Twenty-four-year GAL member Tom Thiel built instruments and other wooden things in the 1970s when he jumped ship from academia. He was side-tracked by making high-end loudspeakers in the ’80s and ’90s. Now he splits his time between lutherie and supplying reclaimed, unusual, and otherwise crazy tonewood to high-end luthiers through his company Northwind Timber & Tonewood.
▪ bio current as of 2017
2020
AL#139 p.70
Tom Thiel
▪ They say to cut lutherie trees when the sap it down. But what does that really mean? Also, that old story about cutting the trees during the right phase of the moon might be more than a story.
2017
AL#131 p.69
Tom Thiel
▪ Why does my dimensioned neck stock keep twisting?
2014
AL#120 p.70
Ralph Charles Tom Thiel
▪ Ponderings on the current plentiful supply of red spruce.
2013
AL#113 p.68
Tom Thiel
▪ Conflicting information around the term ‘rift-sawn’ and why grain orientation matters to luthiers.
2008
AL#96 p.68
Tom Thiel
▪ As high quality exotic woods become precious, domestic alternatives for fingerboards become more valuable. These alternatives must be as hard, abrasion, resistant, stable, and of similar pore structure, density, and color.