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Today the Santa Ana winds continued to sweep through Orange County, CA. My skin feels like a shedding snake. My shop hygrometer simply displayed "LL", which means that the humidity is lower than the hygrometer's operating range. CNN's weather page says the humidity here was as low as 6% today.

The humidity and temperatures stay within a thin enough range here that I generally don't worry about having a humidity controlled shop. But when the winds blow humidity down to 6%, it's time to get worried. So I pulled all my guitars-under-construction into the house in a room with a small humidifier, which brought it up to about 35% in the room.

Anybody else have to deal with such a drastic drop in humidity, and if you don't have a climate controlled shop, how do you deal with the temporary shifts? I don't much mind bringing ongoing work in the house for a few days, but building comes to a complete halt until things get normal again.

Kelby, where are you at? I'm in Westminster and my shop got down to 36%.... man its been real dry here! I couldn't get it up high enough, so no gluing stuff for me today!

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

Hey guys this past week here in the great white north It got to 6% according to environment Canada and the hygrometer in my shop said 24% before I hit the humidifier. This all happened with a severe snow storm last Sunday and I didn't get out to the shop till Tuesday to turn on the humidifier. Saturday night the hygrometer read 38% so it was a quick drop. I should have taken a picture of the maple back before I turned on the humidifer, it was crazy how bowed back it was. My guess would be that there was a 1/8-3/16 gap if I were to hold a straight edge across the outside of the back.

After the humidifier was on for about 24 hours, the shop was up at 41% and the back was set back to the 15' radius it was built with.

How big is your shop Kelby? could you make a small section of it climate controlled? that way you wouldn't need a large humidifier, just something that works from the Saly Ann or similar. But if this is not a regular occurance, you may just have to be patient...........

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Santa Anna winds = Central Cal. I think.

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Peter, I'm in Tustin. It's been dry lately, but today was at a completely different level.

Rod, the shop isn't huge --- about 28x20. I could pull in a couple small humidifiers if needed, but it doesn't usually get this bad.

In honor of Hesh, I recently converted a small downstairs bathroom into my
stable humidity environment. The room has a small dehumidifier and a
small humidifier set to keep the RH at 45%, I built a few shelves for wood
and keep all my parts in there when I'm not working on them. Having this
set up has really helped to stabilize all my builds since it has been up and
running.
The main shop is in my garage and I do rum a humidifier in there when it
gets really bad, but at this point, the place is too leaky to keep stable all the
time.

Louis

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- Louis Freilicher

Oh No! Not another learning experience!

[QUOTE=K.O.] Santa Anna winds = Central Cal. I think.[/QUOTE]

Nope. I lived in the San Joaquin Valley for 9 years, and in L.A. County for almost 15. It's usually pretty dry up in the San Joaquin Valley, and winds do come blowing through from time to time. But the Santa Annas are more of a phenomenon that occurs sort of southeast of L.A., west of the mountains, but inland from the coast. Caused by hot dry winds coming off the high desert, blowing through the mountain passes over to the west. Eastern Orange County, San Bernardino County, and Riverside County seem to get them the worst. I've seen 18-wheelers blown over on their sides by the SA's along I-10, especially through SB Co.

6% is incredibly low, and likely won't last for very long at all. If I were having to deal with that kind of dryness, I'd move my instruments in progress into a small room and run a humidifier until the shop humidity got back to normal again.

Best,

MichaelMichael McBroom39054.5728125

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Live to Play, Play to Live

I know what you mean Kelby, I've had two sets of sides bend for a couple weeks now, I'm afraid to put them in the mold and glue the blocks in. If I do, once the humidity returns to normal they will never fit in the mold again. I'm just biding my time by working on necks and rosettes.

It can't stay this way forever, can it?

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

We called winds like that Spring in southern New Mexico. At least once during the windy season a semi would try to go through a pass and get blown over, a mobile home or two would be blown over because someone wouldn't to use the hurricane straps. (Its the desert, there aren't any hurricanes here! They are just trying to rip us off!)
The wind was one of the more compelling reasons we left Las Cruces.

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Aoibeann