Black Locust

[Skarsaune]

Black locust side after fuming with ammonia.
Walnut binding.

A9A810BF-C220-4E2C-8A59-FB32F62AE521.jpeg

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Beautiful. Golden with the walnut is a nice contrast.

[Stray Feathers]

Looks great! Can you share more on this guitar please (or have I missed it somewhere)? I have a Black Locust set ahead of me, will do for an OM. I'm very interested to work with it. When and how do you do the fuming, and does it sand off? Does Robinia (Locust) tend to darken anyway? Thanks - Bruce W.

[TEETERFAN]

Looks great! That’s a tasty combination. More pics, please, thanks for sharing!

[Skarsaune]

This is (I think) the first I’ve posted of it. I’ll look back thru pics and start a project blog if I’ve got some.

000, 12 fret, short-ish scale. Couch picker.
Neck is Frazier magnolia I cut on our property, head plate, fingerboard, bridge, and binding will all be walnut that we’ve cut.
Bolt on neck.

I bought some nice QS locust from a semi-local wood hoarder. Resawed some sets. The locust was super crack-y.

I fumed the body when it was completed. Built a frame to hang it from, then placed it and an open container of ammonia in a large clear bag and sealed it up. Let it set overnight and voila. I did test samples with smaller pieces to prove it out. The wood can go green if you have too much ammonia or too long. I was shooting for this nice golden brown. It does not sand off, which is great. It also glues just fine afterwards. I let the body air out / off gas for a good while before I did anything else.

The extra BL pieces that are hanging around darkened just a little. It’s pretty yellow in its normal state.

[Stray Feathers]

After seeing your photo I started looking into it. There is a useful Fine Woodworking piece here:

https://www.finewoodworking.com/project ... -white-oak

It talks about different strengths of ammonia, and different lengths of time fuming. What did you use? And I am curious to know if the fuming affects a softwood top? I wondered about fuming the back and the glued-up rim before closing the box.

[Skarsaune]

Lemon scented regular household cleaning ammonia from the dollar store. I put two jelly jars in my apparatus.

I also used a clear bag, so I could monitor progress.

In the project blog post, you can see one of my samples that’s quite green. That’s a 1x4-ish slice, hung in a jar full of ammonia.

The ammonia didn’t affect the spruce top, walnut binding, nor any of the multiple woods in the rosette.

You could fume your parts ahead of time. I glued test pieces together to make sure glue up wasn’t affected. I just chose to do mine complete.

[Stray Feathers]

Thanks for sharing this really useful information. And thanks for anticipating my question about the effect on glue! I'm really looking forward to my own locust build now. One other bit of information I found interesting on the Rockler site:

https://www.rockler.com/how-to/fuming-wood/

It says that temperature affects the colour of the fumed wood, with cooler temperatures showing more greenish hues, and warmer (80 -85º) bringing more reds out. Bruce W.

[BEJ]

If anything turns green just make sure it's the wood and not you.

Bruce,

[RHayes]

Haven't been doing any guitar building for over a year so been lurking a bit to get re inspired. This is an old post but was wondering about the black locust guitar outcome. I obtained a few black locust logs and milled some future(I hope) building wood. The photo was from March 2021 and it is drying nicely. I'm in the "patience grasshopper" mode for now.