Here's a Fun One--Spalted mango, bloodwood, and canarywood

[darren]

Mr. Ken C,
I have a problem with that last photo. You see, I can barely see some sanding scratches, where you just haven't put enough time in cleaning up your binding job. When you think it looks actually presentable, for an 'under construction' guitar, feel free to repost that photo. Otherwise do not make me waste my bandwidth looking at this type of image. The other images 'just' make the cut. Just barely.





....sheesh.


You set the bar too high Ken. :)

[Kevin Sjostrand]

I too have seen Canary wood that impressed me to think it would make a fine looking guitar, but I haven't seen any quartered and cut for B & S's...........John, or Ken Cierp, have you guys every had, used, or seen it for a guitar?

Kevin

[Tony_in_NYC]

How is this:


The full site:
http://edwinsonguitar.com/Edwinson_Luth ... itars.html

Looks pretty nice to me.

[Ken Hundley]

Beautiful work, Ken. I love Mango, but it is hard to work with. Spalted woods especially are tough. If I remember correctly, the spalting is caused by a bacterial infection in the wood, and is actually the beginning of deterioration, which is why it can be so difficult to work with. Sure is beautiful, though.

Fresh cut mango, to me, is as soft as basswood, but give it a couple weeks and it seems to harden right up almost like mahogany. I have not worked with canarywood. It might be a good binding for me to use when building with Padauk or wenge, though I do like the flamed maple too. Beautiful work all the way around. Keep it up!

[Darryl Young]

Very nice Ken......you have a great eye for asthetics.

[rgogo65]

Ken,
What sort of problems did you have as far as stablizing the spalted wood? OR was it NOT a problem? Beautiful job by the way...thanks,

Ray

[Tony_in_NYC]

My spalted maple headstock veneers were extremely crumbly and there is no way they could have worked for a back or sides. However, they were far more spalted than this set. But they still had to be hard to work with!

[Ben-Had]

mmm, MMMMM!! That makes me wanna go out and huge a tree. Beautiful.

[Ken C]

Ken,
What sort of problems did you have as far as stablizing the spalted wood? OR was it NOT a problem? Beautiful job by the way...thanks,

Ray

Ray,

The back wood was rather crumbly in a number of spots. I bought some of Minwax's wood stabilizer and treated both sides of the back panels, but when I came back an hour or so later, the panels had turned to potato chips and one had a pretty good split up from the bottom. I spritz some water on each side of the panel and let it sit for a bit. Once I was finally able to flatten them again, I spritzed a bit more water on each side and clamped the panel that had cracked. I let it sit this way until dry. Once dry, I removed the panel from the clamps, and was relieved to see the crack seam was staying closed on its own, so I wicked in some CA along the seam. I then joined the panels with epoxy and thickness them a bit more than what I wanted for a final thickness. I broke out the thin CA and gave both sides of the back as much CA as they could hold. I let this cure and thickness the back to my desired thickness. What a pain. I didn't put the Minwax stuff near the sides, I bent the sides first then treated the inside with CA. Once I had the box closed, I treated the outside of the rims with CA. I went through two 2 ounce bottles of CA on this wood! The body does seem pretty stable now, but I worry. I debated about using double sides with a thin mahogany veneer inside, but I didn't really have a good way of gluing up.

Time will tell if I got it stabilized enough.

Ken

[jbutler]

Ken,
Can you share your procedure for making your own purflings? What do you cut them with? etc.
Thanks,
John