THE RECLAIMERS

And I would walk back in time 5,000 years…

“Using reclaimed wood is rather more green and sustainable – for a smallproduction luthier – than even using local sustainable woods,” says UK guitar maker Adrian Lucas.“You might have a wardrobe that comes to the end of its life, but the material it was made from is as good as the day it was built and it’s such a waste to discard the whole thing.

“Reclaimed wood can be of a very high quality,” he continues, since moisture and chemical content may have stabilised. Finding big enough pieces intact can be a challenge but “a four-piece back is every bit as good as a two-piece, and can often allow one to maintain quarter-sawn grain over the whole width”.

Among the most alluring of salvaged woods, bog oak or Fenland black oak has been submerged in boggy ground for perhaps 5,000 years. “Because there is no oxygen in the mud there is no decay,” says Lucas. “Bog oak is usually black and sometimes fades to brown, but the oak figure is still visible and can be very beautiful. It often turns up in fields where it is a nuisance to farmers. It makes great fingerboards and its colour means it has quite a traditional appearance, but it also works very nicely for acoustic back and sides.”

Lucas has made an Arbour model with entirely reclaimed woods apart from the bridge pins, purflings and rosette veneer: a soundboard of reclaimed 80-year-old Douglas fir; back and sides of Honduras mahogany from a chest of drawers; a mahogany neck made of a door frame from Bradford University; and an Indian rosewood fingerboard and bridge from an old dressing table.