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I have read some on reso materials for metal body. I see german silver is the best but what about other materials like copper, Brass, steel etc. and what is the gage that one would use?... I'm just researching this for a possible build in the future.
Thanks is advance... Jerry

Hopefully Chris Paulick will chime in, if not find his wonderful archived discussions on building a tricone at MIMF. So called German Silver (aka bell brass) is a common material, in part because of it workability and ease of silver brazing. Some are made of mild steel - it can also be silver brazed or tig welded. There are sound clips at NRP of both brass and steel guitars - you should be able to compare the difference.

I had a wild hair idea of making one out of titanium (would you call that a TiCone?) but I happen to work in a metal fab shop and one of my buddies is a Ti welder for Moots cycles so I have some equipment that would make it easier. It would be light but very expensive, I think in a bushed finish it would look wonderful.

Any suggestions as to where to buy materials? I will have to check out MIMF for Chris's threads. Your idea for titanium sounds interesting. Wonder what that would sound like? Brushed would look good!
Thanks for your help here. I'm just kickin' the idea around.

GW, I work in a metal fab shop and our catalogs can supply "German silver" (aka nickle silver), various "bell brass" alloys, as well as all kinds of mild and stainless alloys in about any gauge you could want. Find a sheet metal shop that is willing to order for you or find one of the on line places that will sell in the quantity that you want.

Your choice of alloy will depend in part on your fabrication equipment - how are you going to cut and shape it, and secondly, how will you join it (silver braze, tig weld, etc). I happen to have access to a Trump laser cutter which I can send CADD files to, and I both silver braze and weld. I also have milling machines available to make jigs and fixtures.

As I said, the titanium idea was a wild dream - materials would have been over a grand and even tho I can tig weld mild and stainless, I wouldn't attempt it on Ti. However one of my buddies can weld it so the idea would be for me at form the pieces and he would put it together.

How would it sound? I happen to believe that there is a difference in sound between various metals used in resonators, but that the cone is the largest contributor. I know a guy who builds aluminum resonators - they sound pretty darn good so I would expect Ti to also. Now that I've build my wooden tricone I doubt that I'll ever do a metal one - it would be a huge amount of work for a one-off.

The german silver is around 20 gage. It's soldered and not welded. It's all in the MINF tut in the library. Brass or what I call yellow brass is a bit bright and even more if you use a brass slide. It's a bit too harsh for my taste. Steel is a little darker sounding which I like over the brass for blues. GS which is also called white brass and nickel brass (same stuff as frets) to me is the best sounding is probably why it was used on the first Tricones. Check out those tuts at MIMF library and all the others attached to it as it list where to find the GS but last I bought it was sometime ago so I don't know what the min. order now is or the price. At the time I had to purchase enough that yeilded 3 bodies and it was around $350 for it if I remember right. It's probably double that now. The Nickel plating was about $450. As for copper it 's too soft as the aneal of the GS is pretty soft too but not like copper. I've heard an aluminum body and I didn't care for it either. Getting a Tricone cover plate might be tricky to get but I'm sure you can locate them.
There are a few ways to cut it. A bandsaw with the proper blade might be the easiest and can be used to knotch the top and back too. I used a router with an end mill and template guides but that's just me. You will need access to a brake and a shear to cut the rough pieces to size. I found a sheetmetal place that sheared the pieces for me and a metal roofer guys had a break. They also ran the top and back pieces through the rolls that flatten them up nicely. You might want to check out some places in your area.
But check out the tut and see if it answers your questions.

This is probably a dumb question, but what is the "MINF tut", and where do I find it? I'm a pretty fair metal fabricator, so a metal bodied guitar is right up my alley.

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That would be a typo - it is MIMF (which stands for Musical Instrument Makers Forum). You need to join and be logged in, then you can search its archives. Chris is refering to a very long and detailed tutorial - you may have to hunt around to find it.

http://www.mimf.com/

I happen to have an autocad drawing of the top of a tricone - it can be printed and used as the start for your plans or sent directly to a laser cutter. If you want to send me an e-mail addy I could send it to you both as a .dwg and .pdf. I've also got plans for a metal biscuit (StewMac I think) and a woodie spider (Beard), but they are not in the public domain so you would half to go back to the source.

thanks for the clarification, I found the "library" information, it's in this post, scroll down to the "resonator"section for links to the archived threads:

http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=913

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Blog on Making Stuff: http://www.McGlynnOnMaking.com