations. I was invited to talk about my work restoring historic guitars.

We like to stay away from flat-sawn wood in guitar-making because it tends to be less dimensionally stable and will shrink or swell to a greater degree with humidity changes. The main exceptions are when we want something to bend easily (guitar linings) or because the flat-sawn wood is nicer to look at. This is the case with bird’s-eye maple. I have included a photo, not of the beautiful look of good bird’s-eye but rather the endgrain showing the tree rings so you can see that the wood is totally flat-sawn. If you cut the same maple radially as you would any other wood for guitar-making the eyes don’t show up. You are looking at a the side of the guitar with the binding rebate cut exposing a clean view of the 2mm thick back. You can see fine dark lines in the maple which are horizontal – just the opposite of the dark vertical lines you see on the end of a typical top or even on the inside of the soundhole.

I love this wood. I know, I have published pictures of similar wood in the past but I just can’t get enough of it. This might well be the last set that I have with this wonderful colour and texture. I took this little video just to show what this guitar would look like with no binding and purfling. Who needs extra decoration? Well, actually there is a good reason for those elements. The binding protects the endgrain of the top and back from changes in humidity and at the same time fromm knocks and bumps which can also cause cracks. Furthermore, softwood takes bumps very badly no matter what the grain orientation. The purfling, by sticking to the top on the long grain, holds the binding much better than if the binging were only glued to the endgrain of the top. This is achieved by the staircase cut shown in the diagram. The purfling gives long grain for the binding to stick to. The endgrain is only a problem at the endblock position but as the binding ends there it is very important that it does not unstick.