Making guitar tops from logs

[getoverit]

I watched a show the othr night on my favorite channel (DIY), and they had a program called "Home Made Music" that I found particularly interesting. One of the guys goes around the appalacian mountains and buys red spruce trees from land owners for further milling into guitar tops.

These are mostly old growth trees with tight growth rings, and it appears that he cuts the logs into about 6' long sections and hauls them out by hand.  The rest of the processing is what is somewhat preplexing as they didnt elaborate about how he does it, but had about 10 seconds of a movie showing how he does it.

At first, he debarks the log by hand with a fro or adz, cuts it into 2' long log and then quarters the log with wedges and a sledge hammer. THEN, it appeared that he had a hand tool, similar to what they used to cut cedar shakes with, and circled the quartered section making 100% quarter "sawn" pieces of lumber. I guess a picture is better than words, so here is what I am talking about:





These pieces of wood are thicker on one side than the center, but that doesnt matter since they are then sent through a thickness planer at some point to make them more uniform.

My question is: Do any of you that make wood for luthiers do it this way, and if so, could you elaborate on just how it is that you produce the lumber for guitar tops?

[beenthere]

Suspect the splitting is done to get just the straightest-grain pieces for planing.

[Dan_Shade]

you need quarter sawn lumber in instrument building to provide the proper strength you need.

the strings under tension will warp up flatsawn stuff pretty quickly.

[getoverit]

My question is if any of you produce lumber for tops this way, and if so, how do you split the log into lumber?

[Dan_Shade]

I've seen it done like you described.  the tool is called a froe.  chair makers often use the same processes.

[Steve]

Spruce top material is often made this way. I think the way they do it is to split (with a froe) the block so that you are perfectly straight with the grain and have no runout in the piece. Then you can saw out the bookmatched pieces and they will have no runout either. Quartersawn for sure.

[jkj]

If you want a froe you can buy a new one, find an old one, or make one from a bar of steel or an old piece of auto/truck spring.  I fould one at a good price in an antique store.  Roy Underhill's series of Woodwright books goes into great detail on the making and use of the froe and other hand tools.

JKJ