humidity

[peter havriluk]

Topic of the season for those of us who have finished guitars. Hard to do in New England winters. I'm wondering if there is any benefit derived from zipping the encased guitar, with humidity enhancers inside the case, into a vinyl suit bag so as to impede the case's and hence the guitar's respiration with the outside world? I've never heard the suggestion, and that suggests that it's either a really dumb idea or it doesn't work, or of course, everybody does it, why even bring the topic into discussion.

Opinions and reactions are invited. So are humidification ideas that work.

Thanks, folks.

[ken cierp]

Great to construct guitars when the humidity is low about 40% is ideal -- bad to construct (assembly and glue ups) guitars when the humidity is high. The worry is when parts are glued up with a high moisture content -- when the water leaves the wood it shrinks -- boom cracks. That said I am not sure what you are asking about?

[peter havriluk]

Ken, here's where my thought(?) process was going:

Humid air is less dense than dry air. I think a guitar case, being unsealed from the elements, if there's humidity enhancers inside the case, will be invaded by denser, dry air and the humidification attempts inside the case compromised. My notion was to insert the guitar/case in a garment bag so that it won't be breathing in the dry surrounding air, allowing the moisture devices inside the case to do a better job raising the relative humidity inside the case. Not a big deal, but if an improvement of humidification can be obtained by using a relatively inexpensive garment bag, the moisture level of the guitar would be a bit higher. But I've not seen anyone mention this notion, and I was putting it out to the group for a reasonability check.

[Tim Benware]

I think you could possibly get it too high that way. Better to invest in a humidifier (winter) and a dehumidifier (summer). Currently I am going through about 4 gals of water a day to keep my shop between 40-45% RH.

[peter havriluk]

Humidifier's already in the room where the guitar lives. Noisy little bugger.

[Eric_K]

I had to save up and install a whole-house dehumidifier in my house to get the humidity down to 50%. I started a new guitar two weekends ago. I couldn't glue the braces last weekend because the humidity dropped below 40% for the first time since I started tracking it. My neighbors keep humidifiers in their guitars in cases, the hard ones, not the vinyl ones. The one neighbor says that he fills his twice a week.

Eric

[Daniel P]

We've got all the humidity you need here the PNW