Caveat Emptor

Pete Howlett

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Chris Harban re-sawed some blind buys I got on eBay and shipped them to the UK. I'll post images tomorrow that will convince you that buying ready sawn sets is not an expensive way to buy wood. Watch this space - back in the workshop full time tomorrow after 12 days away with lower back pain... Another efficient way to loose money :)
 
Hi Pete,
I am glad that you feel much better with the back pain. All the best to you.
 
Chris Harban re-sawed some blind buys I got on eBay and shipped them to the UK. I'll post images tomorrow that will convince you that buying ready sawn sets is not an expensive way to buy wood. Watch this space - back in the workshop full time tomorrow after 12 days away with lower back pain... Another efficient way to loose money :)

Right you are Pete. When you buy sets of wood your surprises are kept to a minimum. Last year I bought a medium sized curly koa log for $20 a board foot. I bucked it and cut out any visible rot and defects I saw, and milled it into manageable sized cants. I just finished having it resawed into sets. (I farm out large milling jobs.) Between the hidden rot, pin knots and other defects and the total waste involved I figured I lost about 2/3 of the wood. It also took me several days to process it from tree to finished sets. In the end I got some very nice curly koa sets but they cost me well over $100 per set. Perhaps much more if I consider my lost production time. The total yield was close to 100 tenor sets.
I'm not a high volume builder so I'd rather pay the extra money and buy sets from a reputable dealer, one that you've worked with before and trust. My ebay wood purchases have been 50/50.
 
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the rendering was spot on though.. just not the wood..


I'm curious what this wood looks like now, that deserves this post.... is it the bad grain? or does it all now resemble a whirlygig that won't even fly? The wood was sliced, I believe sanded, and then immediately shrink wrapped, and repackaged. I hope it is not kindling now....


Sawing your own is best, from carefully selected boards. That $3000 bandsaw will pay for itself quickly. There is no way I could afford to buy individual sets of the wood I like, and thankfully, a good bit of what I use is really scraps, genuine scraps, left overs from my other projects. Someday I will post a pic of a fantastically figured turntable top, and the cutout for the turntable, which is a gorgeous matching uke top! In the past, these cutouts went into the wood stove. Other times, I can buy a beautiful board for a client, slice it, and have half the slices remaining for uke material, paid for. Of course I have been expanding and buying wood now specifically for ukes. Buying boards from new sources, sight unseen, even with pics, can be tricky. On a few occasions, with sellers on ebay, I have been disappointed, even after a half hour conversation clarifying EXACTLY what I want, and what I do not want, and the lame reply, 'well, I thought that you might be able to use it anyways......' He got to pay for shipping both ways, and for his hassle. I lost an hour and a half unwrapping, communicating, re-wrapping, and mailing the board back. That said, I have met some sellers through ebay that I now deal with directly, and very happily.
 
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didn't see your post Chuck. You would know better than me...


Most of the wood that I buy is of musical instrument grade, QS. And my scraps look like what Gilmer sells as Uke billets
 
When you are resawing lots of expensive wood it makes more sense for me to have it done by someone with precision milling equipment. The motor feed alone on the saw we use costs more than half of my equipment in the shop. For the service I pay $100 an hour and I buy the new blade. In three hours we can saw more sets than I'll use in a year. The yield is probably 1/3 more than what I was getting with other saws (I wouldn't even attempt it with my 14"er.) And the finish is such that it requires no sanding prior to me working with it. Much like what David Borson does in Fort Bragg. For a small shop operation, as most of us here are, it is well worth the time and money IMO.
 
Well, in 1997 I committed to a $14,000.00 Baker AX horizontal band resaw with a 20 hp motor and conveyor belt carrier. In three years I paid off the lease/purchase and the saw had literally paid for itself in that time. It was at least break-even from month #1. Because of that saw, I've had access to incredible deals on walnut, cherry, Brazilian rosewood, cedar, Giant Sequoia, mahogany, koa, etc. I'll still buy sets from a few suppliers, but the bulk of the wood I use comes out of that very expensive...but financially the smartest equipment purchase...pretty massive saw.
 
Oh, one of the most unusual sets I sawed was when I went through an old lead bullet. I kept that book-matched, resawn bullet in the guitar back...
 
I get 6 slices to the inch, and it looks almost planed. A couple light passes through the sander and they are done. I cannot imagine cutting thinner, precision is not an issue at all. I realize the value of one individual slice, and I do not lose them very often. I have a special fence for resawing, and use some custom feather boards. I have no problems sawing an 8' piece of 8/4 at 10" wide. 6 slices per inch.

Are you getting 7?
 
Uh, yeah......... I should've mentioned that I am off grid, relying on solar power only and limited to equipment with motors of 1 1/2 to 2 HP. Even so, for a small shop situation I still think it's best to have someone else do your resawing of expensive wood. Someone like Rick perhaps!
I have ebony logs that I trust to no one except my sawyer. We even resawed some 14 1/2" wide mango recently. Great tools are amazing!
 
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all of the wood I resaw is expensive, and often worth $100-$150 per slice. If I felt that I could do better with different resawing, I would use it. There is a $60,000 horizontal resaw in the shop across the street, at $60 per hour. I used to use them, and still do for really wide stuff, but I am every bit as happy with what comes off my saw.


Off grid... I lived off grid for about 5 or 7 years. I learned that sharp saw blades are worth their weight in gold. And.. wil never forget the day, the first time the table saw at my property started on grid power.. night and day!
 
