Hello Talk Composites!

Jonathan Wilson here and I run a small firm that specializes in niche stringed instruments called GuitarViols (guitar formatted violas, bowed guitars) that are widely heard in TV/film/game soundtracks over the last two decades! www.guitarviols.com . The construction of my instruments is much like violins or guitars (traditional woodworking) but the fingerboards (playing surface) involves a composite cocktail of resin and graphite molded as a shell and vacuum layup of CF inside. I like these more than any other material I have worked with and, unlike wood, it is a high performance part that gives the player an almost zero friction experience! (which is great as relatively expensive strings have a way longer life because of that). 

Over the last 4 years, I have had a project in  fits and starts: An all composite (Carbon fiber, flax, hemp cloth) GuitarViol model. I have the molds (tooling gel coat and fiberglass) I am now about to do some initial lay-ups/tests. The mold, by design is a vacuum infusion (though I may use throw away bags and hand lay-ups on the first ones). Anyway, I will be hitting up the forum here and there I am sure! Though I have been doing composite boards successfully with my own crazy composite process since 2016 , the rest of it is still uncharted for me! Thanks for having me!

Cheers!
JW

Welcome to the Forum!  We have had a few forum members work on composite instruments so there is some information here on that as well as plenty of experience with the general composites work. 

Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant