MIMF

Greetings,

This is my first post on the forum, so I run the risk of being highly clumsy and indignant. However, I do feel like this is a question I haven't seen answered anywhere else yet, so I'll give it a shot. I'm not sure if this is the right subforum to post under, since it's a tricky topic. Please suggest a move appropriately if not.

Right, so, to introduce myself briefly, I'm a 21 year old student who is itching to get started with violin making. The major problem I have is lack of a proper workplace, since I live in a small flat. I do not want to work in any common area, since I'm heavily concerned about dust pollution, and I can't spare an extra room for my work. I do, however, have a reasonably roomy balcony available to me.

My question to you is this: provided I stored my wood when not working outside (blanks, during drying, etc.) would it harm the wood to do my woodworking on the balcony? The area where I live (Central Finland) has a fairly stable climate most of the year, with humidity being between 60-80% and the daily average temperatures ranging from +10° C (50F) to +18° C (65F) with a an average daily temperature span of around 8°C (4,5F). Obviously I would endeavor not to work on particularly humid days or during the winter season, which lasts 4 months here (hey, having an 8 month work window still beats not working at all, right?). I could also put glass panes on my balcony to help somewhat with the regulation of atmosphere.

Perhaps I am being optimistic, on the other hand, I feel like I could just be paranoid. I've been working towards making my own instruments for well over 3 years now, so I would rather not work a while longer than to see my wood swell or crack and my work constantly be destroyed. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about wood to estimate whether this would indeed happen in my circumstances.

I'm sorry if my question is highly uninformed, but I'd rather be humbled and enlightened than proud and in the dark.

I'd really appreciate any input.

Thank you!
- Tim

Welcome to the Forum, Timotej!

We have had a few members over the years whose only space was a balcony, so it can be done. I will leave it to more experienced members to answer, but I suspect that a short time in the outdoor "shop" will not have much effect if you keep the wood and partially-built instruments in a humidity-controlled environment. For those in really humid or dry climates, that is basically what they have to do.

What Jim said. Working on the balcony should be fine but you need to keep an eye on humidity. The usually recommend range for construction is 45% +/- 5%. The critical phase is gluing up the "box". You definitely want the humidity right when you are gluing braces and doing the assembly of the guitar. You may have to think about "weather windows" when you can do specific jobs. I do some of my "dirty" work like sanding outside the apartment as well but all the "important" stuff is done in my living room. My workbench is behind the sofa. Robert Bouchet, one of the famous french classical guitar makers did everything in a small apartment in Paris.

Thanks for the welcome, Jim! (If I may use the familiar address.)

What you've both said mirrors my own thinking on the subject. I reckon I could easily do the gluing, gouging, planing and chiseling inside. What I'm most concerned about are the sanding and finishing stages, since they do produce a vastly greater amount of particulate dust. I'm glad nobody so far seems to see anything terribly wrong with my workshop placement idea. I would love to hear from someone who has experience working in a small apartment/room as a workshop and how they deal with the dust problem, as well as any experience they can share in general. I suppose figuring out how to keep the wood stable outside is issue number one, though.

Thanks for all the feedback so far!

My wood is mainly under the sofa in the living room. Some is in an IKEA drawer arrangement also in the living room. I do my planing on the work bench behind the sofa and the sanding outside on the terrace.

Humidity swings are less of a problem with violins than with guitars: the box is narrower, so the shrinkage is less, and the archings make them less prone to cracking. That's not saying it can't happen!

My violin making teacher had a summer cottage on the shore of a lake near here, with a porch over looking the water. She'd sit out on the porch carving or sanding, and the breeze carried all the dust and shavings away into the woods. This was a real help as she became allergic to both spruce and maple dust when she got older. She didn't pay too much attention to the humidity at the lake, but she was mostly roughing things out then. She did final graduations, glue-ups, and bass bars during the winter in a shop where she had at least some control over the humidity.

Wood gains and loses moisture fairly quickly as the relative humidity changes. If you monitor it you may find there are times of day, even during the humid parts of the year, when you can work. Before modern methods of humidity control a lot of luthiers worked that way. I knew a guitar maker in Majorca who made parts and did trim and finishing for the nine months of the year when the humidity was too high, and glued up boxes day and night for the three months when it was dry.

As Alan said, violins are a lot more forgiving. It is the cross grain gluing in the construction and the relatively wide plates that create a lot of the stress in guitar bodies. We try to minimize the stresses by gluing certain parts under ideal humidity conditions. Violins makers also tend to use thinner mixes of hide glue (so I've been told) to hold the top and back plates on, as these are typically removed to do repairs inside the box.

Timotej, it sounds like you have a good plan. About dust, if you had to sand or machine wood in the apartment, you could consider constructing a partition to contain the dust. I have a basement workshop. This is not a living area, but still the space is open and I (and my family) don't want fine dust on all my stuff or laundry. I partitioned the space by stapling a canvas drop cloth to a floor joist. It hangs down loosely on the concrete floor. Two sheets overlap to form a door. The door part is a pain, but it gives me a dedicated space and does contain the dust. This is not an airtight setup but there is coverage from floor to ceiling across the length of the room, which is good enough, at least for the basement.

