Spruce defect?

[Magnus Geijer]

This, which was hidden until carved, popped up the other night. Can anyone tell me what it is, exactly? Pitch pocket or just a discoloration of some sort? It feels no different from the surrounding wood. This one is going to have a dark finish, so I'm not that concerned about it as far as looks go, but should I expect it to do anything strange with stain and/or finish?

Thanks,

Magnus

[sunburst]

Doesn't really look like a pitch pocket. The dark streaks that go along the grain in both directions lead me to believe it might have been a small injury to the tree as it grew that healed over in one year, and that was that until it showed up right on the surface of your top. Such things happen.
I'd continue as planned and expect no problem with using or finishing the top.

[Rob Grant]

The last time I ran into something like this it was a stain created by an iron shrapnel fragment from a WWII Mills bomb (British grenade). The AIF used this part of Queensland back in the early 1940s as a training area for the jungle war in New Guinea. The frag showed up in a beautiful bit of old growth
maple (Flindersia). For years after the war, timber mills would run over a log with a metal detector before they put it through the saws. Occasionally I still come across shell or granade fragments in old growth trees.

Of course, I don't think this is your situation.<G> Looks like a good candidate for a "black top."

[Rick Turner]

I'd even suspect a nail because of the blue streaking. Could have had some barbed wire nailed up, a "no trespassing" poster, or whatever. I resawed a steel jacketed bullet once and left each half in the guitar back...

[Chuck Naill]

Below are photos of defects that appeared. I actually now like it when these characteristics appear during the carving process.

The violin top shows some staining on the right side from the decay of a limb. The old time woodcutters refer to this as red horse. I named the instrument the RedHorse Horner.





chuck naill

[Spruce]

This, which was hidden until carved, popped up the other night. Can anyone tell me what it is, exactly? Pitch pocket or just a discoloration of some sort? It feels no different from the surrounding wood. This one is going to have a dark finish, so I'm not that concerned about it as far as looks go, but should I expect it to do anything strange with stain and/or finish?

Thanks,

Magnus

What's the species??

Is there any discoloration on the underside of the plate??

Did you carve away a "more defined" center part to that discoloration??

If "yes", it looks like it might a bug hole in the sapwood--a common and often hard-to-detect "defect"...

[Magnus Geijer]

>>What's the species??

It's Sitka.

>>Is there any discoloration on the underside of the plate??

Nope, not a trace. And nothing visible from the top before I started carving, so just an isolated spot in the middle of the board, which is I was a little confused about it in the first place.

>>Did you carve away a "more defined" center part to that discoloration??

Nope. This is about as visible and defined as it ever was. Which figures, of course. If I'd been carving my top 1/4" up or down from where I did, it would have been carved out completely.

From all the suggestions, I'm guessing it was some very light damage from the outside, since it's so localized. Sounds like I don't have to worry about any funky isssues with finishing, so I have no concerns, really. Especially not since the board rings like a bell.

Thanks,

Magnus

[Jerry Haynes]

I personally like things like that, and I'd be very attempted to let it show, at least some of it. But that's just me. I agree with all above, I don't think you'll have any problems with it. Jerry

[Rob Grant]

Rick wrote:

"I resawed a steel jacketed bullet once and left each half in the guitar back..."

Rick, I was telling a guitar playing friend about this last weekend and he was keen to see it. Would you happen to have a photo that you could post?

[Rick Turner]

That sucker is long gone. I did that about 12 years ago. It was some California Claro walnut...very pretty stuff. Should have taken a picture...didn't...

But I do want to make a cowboy guitar someday and create the soundhole with a shotgun blast and then bind the thing with barbed wire...

[Spruce]

Rick wrote:

"I resawed a steel jacketed bullet once and left each half in the guitar back..."

Rick, I was telling a guitar playing friend about this last weekend and he was keen to see it. Would you happen to have a photo that you could post?

Here's a pic of a couple bullet holes I ran into about 20 years ago in a large Sitka tree....

Didn't keep the bullets...

[oldwave maker]

But I do want to make a cowboy guitar someday and create the soundhole with a shotgun blast and then bind the thing with barbed wire...

Sounds a bit like my "The Cheney" guitar, from the Last Throes Guitar Co. in Undisclosed Bunker, Va., tho the side crack repair is the cowboy way fence staples and baling wire, and the original pellets were bbs.......
Sugarbush defect- anyone done a sugar maple back with bookmatched tap holes?

[sunburst]

Bullets, nails, screws, tap holes, shot, barbed wire, insulators, I've seen it all in over twenty years of owning a portable sawmill. There are a couple of exposed half bullets and some half shot (<g>) showing in the siding of my shop, but it all weathers gray along with the wood, so you can't really find them.

It's almost amazing how many bullets there are in trees. When I was doing more sawmilling I carried on of those lock-back folding knives in a leather thing on my belt just to dig bullets out of boards. It only takes one time folding a pocket knife up on your thumb to convince you a locking blade is better for bullet extraction!