Old Infinity Luthiers Shop Blog
To visit the new Shop Blog, click here.
To visit the new Shop Blog, click here.
Check out the Infinity A Model Mando Blog.
- July 2010
July 1Gutting the inside of this building... not the most glamorous of jobs, but necessary to properly setup the new shop.
- June 2010
June 27Lately, we've been unpacking from the trip to Bean Blossom. Also, gutting of the new building has begun. We hope to have it completely gutted and ready for setup by the end of July.
June 21Bean Blossom was typical: wicked weather, great music and all night pickin'.Here is the 'Back 40' in the overflow at Bean Blossom. Just minutes before this photo of the rainbow, a storm had ripped through the area causing flash floods, power outages, fallen trees, mass chaos!
Camp Infinity setup and ready for pickin'.
Jason B. gets some instruction on reaming a headstock, installing tuners and nut fabrication in the wild. Here he is showing off his handy work.
New models for Infinity Luthiers: ID-18eco and the new A model mandolin. The mandolin is a crossover from early and later Gibson A models. Short neck with longer fret scale to pick old time tunes with ease.
Kenny Smith of the Kenny and Amanda Smith band test drives the new ID-18eco. Kenny Smith is one of my favorite pickers and two-time IBMA Guitar player of the year. I did not know it before this trip, but Kenny is a luthier himself. He spent time working at Gallager Guitars in Tennessee before touring full-time.
Kenny plays a 1935 Martin D-18. Here we are comparing the neck shape and thickness of the ID-18eco to the old Martin D-18. The ID-18eco neck was based on the 1949 Martin D-28 being restored. Surprisingly, the ID-18eco and Kenny's '35 D-18 neck were nearly the same in shape and thickness.
You can purchase Kenny and Amanda Smith's cd's, books and other merchandise at their website.
While breaking down camp, we found a visitor hiding from the torrential downpours under the rain fly. A mama brown recluse complete with full egg sack. I guess this spider does carry a fiddle and loves Bluegrass.
June 5Getting ready for a trip to Bean Blossom. Testing out the display tent setup.
- May 2010
May 24Some grained celluloid bindings and celluloid pickguard material arrived for the Martin.
May 21Well, the decisions are in... the Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council have given unanimous approval to conduct the luthier and wholesale exotic lumber business at a location near my home. I'll be installing flooring, workbenches, vices, cabinets, etc. over the summer and hope to be in the new shop by September. Once finished, this should improve my output by double... we'll see and hopefully without increasing prices.
Also, here is a short audio clip of the newest Infinity Luthier model: Infinity D-18eco. This audio is a version of Billy in the Lowground with a low volume rhythm recorded using an AudioTechnica pro37 mic and Tascam Neo recorder.
Billy in the Lowground
May 17The old 1949 Martin D-28 is still in the works. Recently it has been partially re-assembled. The back and top are attached. Also, the truss rod slot is scraped clean and the t-bar truss rod is ground, cleaned with wire brush and coated with a protective paint to limit future corrosion.
May 13My business partner Rich is back in Belize this week. We have been stalled on pulling logs because of some equipment issues. He is on his way to look at some skidders that, if worth it for our use, will help us get more logs out of the rivers by June. This pushes back our next estimated date for having new mahogany and other lumber.
Speaking of lumber... we should have the thicker Honduras Mahogany coming out of the kiln soon. These are the cuts I directed for solid body guitars and necks. Although the size of the logs was less than thrilling, there will be some lumber available and those of you on the email list will be notified as soon as I determine what has been dried properly and remains a quality product.
On another note... Infinity Luthiers may have huge news in one week from today. If the news is good, our operation will be slowed for a few months. This is ok. If all goes well, our organization of materials, jigs, etc. will greatly improve and allow us to get more restoration, repair and contruction completed in less time.
May 8The next new Infinity Luthiers models are taking shape. These are the Infinity A Mandolins. The, Bill James created, tailpieces should be along soon. We'll keep chugging along with the build and hopefully have them for Bean Blossom.