I attest to Chri's yield capability - 6 slices to the inch on these boards which were already dimensioned so I guess closer to 3/4" eh Chris? For any boards I get here in the UK I use a 'sawyer' and used to have David Borson (who I thoroughly recommend for yield and precision) convert my US boards. Dave and my guy here are precision sawyers who convert for yield. If you can guarantee your wood source then it is definitely worth getting your sets like this. However, this may come as a surprise to you Rick but most of us just cannot afford a resaw or have the power to our workshops to run 3 phase machinery. Even if I did have such equipment and resources the market for such a service would be so small in the UK as to make the prospect unworkable... I really am getting to the point where I am looking for a reputable seller of sets that are consistently what I want rather than what the merchant wants to sell me. Sadly I cannot afford the road trip to Hawaii to achieve this and have to rely on 'spotters' now :(
 
yes, those Koa boards were a little over 3/4" I think. IIRC, i cut those to 4 slices? (per board at 3/4")
 
I really am getting to the point where I am looking for a reputable seller of sets that are consistently what I want rather than what the merchant wants to sell me. Sadly I cannot afford the road trip to Hawaii to achieve this and have to rely on 'spotters' now :(

Save your money. My wish is the same as your's Pete. And of every other builder I know here. The streets in Hawaii are not paved with koa and it's getting harder all the time to find quality wood. At any price! I know a couple of builders here (and you know who they are too) regularly buy their koa from Mainland sources and yes, even from ebay. Go figure. In order to find anything really nice you often have to buy an entire log which is risky business.
 
Yep 4 slices for 3/4"... just looked at the 3 koa suppliers I know and none of their sets are anything i would want.
 
I get the same results.

And Pete, I do fully understand that I'm probably the most commercial of any luthiers posting here, but I'm not going to dumb down my comments and not talk about big machinery just to feel like one of the boys struggling with 14" import underpowered band saws. I am who I am; I have the shop that I have; and some may find my experience and tooling relevant. Allied Lutherie, the Roberto Venn School, and LMI all found my experience with the Baker valuable enough to follow in my footsteps and buy similar saws.

BTW, the way the numbers worked for me on the resaw is that I had been paying about $45.00 a set for walnut backs and sides for my Renaissance acoustic electric guitars, and I was making fifteen of them a month, so my walnut costs were about $675.00 a month. I got the saw, and started buying walnut in billets from a sawmill. The wood cost went down to below $12.00 a set for the actual wood, plus a bit for labor, blades, and power. Then I started doing some resawing for other luthiers...Jeff Traugott, SCGC, etc., and at that point the saw became a profit center in my shop. Now it's paid off, and there are a lot of stretches when I don't fire it up for a month or more, and that's OK.

And yes, I've got gobs of 3 phase power. The resaw, pin router, and my CNC machine (sorry...) all run on 480 volts worth of 3 phase, and I'm proud to say that I do my own electrical work here now. I just wish someone would make a 3 phase router optimized for table use. The modern 3 phase CNC router spindles are amazingly small and quiet.

If I were in a one man shop...which will be someday again I hope...I'd go with a good old Delta 14" saw with a 3 hp motor, the riser block, all the Carter upgrades to tensioning and blade guiding, and use the same 3/4" Timberwolf variable pitch blades that I use now. I've already got the saw. The upgrades cost more than the saw did.

And I know this is controversial, but I'm a major fan of commercial-grade 10" table saws. I don't know how one can build a shop without having a table saw for turning sheets of plywood into benches and shelving and jigs and fixtures. Mine's a 3 hp Powermatic, and it's in use every day churning out parts for neck laminations, solid maple or mahogany necks, electric guitar body blanks, and yes, even doing a lot of the work on uke necks. When I was a cabinet maker, in one of the shops I ran we had a 12" table saw with sliding table and even a scoring blade for doing chip free cuts in Melamine. It was great, but that sized saw is not needed for much in lutherie...or even commercial instrument making.
 
And it's great having that commercial perspective - thanks Rick. You are the single representative that posts regularly here and I'd guess that if you ever downsize you will really be missing those big boy tools :) My 14" bandsaw has a great Italian motor that has been going for the best part of 35 years. Problem with today's machines is the quality is universally poor! My pin router has a 2 1/4 horse motor on it and is a dream. Here in the UK the Wadkin brand of overhead routers 3 phase regularly come up on ebay... lots of woodworking shops closing I guess :(
 
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I like my minimax 16" 5HP much better than the Delta, or the equivalent Laguna. I put a Biesemeyer fence on it cuz most all of the other bandsaw fences I could find, suck, and I have the feel for using that fence as a precision tool. I put the Laguna guides on it, looked at the Carters. Might be interesting to try the carters, to see if I get any less play in the blade. (plenty good already) The lack of bearings (with the Laguna guides) to gunk up, I appreciate. I suppose with higher tension springs, the Delta could be made decent, but the smaller 14" wheels mean lower life on the blades.

My saw requires more effort to get precision results from than Ricks saw, is less ergonomic, and is less suitable for wider cuts. Mine is less of a production tool, but it can be very accurate. I am good to about 10-12" depth, 14" in a pinch, but not without a somewhat uncomfortable 'pucker' factor. It aslso costs less, and works great for 8" -10" cuts.

I also would not want to give up my table saw...
 
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