Official Luthiers Forum!

When buying lumber for Backs & Sides, what is the rule. Should you buy quarter sawn, or what?

I finally bought a Mini-Max MM24 Bandsaw and now I need to learn all the different ways hardwoods should be cut for guitar use.

I got a great deal too. The sales rep called me and said he had recieved this saw and it was damaged during shipping. Just some cosmetic damage to the outside frame and a couple of dings in the table. They sell on the net for $3695.00 and he told me he would sell it to me for $2500.00 I couln't pass that up. Here a link to a picture:
http://www.minimax-usa.com/bandsaws/mm24.htmlBlueSpirit38645.6365625

You STOLE it. That's a great saw

Always look for quartersawn lumber. There are instances where you don't want it, but as a general rule, that's the best way. One exception is quilted maple, which won't show the figure if quartersawn.


Don Williams38645.6504050926

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

While quartersawn is always preferable, it has been my experience that flat sawn wood -- or at least wood that is sawn subtatially off quarter -- may work fine for backs, but I've had problems with flatsawn wood when used for sides. It tends to get wavy and develops ripples along bends. I've had this problem with flat sawn cocobolo and Brazilian rw.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

And some neck stock you want dead flatsawn if you laminate it, then when you turn it up on its side you have the grain running vertical.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

That's a beauty of a bandsaw. What a deal!!

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Congratulations on a great buy. It is a very nice saw. If you are going to do a volume of resawing (large runs) as opposed to a few boards at a time I would highly recommend as power feeder.

They are really helpful both for consistency and to reduce labor. Unless you are doing alot of resawing you should not need a dedicated resaw specific feeder. The type of feeder to look for is typically multi-speed and reversable and can be used for various types of woodworking operations. The multiple speeds are useful for adjusting feed speed to the type of wood you are resawing.

For most models you can buy an extra base so the feeder can be mounted quickly from machine to machine. I have a resaw bandsaw with a feeder and switch my feeder from Resaw to table saw (for ripping) quite often.

Shawn Any suggestions on mfg. & model?

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Yeah Shawn
Got any Pics?

It used to be that these type of feeders were only manufactured in Europe, mostly in Italy. Because of that at one time you could only get them in 3 phase electric as found in Europe. Today almost all of them are made in the far east, but still based on the european design and are available in single and three phase. Just like many other woodworking tools today, almost all of them are made in the same factories so picking a brand is a matter of finding a company that has the quality control, terms and price that works for you. For 15 years I imported and sold European Woodworking machinery and the price for feeders today is a 1/3 of what it used to be.

Here are some of them from the Grizzly catalog Grizzly catalog. Grizzly shows a picture of a type that is dedicated for use with bandsaws but because of the design and geometry of the feeder it is not nearly as adaptable as the multi-purpose stock feeders that can be positioned from the side or the top of the workpiece. The dedicated bandsaw feeders are very good, just less versatile in case you want to use them for other machining operations.