Check out the Infinity A Model Mando Blog.
May 1We're gearing up for a trip to Bean Blossom. Hoping to have the Infinity A-Mandolins along for the journey... it will be a test of will to get them complete enough to bring out in the heat and humidity.
Check out the Infinity A Model Mando Blog.
- April 2010
April 29Here is the newest model at Infinity Luthiers. This is the Infinity D-18eco (ID-18eco). This beautiful guitar sounds as good as it looks. The mahogany and adi combination have produced a voluminous instrument with accentuated highs and mids. This guitar has awesome punch. There should be no question when a person playing this steps out for a break.
April 21
I have never had as much trouble gluing a wood. The bullet tree bridge has lifted twice now. Here it is being glued down again with hot hide glue. For the short amount of time it was strung up and in tune, it had a very bright high and mid with huge volume. Can't wait to get this bridge to stay put and let it settle in a bit.
April 18The '48 Martin gets its x bracing reglued. Also, a new bridge plate to replace the replacement rosewood bridge plate. This maple bridge plate is a bit thicker than original to help keep the top from blowing apart. The last luthier that worked on this guitar sanded the top until it is nearly too thin to use.
Also, the mahogany project guitar gets its bullet tree bridge ebonized. The bullet tree was also recovered from the Belize River with the mahogany and sapodilla. You can see the sapodilla fretboard is turning out sweet with a coat of oil on it. More photos when it is fully complete.. soon.
April 17A Philadelphia built, 1950 Epiphone archtop gets a new trapeze tailpiece, tuner buttons, cleaned and setup. An original tailpiece would have been great but I was unable to locate one. A diamond decorated trapeze from an old Gibson 335 does the trick nicely and the new ivoroid buttons upgrade goes perfectly with the new setup. This neck had a huge amount of back bow with no help from the truss rod. After strung up, the back bow subsided and it was playable. This neck will be monitored closely for the next couple months. If the back bow turns into a noticeable bow, the one-way truss rod will have to be adjusted to keep the relief to a minimum.
April 16The mahogany guitar gets its nut cut out and shaped. This processed cow bone gets sawed down into strips and one large enough gets shaped and fitted to the nut slot. The nut will get final shaping and slotting after the guitar is strung up and left under tension for a week. Until then, it will set in the nut slot and have only slight slots filed. This allows the tension of the strings to pull the neck and body into its equilibrium.
April 12Wow! Popular Woodworking Senior Editor Glen Huey uses our Honduras Mahogany to create a beautiful Queen Ann Lowboy. It made the cover of the June 2010 issue. Here are a few links to checkout:
http://blogs.popularwoodworking.com/editorsblog/Get+A+Look+Inside+The+June+Issue.aspx
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/jun10
The mahogany guitar being built here is from the very next slice of log #3. So you could say that the mahogany guitar and the lowboy built by Glen are sisters!
April 10
A vintage Martin D-28 gets its old rosewood bridge (probably installed in the 70's) removed. Also, the mahogany project gets its neck glued on. Dovetail joints take very few clamps to keep a tight joint during the glue-up.
- March 2010
Mar. 26
The logs... this term is used loosely... loaded into the production line. This mill is huge. They saw, grade and sort approximately 40,000 bd. ft. of oak and other domestics every day.
The stickers on the end of the cant are a new system of identifying and tracking lumber that comes from 'Green' sources. Although the site is not yet fully operational, the certification applies to lumber that is not commercially cut. Sources included are: river-recovered, buried logs and root systems, standing or fallen structures, standing timber removed for development, timber removed before being submerged due to damming or diverting rivers/streams and timber damaged in storms or other natural disasters including disease. A number system that identifies the date that the timber was removed and the processor will allow consumers to look up the source of their new guitar, dining room table, moldings, flooring, etc.. Here is a link to locate the source of one of the logs in the photos below: Find Log.
Mmmm a well deserved slice of cheeseburger pizza.
What are you going to be... a parlor guitar or perhaps a highboy?
