Official Luthiers Forum!

Does anyone besides me seem to get more waste than brace, when planing split pieces?  I bought the Italian Moon Spruce brace stock at the Swap Meet, split out some pieces from one hunk that looked pretty straight. Now I = find that coming up with nice straight and vertical grain creates as much waste as brace.  The waves in the grain are limiting the length of the straight braces I get out of each piece.

 

As I look at the picture, some of them look crooked, but I think the angle is deceiving.  I'll check them.  But the grain is straight, and there is no runout in these.

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I always split, but there's a way to do it.

Always split in halves. Otherwise, you don't have equal resistence on each side of the split. But you only have to split once in each direction; once split, plane the split faces straight, and saw from those. You wn't have near the waste you are now seeing, and your braces will be as strong as they can be.

Hey Waddy, Is that a brick cutting chisel? I have a blue one like that and it works great cutting blocks and bricks. Never thought to use it on bracing?

Now I'm wondering what I have used in the past to do this myself, a chisel I think.

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Grumpy, that's exactly what I did.  I think the wavy grain in this piece of spruce was the real culprit.  Those pieces to the right of the board are all split pieces.  but each has a hump in the middle that limits the length of the braces you can get.  As you can see from the last pic, 10" is about max, and most won't get that.  Some I did what you suggested, but most took a while to get a flat along the grain.  Funny how things don't always split the way you think they should.

Bruce, that's exactly what it is.  I knew I needed something dull, so as to not influence the direction of the split, and figured it was as good as anything.  I ground a nice dual bevel on it, and rounded off the sharp edge.  It is just enough of a wedge to pop the split open.  Maybe I should be using something else.  I also have a flat 1/8" thick blade there, also with a dulled double bevel.  I use it when the pieces get smaller.  You can barely see it under the hammer and the other chisel.

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Grumpy, I just re-read your post.  Am I trying to split too small?  At about what size do you stop splitting and start sawing.  For the record, I'm making Fan Braces for a Classical here, so they will end up between  3 - 4 mm wide and 4 - 7 mm high.  My bigger braces were split from some very straight grained Sitka.  I just thought the Italian Moon Spruce might be best for these.

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I split whatever piece I have in two, and that's that. If it's a 2x4, then it will split to 1x2 <g>

 All we want is for the split to provide us a true face, one that follows the wood's weakest line(which is why you're brick thing looks like it's perfect. And heck, I have one of those and didn't know what it's for!). I often will take a hand saw and saw a kerf into the billet, only about 1/8" deep, to start my split. I have a dull, old camper's hatchet(the cheap, cheap ones) that I use, but when i can't find it or there's a hardwood wedge nearby, I'll use that. Those wedges left over from roughing out necks are handy for lotsa jobs... I have a handful of flamed maple door wedges, for example <g>

I need to make a new batch of braces very soon; maybe i'll document the process.....

Thanks, Grumpy.  Documentation of the process would be really great. 

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars