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  • Home
  • About
  • Materials
  • Design
  • Gallery
    • Current Shop Happenings
    • 2018 – Present
    • 2014 – 2017
    • 2008 – 2013
  • Contact and Ordering
I’ve had quite a few questions about how I prepa I’ve had quite a few questions about how I prepare my shellac for pore filling. First, a cheap coffee grinder to break everything down. Then into a laboratory sieve, vibrated by a motor salvaged from a personal massager and secured with a hose clamp. A soft-bristle paintbrush helps coax the shellac back towards the centre. Whatever doesn’t make it through goes back into the grinder, and we do it all again. Simple, effective, and unquestionably legitimate laboratory equipment.
Closing the ring completes the structural network, Closing the ring completes the structural network, fundamentally changing its connectivity and stiffness distribution. Of course, the boundary conditions change when you attach it to the rim, but that’s an additional variable, not a reason to ignore the structure you’ve just built. If anything, understanding how the plate responds at each successive stage of assembly is the whole point of measuring it. The more we understand about how these structures behave, the more deliberately we can make decisions about the finished instrument, and ultimately, how it responds to the player.
Sit with the history of Osage orange for a second. Sit with the history of Osage orange for a second. Its ancestors grew in a world of Pleistocene giants, their seeds dispersed across a younger continent by megafauna that have long since disappeared. Centuries later, its wood was so fiercely prized for bow-making that the stories go that hunters would trade a horse and a blanket just to carry it into the woods. But this particular piece skipped the battlefields. It gets to be a guitar back instead. And it’s one of my absolute favourite woods.
After years of workshop trials, independent chemis After years of workshop trials, independent chemistry experiments, and acoustic tracking, I’ve collected my finishing workflows into a single reference manual: A Unified Finishing System for Guitar Family Instruments. It documents the formulations, underlying reasoning, and application methods I use, including: * Water- and alcohol-based casein surface consolidation * Dry-packed pore filling * Glyceryl rosinate ground * Heat-processed, modified shellac blend * Rosinate Anchor Oil (RAO) I don’t believe in gatekeeping technical knowledge that could help advance our craft. No secret ingredients. No mailing lists. No paywalls. Exact formulations, batch weights, and CAS numbers. All of it, out in the open. Free to download, use, adapt, and share. Link in bio. If the work proves useful to you, consider supporting the Canadian Music Therapy Fund: musictherapyfund.ca
On this latest build, I managed to increase monopo On this latest build, I managed to increase monopole mobility by 14.7%, reduce modal mass by 12.3%, and maintain a similar forward rotation of the bridge. Those numbers represent a substantial improvement in mechanical efficiency. But a number, by itself, doesn’t make a guitar good. To me, measurements are a bit like a kitchen thermometer. They’re useful tools for consistency in an inconsistent medium, but they can’t tell you whether the food tastes good. Once the guitar is assembled, you’re dealing with a coupled system. Everything interacts. Boundary conditions matter. The wood has its own ideas. Universal recipes don’t work, and a measurement taken in isolation can only tell you so much. I don’t measure to chase rigid rules, establish some sort of building supremacy, or convince anyone that a spreadsheet knows more about guitars than a guitarist does. I measure to challenge my own assumptions. To understand what I’ve built, rather than simply what I intended to build. To find out which of my ideas survive contact with reality, and to ask better questions of the wood. The numbers help me understand the questions. Listening tells me whether I like the answers. So, ultimately, are you team math or team magic?
A couple of sessions into the French polish, and t A couple of sessions into the French polish, and the shellac is beginning to cooperate with my unreasonable expectations. #frenchpolishfriday
“A song sleeps in all things, which dream on and “A song sleeps in all things, which dream on and on, and the world begins to sing, if you only strike the magic word.” — Joseph von Eichendorff Let’s go.
Ever string up a guitar and think to yourself… Ever string up a guitar and think to yourself… “Well. That just irrevocably changed how I build guitars.” Yeah. About that. (For the approximately six people who care: monopole mobility = 32.24 s/kg. Bridge rotation ≈ 1°.)
Guitar, meet bridge. Bridge, you’ll be staying h Guitar, meet bridge. Bridge, you’ll be staying here.
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