Tasmanian Acoustic Tonewood Interview 4 Manufacturing process

For some of our Internet users who are not yet very familiar with the techniques related to your profession, can you explain us your complete manufacturing process. From the birth of a tree to the making of a set for an instrument?

There are many many life paths in which the material used to create a guitar has come from.

To answer this question, I will use Tasmanian Blackwood as an example.

After the tree has reached a mature age of approximately 60-80 years it is then either felled, starts to die or is forced over in a wild Tassie storm. We then search for these trees/logs assess their usability and cut it to lengths that are manageable for our mill and move it to the milling location.

Each log is carefully inspected for quite some time (often too long) in order to achieve an understanding as to how it will be best processed into quarter sawn flitches/cants, the quartered pieces are then cut on a bandsaw mill.

Once sawn each piece is then inspected again and sometimes run over a table saw to remove any unnecessary live edges or defects.

After each flitch is trimmed and washed, we photograph, measure and document each piece so that we can track our stock well into the future.

This often happens when we are racking the timber which is a process of carefully laying each board very flat with a perpendicular racking stick across the board to allow air flow while it dries.

This is a very crucial and time consuming part to get perfect, if not racked correctly then timber movement in the way of twisting, cupping or cracking can destroy some beautiful timber.

After many moons go by and my drum kit has has had a good workout 😉 the timbers are all inspected moved and re-racked to counteract any amount of movement.

After this the timber may lay for five plus years resting, breathing and relaxing.

It is then woken up and re-sawn, heavily inspected, graded, and sat on a shelf to rest again.

This is when a small percentage of that tree may earn the title of Tonewood.

The reaming material is used for fine furniture or craft, zero waste.

We then photograph each book matched set, measure, inspect again and list each individual set online for Luthiers to choose effortlessly!

The Luthier then creates the musical masterpiece for the world to see and hear for generations to come.