David Russell Young (NMC)

[Jim Hilburn]

One of the vintage instruments featured on the "Night at the Museum" show was a David Russell Young guitar he made for John Prine. It was played by Miranda Lambert.
While preparing to build my first mandolin in the early 70's I ended up with David's book called "The Steel String Guitar" which is an instructional manual on building guitars. He appears to be a very good builder but one thing that really caught my attention then and still does is his method of attaching a neck.
He writes "Steel string necks are traditionally joined to the body with a dovetail joint, but this is no longer necessary with modern epoxies". And proceeds to glue a neck on with just a butt joint!
Other than this book and seeing the Prine guitar I don't know much about David but thought this would be of interest here.

[rcc56]

He made some nice looking instruments. I have never had the opportunity to play one.

Yes, I also have his book. Most of his instructions are very general, rather than detailed.
I do not recommend joining a neck with epoxy or a butt joint. If I did not want to use a traditional dovetail, I would lean towards a simple mortise and tenon joint secured with one or two bolts.

[sunburst]

I have the DRY book too. It's a pretty good piece of history if not a particularly good instruction manual.
Rolfe used epoxy butt joints for his Unicorn and Phoenix mandolins. Others have used the joint too with success.

Edit:
A little background for those who might be interested.
It seems that some light airplane propellers have blades attached to hubs with epoxy butt joints. Rolfe said something like "if it will hold a propeller blade it will hole a mandolin neck". As I though more about the situation I concluded that the stress or strain on the joint is different. The propeller blade is under tensile load for the most part whereas the mandolin neck is under more of a bending load. Epoxy joints are very strong in tension. Perhaps the propeller joint is a better application for a butt joint than a mandolin neck, but the fact remains; the joint works.

[Charles E.]

I imagine it would make a neck reset rather difficult.

[j. condino]

David no longer makes guitars. He is a violin bowmaker these days.

I first found his book when I was a freshman working on an engineering school project. Tucked away on a campus library shelf next to a book on Young's Modulus, it forever changed my life. I've played plenty of his guitars over the years. I always laugh at the fact that at the time, I was living in the heart of the Adirondacks, but because I was using his book as a reference, it was a LOT of work to find some redwood to make the top! The thing that really stood out with David's book was it's elegant simplicity. It made everything seem possible, rather than overly complicated and intimidating.

Difficult neck resets! Yes- you had to saw the joint open! I'm pretty sure that Bob Taylor started out with David's book, hence his use of a butt joint but after needing few resets, that was modified with brass screw inserts for the first 1/4 million guitars. I built hundreds of similar necks with version 2.0 of the original Breedlove Guitar company. Neck resets take about 15 minutes. I use a traditional dovetail these days, but for the beginning builder and student these style make it very easy to learn how to set a great neck angle and I know form decades of experience with them that when properly done they work very well. From a manufacturing standoint where you have to set three necks a day, they are tremendously helpful.

Everyone has their personal opinion about neck joints and David is not the only author that offers one that most of us disagree with. I still have my first edition, pre publication editor's review copy of his book. In today's multimedia world where there are literally 1000s of sources to learn how to build a nice guitar, most people cannot imagine what a revolutionary concept it was when The Steel String Guitar was published- the idea that an average person with a few hand tools and some patience could build a well done acoustic guitar. There are other builder's who influenced me after I had been building a while, but David was the one who first said you can do this.

[Richard500]

John, not a good analog. Although the largest force is radial, a prop generates thrust, which bends the blades forward. A Cessna 150, which can have a wood prop, at 2000 rpm, has a measured 200 lbs per blade, approximately. Each blade is 30” long, so the torque on the little hub joint, can be estimated. Plus, there are two other forces, and vibration.
I seem to remember that, unlike the 150 I learned in, which has a nose wheel, small ‘tail draggers’ can sport wood props because if they tip forward, which is embarrassing, and the prop touches the runway, a metal prop causes a mandatory full engine teardown, but a weaker wood one doesn’t! So a glue joint may be specifically designed to not be too strong.
A breakaway peghead could be just the thing to avoid neck replacement on mandolins operated by clumsy folk, but I’m not going to rush a patent disclosure just yet.

[j. condino]

Gibson has a long history of "breakaway pegheads"!

[rcc56]

. . . And then there was Don Teeter's method of pressing frets into oversize slots with epoxy . . . which he later retracted as not being a good idea.

But the rest of Teeter's book was quite good, and I still refer to it from time to time. "The Acoustic Guitar" by Don Teeter.

Recommended reading from the same period: "Complete Guitar Repair" by Hideo Kamimoto. Still in print. And there's not much to argue with in that one.

Those three books, plus Irving Sloane's book on guitar repair were all we had in the old days. We had to figure a lot of things out as we went along, and we talked to each other a lot more in those days.

[Jim Hilburn]

Wow! Glad I started this.
In '78 I took a Boulder Free School class on how to build a guitar from Max Krimmel who should be better known than he is. He had copies of the book to sell and that's where I got it. He said we should have it because David did everything different than he did.

[rcc56]

The last time I saw Jim Grainger, he talked a little about the old days when he and Mike Longworth were coming up in Chattanooga in the early 1960's. They were trying to figure out how to take broken bridges off old Gibson and Martin guitars, and figure out how to pull the necks and re-angle and re-set them without destroying the instruments. They were flying completely blind-- there were no books, manuals, or videos available; and no elder repairmen to consult except violin people, and their instruments were built differently. Times have sure changed.

Aspiring young people interested in the craft will greatly benefit from buying Kamimoto's book while it is still available, and study Frank Ford's wonderful frets.com website. A book or two on violin construction can also be very helpful.

[j. condino]

. . . And then there was Don Teeter's method of pressing frets into oversize slots with epoxy . . . which he later retracted as not being a good idea.

But the rest of Teeter's book was quite good, and I still refer to it from time to time. "The Acoustic Guitar" by Don Teeter......

Those three books, plus Irving Sloane's book on guitar repair were all we had in the old days. We had to figure a lot of things out as we went along, and we talked to each other a lot more in those days.

About a year after I found David Russel Young's book I wound up being stationed in Oklahoma City (the run down old school version of it, not the hipster one today...) and Don lived about a mile down the road from me. I don't think I was old enough to legally drink yet, but I learned a lot from hanging out at Don's shop. I bought a 1930 National style 3 tri cone from him for $75 and about six months later traded that guitar for a one owner 1966 Mustang because I couldn't raise the $500 for the car. 'Ironic that today I can't afford the guitar or the car....