Greetings!

I am a new blacksmith who also happens to be a musician, and I wonder how insane and/or impossible it would be for me to consider taking old brass saxophone bodies and flattening them and using them to construct a resophonic guitar body ala National style. I am not looking for perfection, and having the remnants of sax imprint would actually be preferred for a multitude of reasons. Anyone care to weigh in?

Thanks!
Peter.

Hey Peter,

Welcome to IFI!

Others may chime in and say why it wouldn't work or have some great advice on how to proceed - either way, try it out - you never know, you may get some cool unexpected results.

There's a spot in the upper bar of the page that says: User CP. Open that up and fill in your location info - there may be someone near you who can help you out first-hand.

Good luck and post some pics if you do give this idea a try.

Oh Gosh thats better, like I know where MN is, or even where Mt St Helens is ( is that in Greece). Guys this is an international forum, a bit more detail would help.
Ta from Phil at Kurri.

peter i dont know about working brass ( somebody most certainly will!) but i love your idea and i love the idea of leaving imprints like you said of the sax. when you say resophonic body would that be the same as a resonator guitar? have you ever made guitars wood metal or otherwise/ or are you just going to give it a go from scratch? either way go for it i say and show us the result! :)

Brass is normally fairly brittle on account of the zinc in it. Fairly hard to forge without it breaking. When it is forged it is normally done by drop hammer in dies, with as few blows as possible to form it. Open die hammer forging is by our experience not usually successful, but give it a go, you never know. Even though I played sax all through school, and still have one under the bed I never tried to flatten it, dropped them once or twice, I always formed the opinion that the metal was fairly brittle, (after dropping them then having to pay to have them repaired).
Phil

maybe if you actually had a trashed sax you could hammer the imprint of the squashed sax onto some sheet steel to use for something interesting. or is that a bit surreal??! i just like this kind of thing!

The problem is that those curved pieces generally don't flatten to flat. Due to stretching during construction they will end up wrinkled. If they are really trashed you might think of cutting sections out to flatten pretty flat and use as inlay on a piece.

Could it be worked cold? In all the metal spinning stuff I've read, Brass is used quite often and worked cold. It requires anealing often (about 3 times as often as Copper) to avoid cracking.

If it were me, Id try it after anealing and using a wooden hammer and wood block as the anvil.

I say "go for it" too. Experimenting can be fun AND educational! Keep us posted on your results.

Interesting idea.. you have nothing to lose but some time and your mind..

I may be wrong, but aren't there some solder joints keeping the whole thing together?? And I know from experience that taking a 3 dimensional curved object to a flat 2 d object is an excercise in ... frustration... just like going the other way,

I have never built a guitar, but have built some other small stringed instruments. It really is not that hard to build a stringed instrument... it is really hard to build a good to great one... don't be afraid!!! I have done a small dulcimer... challenging but a fun project...

it sounds like you are wanting to build something like a dobro or guitar with a metal resonator? take you time and use good glue...
good luck
Cliff

Like with any new endeavor learning to make a nice guitar, in this case one with brass from a sax might take some practice and have a learning curve, therefor having a supply of saxes to squash and experiment with might be handy. And there is always the possibility that if you squash enough saxes then that could result in less sax on television, and that sounds like a good thing. :D

Less Sax on TV?

Never gonna happen . . . ;)

the sides back and top are soldered together.as well as the sound well. i had my 40's nati tricone apart last nite and put new cones in. the edges are rolled and hammerd flat then the seams are soldered. keep in mind that the raised portion on the back is not merly for looks. that raised section is what help keep it from folding in half.

I don't know a thing about Saxes or guitars but the idea of making a Sax flat does sound like fun. The first thing that went through this feeble mind of mine was to run it through a rolling mill or under a steel drum asphalt compactor(steam roller). That vision sure looked fun, a flat sax. My son liked to drove me crazy learning to play his so it seems fitting to flatten the dang thing. Sounded like he was killing cats, not exactly the sound Adolphe Sax was after when he invented the blessed thing.

Just as it goes into the roller you could say, "B flat, saxaphone."

This is an amusing thread. Back to the basic question: The fella that posted this question can answer it. Can you flatten a sax? Can you attach the fretboard? The bridge assembly? Do you have the tools to do all of these things and then follow through with electical pickups? If all of these aer answered yes then be sure and take pics and even better play a little something on utube so we can link up and hear how it sounds...

