huss & dalton newsletter - april 2015

8/18/2019 Huss & Dalton Newsletter - April 2015

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Huss & Dalton Guitar Co., Inc. April 2015

Hi-

This is Steve again, and this issue is the first of three in which I hope to broadly describe the

creation of Huss & Dalton guitars. The process is intricate and deep and there is much, much,

more to know, but I think I've spent enough time in the shop to articulate the broad strokes.

Part One: The Milling Room


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The milling room, which occupies the top floor of Huss & Dalton's Stauntonheadquarters, is where builders shape raw wood and materials into guitars thatwill be finished, fretted, and set up downstairs. There's generally quite a lotgoing on up here as Dean Jones and John Calkin transform thin "plates" ofwood into the back, top, and sides of a guitar body.

Backs and Tops


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These thin cuts of wood are as consistently immaculate as you might expectfrom the shop's eagle-eyed staff, but Jeff and Mark developed their own unique

procedure to ensure their tops are as durable as they are beautiful. Thispreliminary "deflection test" is Huss & Dalton's take on the tap-tuningtechniques used by many luthiers.

Tap-tuning ideally allows a practicedluthier to listen for resonant qualitiesand weak spots in a given piece ofwood as they systematically "tap" itssurface. But the art of tap-tuning issomewhat subjective by nature, as

standards will vary based a listener'sprevious experience and assumptions.Huss & Dalton's deflection test wasdesigned to take some of the mysteryout of this process with a relativelysimple fixture (pictured). After loading atop plate, the builder applies apredetermined amount of pressure to a plate's bridge region, imposing thesame pressure and tension conditions created by the strings on the finishedproduct. By measuring the resulting relief (or sag) of the cut, staff can easily tellif it will be able to hold up to everyday playing. After a top plate "passes" the

deflection test, it moves on to Dean Jones for bracing.

Bracing


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Huss & Dalton haven't done much to the tried-and-true formula as far as back bracing is

concerned. They stick to the traditional ladderbracing technique, pictured above, which hasbeen keeping acoustic guitars together for avery long time. The company's staple redspruce braces are individually sculpted byDean Jones before he glues them to the backplate. Red spruce is known for beingincredibly light in spite of its rigidity, and Huss& Dalton guitars are exceptionally light as aresult.

If an acoustic guitar isn't braced properly, normal string tension could cause theguitar's top to become arched over time. The company has two distinctapproaches when it comes to the construction of their cross-braced tops (seebelow). Their Traditional (or flat) tops adhere, as their name suggests, toestablished cross-bracing techniques that haven't changed significantly insome time. For their Signature series tops, on the other hand, the bracing isshaped into a slight arch that translates into a subtly dome-shaped (or radius)top. Signature tops are designed to arch along a 25-foot radius, which meansthat the inner surface will align perfectly with any point on the surface of a 50-foot ball. This creates a slight arch under the bridge that tends to boost theguitar's mid-range response and punch.


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The Sides

While Dean braces the top and back, John uses the Fox bender (picturedbelow) to prepare the sides. This fixture, named after its creator Charles Fox,molds the side plates into shape using a combination of water, heat andglycerine. The raw wood is protected by a damp paper shield as the builderslowly applies more heat and pressure -a thin sheet of spring steel conductsheat and the glycerine keeps the wood from burning as the steam slowly softensit. After they have been given time to cool off and harden, the raw sides arealmost ready to accept the back and top.

After the sides come out of the Fox bender, John trims the excess length sothey will fit into a mobile jig similar to the one pictured below. After using thisdisc jig to sand the edges to spec, he's ready to glue on the kerfed lining. Thislining is cut from mahogany and "notched" so that it can will bend with the


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guitar's sides. Once both strips of kerfed lining are flush with the rim, they actas the surface upon which John can glue the top and back. For guitars withSignature tops, John uses a disc mill (fondly referred to as "The Beast") toshape the lining's surface along a radius that can make full contact with thearched top plate. It's nice to look at, but the kerfed lining is also structurallycrucial -it provides consistent wood-to-glue contact all around the body, whichhelps keep natural string tension from pulling the instrument apart.

Binding and Purfling

Now that the glue is set and the body is structurally sound, it's time for John toprepare it for binding. Using a binding router, pictured, he cuts thin squaredchannels around the edges of the body. After he perfects them with a smallchisel, these channels are ready to accept binding and purfling strips.


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John glues these long, thin strips into place by hand, using tape to secure themuntil the adhesive dries. Softer materials like ivoroid are flexible enough to binda body without breaking. Wood binding like maple or cocobolo, however, ismore challenging to work with and needs to be shaped on the Fox benderbefore it will conform to an instrument's curves. John can do it all, and his workliterally ties the body together. When the glue is dry and the tape comes off, thebody finally looks like part of a guitar.

Now that the body is in one piece, the guitar is ready to move along to the nexttransformative step in the Huss & Dalton build process. Stay tuned for thecoming issue, in which I'll be taking a look at the neck, bridge, inlays, and finish.


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Part II: right around the corner!

Thanks for reading-Steve Goodrick

huss & dalton newsletter - april 2015

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