I took my new shipment of NYC Water Tank Redwood, to George Thomas's shop today to saw it into usable tonewood sets. I am very pleased with the results. George has a new Grizzley Imports band saw that does a wonderful re-sawing job. I should have enough redwood tonewood for the rest of my days.
Here is George Thomas, luthier, making a careful cut on an eleven inch slab of Redwood. He cut off enough of this to make two sets for guitars. Then we ripped the piece in half to make ukulele tone boards. 5 1/2 inches was plenty as I prefer two piece book matched tops. This big Grizzley saw cut the eleven inches perfectly, Plenty of power and straight as a die.
Here is the saw. I was extremely impressed. This will do the re-waw job in anyones shop. Eleven inches is a lot to saw, even with soft Redwood. The saw did not even slow down, and the cuts were straight and true. I have many Grizzley tools, They are excellent.
Notice the marks on the board. If you want book matched wood you must make this kind of mark before you cut in order to be able to determine exactly where each piece of wood came from
Here I am slicing off piece after piece. Some of the freshly cut tonewood is shown in the foreground. I was thrilled with the quality of the wood. It is stiff and has a wonderful ringing tap tone. I am confident that it will make excellent ukes, and George thinks it will also make two good guitar sets.
Here is part of the cut. Each one of these boards will make two halves of a tenor ukulele tone board, so each board represents one uke. I cut enough to make 48 ukes. Hope I live long enough. I did not cut that big piece saving it for reserve. When I get back to my own workshop I will saw each pair of these boards into pieces and tape the book matches together for storage. One set will be 13 inches, long enough for tenors, The other set will be 15 inches should I ever want to make a few baritones.
The really good news is that the wood is beautiful, sound, stiff with bell like tap tone. I am delighted and so grateful to my friend Jon in Pennsylvania who got this great Water Tank Redwood for me. Also thanks to my Bellingham luthier friend, George Thomas for the use of his great new Grizzley bandsaw. Hope those sets make two spectacular guitars George!!