Aren't saxes b flat sharp? So you had best not use a pneumatic roller or your roller would be flat rather than the sax. :)

This is an amusing thread. Back to the basic question: The fella that posted this question can answer it. Can you flatten a sax? Can you attach the fretboard? The bridge assembly? Do you have the tools to do all of these things and then follow through with electical pickups? If all of these aer answered yes then be sure and take pics and even better play a little something on utube so we can link up and hear how it sounds...

there is alot more to building a resophonic guitar than that.

After you get the sax squashing happening right, Maybe you could find a use for violins too, there is way too much sax and violins on TV these days.

I just looked up some on resonator guitars, and it looks like the cover is mostly that- a cover. The rest of the resonator is very carefully made, so if you are making the cover from a sax, possibly for an existing guitar, then I expect you will get very good results, needing only to add additional holes as necessary.

If you want to have everything made out of the sax, there will be a whole lot more skill involved.

Phil

body forms and what not need to have a bit of wood working skill as well.the tail block and neck blocks are wood. as is the rock maple "broomstick" that connects the 2 tails and supports the sound well. . then you have to work out where your biscuit will set so the intonation is right. it would be a ton of work tooling u for this with a high failure rate.

Horsehoer I understand that fully,,however the person that posed the question gavve us no idea what skills he has or equipment. With that in nind I just posed a set of basics to see if he is anywhere near close to being able to start on a projext like this. And if he looks up cigar box guitars they are not even closse to a resophonic type but they can work and do not sound all that bad considering. I think parts of a sax could replace the cigar box. But then it is not something I will attempt. For me a d size martin and a fender tele are all I need.

Well ain't this fun. Glad y'all are having so many laughs on my dime, and much thanks to those weighing in with suggestions.

To muddy the waters a bit, I am only interested in the possibility of building a metal guitar body out of brass that resembles a National Style O as closely as I might get it or decide it needs to be, with some interesting references to saxes embedded in it somehow. The neck I will buy, the wood work is not an issue.

I have numerous sax bodies that are essentially good for scrap as they have no keys, etc, and none of them are worth restoring. I am a long time sax and guitar player, so this seems like a good project for me if I can make it work. I have very little tooling, but have many smithing friends and connections, and possible access to a metal work shop. This guitar will not have any pickups. I will buy the cone. Sending the bodies or parts of the bodies through a roller was one idea I had. I would prefer to do the whole project out of recycled sax for spiritual reasons and out of a long time debt I owe brass and the spirit of saxophone. If I had to use some sheet brass that might be workable, but finding acoustically similar metal might be challenging and would be a compromise I'm not sure I can accept. I am very meticulous and very resourceful. I need a resophonic partner and ally for what I write, sing, and perform and have had several, but now I need "the one" (not that there's only one in the world haha) And, as one of my teachers once so eloquently put, it could be that making a guitar that is somehow artistically beautiful, has my sweat and blessing in it, but may not ultimately end up playable, could actually be the gift I need to offer up so that the right guitar will present itself.

Chew on that one and fire away.

~Peter.

~if sounds do not reach the ear in the chest
nothing happens~

Hey Peter,

As I said in my first post, you may get both sides of the opinion-fence as to whether this can be done but given the tone and info of your last post I say:

Just Do It!

Have a great time with it and please post pics of the attempt and results!!

well peter im with your idea 100 percent i think its great - i cant wait to see what you turn out - i just love the idea of using the scrap saxes to make up part or all of a totally new instrument - it will certainly have creative and spiritual resonance as you say - i think you may come up with exactly what youre looking for! very exciting i love metal guitars we have a steel resonator guitar as well as many others although we have never made one! I think making any kind of musical instrument is an inspired activity! Go for it peter and show us what you turn out with :0

Maybe this was covered and I missed it but couldn't the sax be split down the back and unrolled? I know the sharp bends are not going to work out, but you could get several usable sections.

Forgemaster -

Oh Gosh thats better, like I know where MN is, or even where Mt St Helens is ( is that in Greece). Guys this is an international forum, a bit more detail would help.
Ta from Phil at Kurri.

MN - Minnesota is a state in the northern central United States. Mpls (Minneapolis) is a city on the Wisconsin (another State to the east of Minnesota) side of it. Mt. Saint Helens is in Washington State - Washington State is on the Pacific northwest corner of the lower 48 states. It is a volcano that erupted dramatically a while back.

Hope this helps.

Now help me - where the heck is "the eastern side of Mt Tumblebee"?
And I'm not sure what this phrase means "Ta from Phil at Kurri."
My guess is that in American English you would say "See you later, Phil in Kurri." I am not sure. Is Kurri a place?

BTW - I probably should know, but have no clue where Big Chimney is either!

Oh - and I would like more Sax on TV - but I guess I have to stick with Charlie Parker on the stereo.