Hello Joshua!
Congratulations on your first lute....
A personal opinion regarding the use of Oak.
firstly, and I think most important is the physical balance of the
instrument... The neck and pegbox both need to be light!
the weight of the instrument needs to be felt as being in the bowl as it
sits on the knee in order to allow freedom of movement of the arms.
Oak is a heavier wood than those woods typically found in historical
neck cores, and therefore is not a good choice here for the neck.
Also there is the question of tooling. The more traditional woods,
unfigured sycamore or maple, Spanish cedar etc are not as hard as Oak
and because they are also not as roughly grained, they tend to tool
with greater precision.
Now the strength of the neck really lies in the grain orientation
anyway.... You don't want the neck grain to be horizontal or parallel
with the strings like an archers bow, but exactly at 90 degrees to the
strings or fingerboard . this gives the greatest strength with respect
to the neck either taking a set in bending upwards, or downwards .
Veneering the neck with ebony does I think give the neck a bit more
strength here as well. I personally use Spanish Cedar for neck cores ,
it tools wonderfully, and is light! Remember have the neck grain as
perfectly straight and perpendicular to the strings and fingerboard as
possible.
Now as for the pegbox, there are additional reasons in addition to the
weight issues, for not using oak .
There needs to be a relationship with respect to hardness between pegs
and pegbox. if the pegbox is too dense and hard, it will slowly abrade
and unevenly wear down the pegs themselves. This you don't want. You
want the holes in the pegbox to slightly enlarge and bed nicely to the
taper of the pegs as the instrument is used, remembering that you can
always lightly re ream them if necessary, and in difficult situations ,
its always possible to plug a pegbox hole and then redrill it... This is
much easier than turning a new peg!.
If the pegs remain properly stable and round , being tapered, they
simply set in the holes a little deeper as the pegbox holes wear in time.
The pegs themselves, are usually made from a close grained and evenly
dense wood (but not a wood thats abrasive and hard like ebony). You
can use Rosewoods, Plum, Pear etc , or while you can use Oak, remember
that its a more open grained wood than the ones I mentioned and is
pretty coarsely grained..... tougher to get a really precise shape here.
As far as bridges are concerned, historically they all seem to have been
made of some form of fruitwood.... although perhaps you can use rosewood
here, I prefer plum . its light and transmits sound from the string to
the top admirably .
as I said, these are only personal opinions ....
best
Richard Lees
On 10/30/2012 3:09 PM, Joshua Horn wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm giving a go at building my first lute. (A flat-back) I have a
question though, I have a considerable amount of large pieces of dried
Oak on my back porch. Would it work to use these to make the neck and
peg box and maybe the bridge out of? I picked them up from a neighbor
and I have had no use for them yet. They've just been sitting there for
years, and I hate for them to go to waste.
Josh
><> + Joshua Edward Horn + <><
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