A Better Use for MDF - A Form to Laminate Classical Guitar Sides
The guitar is a journey, a never-ending quest for perfection. Andrés Segovia I have never quite liked Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF); it’s heavy; scratch the surface with some sandpaper and dust from it flies everywhere; and, well, it just isn’t wood. I grew up with the lumber industry and know the history of William Mason’s “Masonite” and am always grateful that he and Thomas Edison worked together to find a use for all the wood chips and saw dust that come from a sawmill. When I was a kid in the late 1960’s a few “teepee” burners were still in use, sawmills would burn the sawdust and all that smoke would linger in the valley for days. A very long time ago, I made work boards for my guitars out of pine and redwood, but it was hard getting all those laminated strips flats and scooping out the area for the top doming was tricky due to wood grain runout. When I realized I could use MDF for the solera, my life got a lot easier, MDF has no grain, is fairly flat and easy to sand flat ...
