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From: Ross
Remote Name: 76.101.10.136
Date: 04 Jun 2007
Time: 11:29:09 -0400
Luthier’s Weblog 6/4/07 Just came from battling entropy with my Echo weedeater. The forces of disorder require unyielding opposition. No reinforcements in sight. I fear renewed onslaughts. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out. I wonder what a yard service would charge . The robot luthier looks at what he has designed, and turns his attention toward box construction. Materials must be decided upon. He really doesn’t get too romantic about the whole Wood Thing, having been persuaded through experience that most any wood that is at least ballpark suited for a particular task can be fashioned to adequacy. In fact, he is free to pay very reasonable prices for timbers that have nice vertical grain and uniform feature because the coloring may not be consistent or the figure less than extravagant. He realizes that extremely figured wood is often less stable than it’s plainer neighboring board. The builder decides on East Indian Rosewood for the back and sides. He feels that this relatively stiff wood will present a steeper vibrational transfer gradient to the soft spruce of the top than would a softer side wood. His reasoning is that the less energy that is transferred to the sides, the greater will be the amount expended on sound propagation from the top. For this same reason, he decides on Englemann spruce for the top, it being less stiff than Sitka, Redwood or Cedar. He much admires these other top woods, but believes the gains to be made by establishing a compliant top : stiff side ratio clearly indicate his wood choice. As with his neck design, his aim is to direct and focus as much string energy as possible to the top. He chooses Sitka, however, for his braces. The supreme toughness and strength to weight ratio of this species allows very stiff braces for their mass. Carbon fiber may be a future consideration for bracing, but at some point, adhesion considerations of brace to top limit the amount of stiffness that may reasonably be taken advantage of. He is doing some mental modeling of this idea, but does not see advantages for his application .Yet. Ross Teigen 8:55 am