Official Luthiers Forum!

There is a spot in my maple neck that I thought I could carve past. I'm not sure at this point if I can carve it out, but I'll see how far I can go. It is not for a client. It's just another guitar I'm making. I guess I'm just going to have to get over it because I'm not abandoning this neck... Just thought I'd share... Any suggestions? Should I let it bother me?

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Beauty spot!

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Thank you Colin!

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

It depends on the person. Me personally, I see wood as an act of God or Mother Nature or what ever you want to call it. There are no cosmetic flaws in a perfect act of nature. That is there for a reason, it grew there, it's wood a once living and beautiful thing in it's own right.

If it does not carve out and if it bothers you, there is always the option of some kind of inlay.

Careful application of wood bleach will lighten it some and make it less noticable. Sometimes wood bleach will "eat away" a little bit of material but a little filler can remedy that. Household bleach will work and is a bit less aggressive. It might take a few applications. You could do a "burst" on the heel and peghead or use a toned lacquer. Between bleaching and toning you might make it "disappear"

I've successfully used wood bleach for a similar "defect" in a neck before.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Sorry, no advice for remedy, but yes that would absolutely drive me nuts. Maybe cut that full length of lamination out? Bummer. Sorry, bro.

_________________
sweat the small stuff.

inlay a similar looking piece of wood on the other side of the neck inlay.
WOW it was in the tree!!
Mike

_________________
Mike Collins

I unearthed a similar flaw in the maple neck of a mando I made for one of the challenges here. It was for me so I just considered the "flaw" as "character." I didn't take any close ups but here on page 5 you can see a picture of how it looks on the completed instrument:

viewtopic.php?f=10133&t=37268&start=100

I don't even notice it anymore.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

My build for the last challenge had two http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=647385#p647385 A dark spot in the endgrain, and a small knot where it meets the shoulder. But I was going for a fairly rustic style, so it looks more appropriate than in this case with the lamination stripes.

Another possible solution would be to cut the entire heel off and glue on a block of different wood. Probably with a black line like you currently have on the heel cap. Or you could go totally radical and cut through it two or three times at different angles, and then glue it back together with black lines in the cuts (or maybe black-mahogany-black), making a sort of stacked heel but with non-parallel lines

In Japan there is an interesting asthetic concept called wabi-sabi which involves accepting and appreciating the imperfections that occur in the natural world and celebrating them as symbols of true beauty. A potter might emphasize a slighy irregularity in shape or a crack in a pot. The gardener should cherish the single leaf that falls onto a perfectly raked stone path - and the luthier makes no attempt to disguise irregularities in the ratural materials.

I would have no trouble living with this as it is. If a naturally occuring imperfection drives us nuts then I think that says something interesting about us. But if it is your own stuff-up that is a different story!

Are you leaving the guitar natural? If so, that was nature's mark. If you are doing a stain or tinted lacquer, you can just feather in a dark heel.

I'm not going to do major surgery to fix this. The neck is fitted to the body and the headplate is attached and bound. I can't help but think that any attempts at "fixing" this would make it even more visible. I have some room to keep carving. If I'm lucky I'll carve past it or it will be reduced in size. I actually carved past a spot on a cherry neck on a former build. If it's still there, I'll likely live with it... Hopefully, the guitar will be attractive enough the spot won't jump out... The beauty spot on the girl above doesn't diminish her attractiveness... (She may have put that on herself...)

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

As you carve try to notice if the spot is getting bigger or smaller. If it's getting bigger you might want to leave well enough alone. If you are leaving it all natural you could use potassium permanganate to "age" the surface to it's eventual color, and then use pigment powder to blend the dark spot in.
As to the SYT above, I'm sure the "spot" was added on top of the 1/2 lb of make up caked on her face.

I use oil based enamel paints and an artist's brush to touch up small inclusions in maple. Add a bit of tint to a white enamel to get the proper shade. You can't make it invisible but you can lessen the obvious nature of it.

It's noteworthy that we struggle to make our hand-built, nature-sourced creations look as if they were made by precision machines from flawless, homogeneous materials. Homogeneous except for the wood grain which, after filling any pores, we encase in a layer of shiny (if quite thin) plastic.

The other aspect of beauty is the sound it makes...

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com