Subject: Hello everyone

From: Joshua Horn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:09:08 -0700 (PDT)

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 + <><

   --

---

From: Richard Lees <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:23:36 -0700

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:
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>

---

From: Jon Murphy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:16:46 -0500

I'm not good at choosing the wood as the only lute I've built (a flat 
back) was from a kit - but I will second, and doubly second, Richard's 
comments on the weight of the neck and peg box as to the balance of the 
instrument.

The hand position on the lute is different than that on the guitar as 
the form of play is different - I'll not get into detail, I'll just say 
that one needs a bit more freedom of finger movement with the lute. I 
converted a Bolivian charango to a Scot's mandora (small instrument - @ 
14" long strings bridge to nut, five double courses) - the charango has 
a heavy peg box with mechanical tuning pegs. I have to use a saxophone 
neck strap to support the head of the instrument in order to have the 
freedom of the fingers (the music for the Scot's mandora is of a vintage 
with early lute music). With my lute I need no strap as the balance is 
there - although I do have a "button" on the tail so I can attach a 
guitar strap which I sit on to hold the tail down when I don't have a 
good sitting position (I do like to loll back in my armchair when 
playing relaxed with a beer).

Summary, the balance of the lute, as Richard says, is a very important 
part of its playability - I'm only emphasizing his comments.

BTW, for those interested - it wasn't much of a conversion on the 
charango, just a bit of widening the bridge tie down holes and the nut 
grooves for the wider strings in the 4th and 5th courses. The charango 
is "re-entrant", like a ukelele (a one octave range on the open strings) 
whereas the Scot's mandora has a two octave range across the five 
courses (tuned in fourths and fifths - i.e. D,G,d,g,d',g'). Actually it 
is normally higher, but my charango is a bit longer than the Scot's 
mandora so I made it a baritone. No relationship to the larger mandora 
of Europe, I guess the old Scots borrowed the name and form but made it 
smaller. The only reason I got the charango and converted it was that 
when the Bolivia Mall first came onto the web it was selling at very low 
prices - my hand carved charango, a gourd shape from one piece of wood, 
cost me less than the wood would cost ($65) to make it.
That has changed as they became successful.

Best, Jon