Mar. 20Finally, we will be sawing our load of Old Growth Mahogany on Friday the 26th. If you have a reqest for specific sizes, please contact me by Thursday the 25th. Extra cuts will be made for 1-piece bodies and necks to create LesPaul replica's. Acoustic sets will be cut depeninding on size of the logs.
For more details and photos of the reclaimed Honduras mahogany, click here.
- February 2010
Feb. 6
The broken guitar gets its reset. The mahogany project gets its neck carved and fit.
- January 2010
Jan. 30
The broken guitar gets its top removed. Then a new Adirondack spruce top is added and bindings and purfling installed.
Jan. 24
Sometimes guitars break. This model was broken when it fell. The top has to be replaced, but first the neck needs to come off.
Jan. 23
Still no resolution to the shipment from Belize. During the break from the cold, the archtop and mahogany projects have both been shot with their first coats of lacquer.For more details and photos of the river recovered Honduras mahogany build, click here.
Jan. 19
We are still waiting for our newest shipment of river-recoved mahogany to be released at the port. In the mean time, we got a sunburst shot on the archtop restoration and have bound and been pore filling the mahogany project.For more details and photos of the river recovered Honduras mahogany build, click here.
Jan. 13
Already, it has been a very busy new year at Infinity Luthiers.
The River-recovered Honduras Mahogany guitar is taking shape, but most important this year is that we have spent some time in Central America touring the areas that the old growth logs are being found. Spending time in Belize was an eye opening experience. We met with locals in the cities and countryside, viewed areas where logs lay in water eagerly waiting for their chance to be found and constructed into beautiful furniture and instruments, and partook of local food and drink. Below are a few photos from our trip.The fretboard below in the Dec. 27 entry is crafted from this tree, the Sapodilla. It has been and still is used for its latex gum in the sap. The sap you can see in this old photo to the right is boiled into a large gummy block called 'chicle'. Chicle is Spanish for chewing gum. The Sapodilla is often called the chewing gum tree. No live trees are allowed to be cut because of their role in harvesting the chicle. Lumber from the Sapodilla would likely be full of sap and be a sticky mess to sanders and knives. The Sapodilla we are finding has been submersed for over 100 years and the sap has been eaten away by the anaerobic bacteria. The wood is great to work with and produces a beautiful, unseen until now, pattern of dark brown and blond streaking. 
The Belize river flows from the western mountains to the Caribbean Sea in the East. This river was one of the main methods of transporting Mahogany and other logs to the ships in Belize harbor. If you can imagine the hundreds of thousands of logs in the river at any given time you can imagine how many of these logs were pushed down into the silty mud at the slow points in the river. 
Here is an old photo of mahogany and other logs on a British vessel en route to Britain. The lumber was primarily used for high-end furniture. 
Here is a photo of a living Honduras Mahogany tree. In Belize they call it a Belizean Mahogany tree. This tree was along the side of the road out to one of our river entry points. 
This is the Belize river as seen from a ferry between Belmopan and San Ignacio. We were on our way to Spanish Lookout when we took this ferry. The Mennonites populate the Spanish Lookout area and completely transformed it to a farming community. If you didn't know better, you would swear that you were back in the fields and green pastures of Central Illinois. 
Here is one of our processing areas. The logs are minimally processed by trimming off the cheeks of the logs. This processing is required by the government before the logs can be exported. 
Here is Zev. He is considered the Indian Jones of Central America and finds submersed logs instead of artifacts from ancient civilizations. Here he is explaining the process of removing and processing the logs. 
Much of the land in Belize is owned by the government. Here is land that is simply existing as scrub. If the British had replanted the mahogany during and after their logging of the country, there would be more mahogany today than we could use. If Belize had replanted the mahogany in these areas of deforestation after gaining their independence in 1981, the forests would be thick and ready for sustainable harvesting. 
Sometimes I think people forget that folks gotta eat. Here is some land that used to be heavily populated with mahogany now used as pasture. The cattle provide dairy and meat products and manure. Meat you say? Moo they say... :) 
One of Belize's main exports is citrus and citrus concentrate. Here is some land that was previously mahogany forests used for orange production. During the cold winter of 2009-2010 Belize will likely see a higher demand for their citrus due to freezing temperatures in Florida. 
Aaah.. Chico, myself and Zev. The moment came too soon when saying our goodbye's at the airport. Chico is a resident of Belize and former director of several of the largest corporate arms in Belize. In the middle is me, wide eyed luthier-explorer. Zev is the Indiana Jones of Central America. His extensive knowledge of the history of logging in the region has come through researching historic documents and gleaning information from the elders of the indigenous people. His mission: recover the river logs and use as a substitute for today's cutting, reforest and preserve the entirety of Central America. 
- December 2009
Dec. 27
This is sapodilla. This is also old growth sinker lumber from Belize. We will be testing this lumber for back and side sets after the current Old Growth Honduras mahogany build is complete. It certainly has potential to be a great tonewood.
Dec. 26
This 50's archtop is being completely restored. It just got a beautiful new chechem (black poisonwood) fretboard with some custom inlay. Chechem fretboard blanks will be available in the store soon.
Dec. 22
Take a look at the Reclaimed Mahogany compared to a neck blank recently purchased from Martin 1833 shop. The Martin blank is on the top...
For more details and photos of the reclaimed Honduras mahogany build, click here.
Dec. 21
One of the saws made its way to our parter in reclaimed exotic lumber, GreenerLumber LLC... Now cross-cutting the large stock will be a breeze. If you need large equipment, 3-phase is the way to go. Get a phase converter and you'll never look back!
Dec. 14
I was able to get up to the shop this weekend and complete some more of the guitar using the Reclaimed Honduras Mahogany. Bending the sides was a tricky process. I had to thin the sides down to just under one tenth of an inch to bend them without cracking. My first attempt at bending them with a greater thickness resulted in a crack along the curl in the upper bout.
Dec. 7
While the Illini football team managed to score 52 points and still lose the final game of the season, we got some work done using a set of the Reclaimed Honduras Mahogany. I selected a back and side set from the figured stock. Don't worry, the primo material is reserved for you. :-)
For more details and photos of the reclaimed Honduras mahogany, click here.
- November 2009
Nov. 22.
Spent some time in Cincinnati with Popular Woodworking Senior Editor and Funiture Builder, Glen Huey. Rich and I delivered some of the old growth mahogany to Glen, who will be trying the lumber out by building a lowboy. To follow Glen's blog on Popular Woodworking.com click here.
Nov 15.
Well, we are now on our way to bringing reclaimed old growth mahogany to the US. Infinity Luthiers is now the marketing agent for the instrument grade and quartersawn material processed by GreenerLumber LLC. Greener Lumber, owned and operated by Richard Petty, is working with agents in Belize to find logs lying at the bottom of creek and river beds. Some of this material is already here and has just finished drying. I do not forsee any of the mahogany making it into the tonewood store until late December or early January.
Many folks have been contacting us with requests for material; thank you for your interest. We would like to give everyone a chance at some tonewood or quartersawn material to complete their instrument or woodworking project, so, we are starting an email list for the tonewood store. If you join the email list, an email will be sent to you each time new lumber is added to the tonewood store. For those of you not on the email list, you will have to check the tonewood store often. As the lumber becomes more available and we have a steady supply coming out of the kiln, I envision being able to take custom orders for material.
Until the email list is in place, please use the contact us page to send a note. Indicate your name, email address and that you would like to be placed on the email list for tonewoods.
As new material is milled, resawn and used in projects, check here for updated photos and comments about the quality of the lumber.
Nov. 8.
Wrapped up a festival in Springfield, Illinois. Many jammers got the opportunity to demo an IHD-28 and Cocozilla. Up next is a marketing trip to Missouri. Keep posted to the tonewood store, a unique mahogany may be coming soon.
- October 2009
Recovery from IBMA week in Nashville.
- March 2010