In a living area you could construct something that folds down, if you had to. Throw it up, work away, vacuum, tear it down, fold it up, stuff it under a bed. Don't forget to close the top. I'm not saying it would be easy, but if you had to... Also, a vacuum at the source helps a lot. I recently adapted a recovered vacuum crevice attachment to my random orbit sander. Duct tape was required, but the effect was good.

Shawn, I've actually been thinking of setting up a small-scale laminar flow hood, the type you'd see in a lab (I'm a chemist) and using that on my tabletop inside as an alternative. It would be a bigger investment, and a hell of a lot of work, but potentially manageable. I definitely have that idea in the back of my mind.

That being said, I think all of you have pretty much answered my questions and appeased my doubts. I'm certainly feeling secure enough to give it a try now - I'll know how well it works conclusively when I actually go through the experience. Not sure if I'll start off carving a plate or a neck or doing a complete build, but I should be able to tell how the wood bears the climate either way. I'll be glad to report back to you with my findings!

On a side note, this is easily the warmest (and most informative) welcome I've received on an online forum, so thanks to all you guys. I suppose that's one more motivating reason to become a part of the luthier community.

Cheers!

Working "in the hood" might not be the most pleasant experience. If power sanding the exhaust fan would have to be fairly strong to be effective. Sanding on the balcony might be cheaper and better. But a lot of violin makers avoid sanding and instead use scrapers. Shavings are quickly swept up with a broom and dust pan.
You will read a lot about dust control on this forum as many of us build guitars which require a fair amount of sanding and use woods that are somewhat noxious (cocobolo, pau ferro, rosewoods) compared to maples and spruces used in violin construction.

That's a good hint Clay, thanks! Perhaps I should try to get a couple nice sharp scrapers and use them. If the balcony is preferable in any way, that's all the better for me. I would like to avoid having to build dust hoods indoors if at all possible. As for power sanding, I don't think I'll be doing much of it, as I do intend to use hand tools only (save for perhaps a Dremel tool or a drill press, to make some things a bit less painful). I do believe I'll use sandpaper, and quite a lot of it at that, so that's one issue. At any rate, dust control is my primary concern. Some of my colleagues who work in the paper and wood chemistry industry have picked up NASTY diseases from fine dust exposure and I'm sure most everyone here knows more afflicted people than I do.

Keep in mind that all wood dust is considered carcinogenic! The repeated exposure over time is something to avoid. You should look this up as an occupational hazard, then get dust masks and use them.

Timotej Kovačič wrote:T... a couple nice sharp scrapers and use them. ....

There is a learning curve with scrapers but well worth it. I do a lot of my thicknessing with a combination of a block plane with a toothed blade and a scraper. The block plane with the toothed blade is probably my most used plane.

Over time my violin making teacher actually became allergic to both maple and spruce.

Many violin makers don't use sandpaper at all, or only minimally, in the later finishing stages. Many in the violin world prefer the look of a scraped surface to a sanded one. For scrapers, I use heavy ones almost exclusively these days, and do a lot of shaping with them. You just can't get the crisp edges with sandpaper that you can with a sharp scraper.

One more reason a scraper would work better for me is that I don't have a lot of spaces where I can temporarily discard a lot of paper waste, least of all rolls or stacks of sandpaper. A scraper means less storage space occupied and less trips to the store, which are both big advantages in my circumstances.
I'll try my best to stick to scraping from the get go. You have probably saved me a couple years worth of experimenting with sandpaper before I would have switched over completely!

I do intend to wear a respirator during all of the dustiest operations. Most of the planing, cutting, gluing, gouging and chiseling should not really present an airborne dust risk, at least that's what I hope will be the case if I keep my tools really nice and sharp. This would also enable me to work inside for a larger portion of the construction process, so all the better for it.

As for dust protection, the balcony has another upside - most Finnish balconies are absolutely hermetically sealed from the indoors. I can do my dirty work outside, sweep the place up, shake any dust off myself, take my shoes off and go back inside without having to worry about creating a huge airborne dust contamination when I step inside (into the kitchen, as it happens).

Timotej, I think you will have almost no dust to deal with if you will not use sand paper. Scrapers don't make dust if they are sharp, they make shavings and scrapings. Planes and chisels make shavings, saws make saw 'dust', which is fairly large particles and not likely to be airborne.

Michael Lewis wrote:..., saws make saw 'dust', which is fairly large particles and not likely to be airborne.

I have a strong preference for Japanese saws. Possibly because I never had a really good "western" saw. The Japanese saw gives a really fine cut but the negative side of that is that the saw dust is much finer than with any western saw I have used. If I am cutting ebony, for example, I prefer to do that outside due to the dust.