Mike and Julien,
Many thanks for the cautionary advice
I was planning to work on the rose before bracing the soundboard
but it's sounding risky
maybe I'll just put another layer of clothes on and work in the workshop
regards
Chris
Hi Chris,
as far as I know , humidity is far more important than temperature when dealing
with wood. The thing is central heating system tends to drop the humidity level
dangerously (under 40 %), which means the wood will shrink noticeably (mainly in
width, I mean perpendicular to the fiber length). If you have bars glued under
your soundboard, it could cause problems ( =cracks)... If your soundboard is
free to distort, well, try !
Regards
julien Stryjak
Mike Madden wrote:
H Chris
I am a (very) amateur builder. I am from the UK but based in Italy.
I am no expert, but I believe it is sudden or large changes in the
humidity rather than the temperature that is the killer. Want to hear
from my painful experience? I brought a soundboard in from ambient
summer temperatures in Italy into an air conditioned room to work on
the rose. I left it on the table overnight and woke up to find a
split along a particularly dark line in the grain of the soundboard.
I was told by a local luthier that this was due to the dehumidifying
effect of the air conditioning, which reduced an ambient humidty of
around 55% down to 30%.
I was not a happy bunny!
I'm sure our experts out there will expand on this issue.
Mike
> Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:47:08 +0000
> To: [email protected]
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: [LUTE-BUILDER] moving soundboard from workshop to house
>
> Dear All
> As a new lute-builder I am very much appreciating the discussions here
> - but have a newbie-type question
> I am renting bench-space in a quite large workshop, it's not warm but
> has background heat to keep the temperature from dropping to
> unmanageable levels (we're having a cold (for the UK) winter here).
> but I live in a centrally heated house, where my wife loves to keep us
> very warm and cosy - above 25C.
> I would, however, like to be able to bring my soundboard into the warm
> and carve the rose on the kitchen table
> but I'm worried that the changes in temperature (and humidity? - I've
> just ordered a simple hygrometer to check this) might be too much for
> the soundboard?
> any advice very gratefully received
> regards
> Chris
>
Dear All
> As a new lute-builder I am very much appreciating the discussions here
> - but have a newbie-type question
> I am renting bench-space in a quite large workshop, it's not warm but
> has background heat to keep the temperature from dropping to
> unmanageable levels (we're having a cold (for the UK) winter here).
> but I live in a centrally heated house, where my wife loves to keep us
> very warm and cosy - above 25C.
> I would, however, like to be able to bring my soundboard into the warm
> and carve the rose on the kitchen table
> but I'm worried that the changes in temperature (and humidity? - I've
> just ordered a simple hygrometer to check this) might be too much for
> the soundboard?
> any advice very gratefully received
> regards
> Chris
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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