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Just looking for some ideas. I have stuff all over the place. It's a mess. What kinds of ways do you guys store rough wood, blanks, stuff in process, guitars in the white, etc?

I store most of my building raw materials on these cheapo shelves. I've been putting guitar bodies in white in the Rubbermaid tub you can see against the back wall. During the winter when I have trouble keeping the humidity up, I put the lid on the tub and have a sponge that goes in a container with holes in it that screws to the lid bolted to the top of the tub, to help keep the RH up.

Chris.

Filippo: I can't fathom how neat your shop is. My shop is in a constant state of confusion. Oh, if I only had the patience to do something like this.

I like your idea of have a workstation that holds the guitar pieces. If I ever have a chance to redo my shop, I would break it up into small workstations. Each one would be just big enough to work on one guitar, and would hold enough materials to finish one guitar. I wish I'd known then what I know now. I set everything up all wrong. I'll get it right next time

Filippo Morelli, nice stash. Todd, I love that upper padded storage. My house is almost full of guitars, and my shop, I hate leaving compleated guitars around. Those ajustable shelves are really handy. Keeping things flat is always a chore.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

I have a large shop that's sealed and insulated...so space makes storage easier, I suppose. The main room in my shop is 1600 sq ft. and is surrounded by wire shelves. I keep all my raw wood stickered on these shelves. This room has a home demumidifier and two small humidifiers in it. They keep up ok but they are a pain to coordinate and maintain....I'm still looking for the exact right system to replace them. The trick for me in this room was to keep a sperate fan running constantly. Neither the humidifiers or dehumidifier has enough oomph to circulate all the air in that room. A medium sized floor fan took care of that and really helped the situation.

Unless the room is sealed, temperature controlled, and air can well circulate there isn't much hope of controlling RH.

I also have an 800 sq ft office where I keep finished parts. A small humidifier and dehumidifier keeps up with that room easily. I think I bought both of those units at Lowe's.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

You have some stuff stickered and some weighted down with rocks, what's the deal?

I try to store wood and parts according to where they are in the building process.

Here's the lumber rack for large boards, which is made of ¾” steel pipe, protruding from 2x4” uprights screwed to the wall. The rack is quite strong, and allows me to store up to 4 metre (13’) pieces, which is about the length of these mahogany boards when I buy them, so I can keep them intact until I know how I will use them.

This is the “dusty” machine room, with is a non humidity controlled part of the shop.








This room is also where I store recently processed wood, such as this stash of local spruce, on an overhead shelf.








The rack in the humidity controlled bench room is where I keep my exotics, some more spruce and a few roughly shaped parts. I made the shelf deep enough for guitar sides (and whole guitars on the top shelf, not pictured).








On the left on this shelf is where I put the woods after they have been picked for a specific instrument. I also store guitar moulds, some with bent sides in them, here. On the right are guitar sides with linings and end blocks.








Here is where I put the plates after they are joined, between the rosette and brace tasks, and the boxes as I work on them. My spray booth is next in another building, and the instruments hang from the ceiling in there until I’m about ready to rub out the finish, as with the three in this picture. This space is also home to a 1:20 scale model of a stave church I started almost 20 years ago, somehow I doubt it will ever be completed...

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I am pretty strongly of the opinion that it's best to store wood outside of the humidity and temperature controlled environment until a few months before it is used.

The word "seasoning" as applied to wood is not about cooking with spices. It's about exposing the wood to the change of seasons. Let it expand and contract, and do whatever it's going to do. I think it stabilizes more that way, and if it is going to check, better to find out about that before building with it.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I complettely agree with that, as long as we are talking about raw, unglued lumber. I believe it's a different story when some assembly as started. Than you don't want to expose your work to too much humidity changes, just as you wouldn't want for a finished guitar.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Yep, the stuff I use to make guitars comes from trees. Those trees didn't come from a temperature, and humidity controlled envoroment. I keep my wood on shelves in an unheated shed, with a dirt floor. I do keep it in my shop for a few months before I build with it. I won't use a set until the weight stays the same for a couple weeks. This means it's not longer losing, or gaining moisture. (Thanks for the tip Shane) I keep my shop at 40% RH.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

I know this is the conventional wisdom, personally I don't have enough experience to say, but it seems reasonable. I don't have a place to store wood outside, so I have to keep it all inside. For sure, wood has to be dry enough when you build with it and lock it into the shape of an instrument, or it will crack when the air (and the wood) gets really dry, usually in the cold season around here. According to the people who "bake" their wood, this process also makes the wood move less with changes in humidity later, and maybe so. I do know that my some of my rough shaped neck blanks will move a bit over time, even if I keep them in the humidity controlled part of my shop, so keeping them around for a while in this shape makes sense. Would they move more, and / or become more stable if I also stored them outside until a few months prior to the final shaping? Perhaps, all I know is my current method seems to give me very few problems with unstable wood.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin