Bear Claw thickness Marvin's for nylon string cross over

[Blake Dixon]

Has anyone made a nylon stringed Sitka bearclaw top guitar. I am wondering what thickness I should start with. I am looking top build two matching guitars , one left one right for my so and I. I am looking for some past examples that anyone may have done

Thanks

Blake

[Darryl Young]

That's a tough question.

Is this a traditional Classical build? If not, what bracing design will you use?

Ultimately, the stiffness of the particular piece of spruce you have on-hand will dictate how thin you can go.

[cooltouch]

It's been a few months since I've checked in here, so I'm just now seeing this thread. Your question is one that I've pondered as well. I build classicals, although I have built one steel string acoustic, but it was for my own personal use.

Some years ago, I bought two nice bearclaw sitka top sets, and I used one of the top sets in the above steel string project. The other top set still sits on my wood storage shelf.

Many, if not most, classical builders will tell you that Sitka is not the best choice for classicals, whereas steel string builders will tell you just the opposite. This is mostly because sitka tends to be denser than Euro spruce (the most traditional and thus the most preferred for classicals) and springier as well, properties that don't work as well for nylon strings as they do for steel strings. But there are a number of highly respected classical builders who have used sitka with great success. John Gilbert is probably the best known. Darryl is correct: ultimately, it comes down to the individual set of wood, and doing what must be done to that individual set to get it to sound the way you want. I have built one classical from regular sitka and it turned out very well. Loud with great projection. I built it about seven years ago, though, so I don't recall anymore its top thickness. But I do remember it was nice and stiff -- somewhat atypical for sitka. I build my classical tops with a shallow "donut" under the rosette to provide additional stiffness around the soundhole, and because of this, I can't just stick a set of calipers down into the soundhole to measure that guitar's top thickness. And I don't have one of those fancy thickness gauges that'll give you the thickness of a piece of wood just be setting it on top of the wood. I forget the name of those things. They're expensive, though. And ultimately not really necessary because you want to have your ears and your sense of touch be the final arbiter anyway.

Yep. Every piece of wood is different and will need to be evaluated on an individual basis. You can use general thickness guidelines to get you into the ballpark, but after that it's all about sound and feel.

Typically, I'll take my euro or Lutz tops down to about 0.085-0.090" and then go from there, which involves more sanding, and then I also contour my tops. I prefer my tops to be thinner along their perimeters to improve flex and thus their ability to pump air in and out of the box, not unlike the way a loudspeaker works -- which is flexible along its perimeter but stiff everywhere else. With sitka, I would not hesitate pushing the thickness numbers some. Say to 80 to 85 thousandths, and in the case of bearclaw sitka, probably even a bit less. Again, though, it will depend on the individual set of wood.

Anyway, I will say this: don't get hung up on details like this. Instead, just go for it. It's too easy to let little things like this become amplified out of all proportion, the result being a stymied project. Which you don't want. Use your ear and your sense of touch as a guide. Give some serious thought to the bracing pattern you will use and shape your braces carefully and gracefully, and you can probably make them a bit thinner than you normally would as well. Of the popular bracing designs out there, I prefer the Miguel Rodriguez pattern because it provides for the greatest number of frequency resonance possibilities due to its asymmetric design -- there's probably a better way to express that, but I think you get the point. Remember that a classical is quite different from a steel string: the goal of the typical classical builder is to build a guitar that is teetering on the brink of collapsing in on itself. It must be both light and strong; a guitar using a minimal amount of materials, yet designed so these minimal materials can provide a maximum of structural support.

Good luck and go for it!