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Hello All,

I've been scouring the net looking for advice on alternatives to Rosewood and Ebony for bridge and fingerboard material and haven't come up with much. I am in the planning / sourcing stage of my next build (Weissenborn style) and am trying to work with local or at least domestic wood. I have some sycamore and walnut that I am excited to use but am 'stumped' on the fingerboard bridge material.

Since this won't be fretted durability isn't must for the fingerboard but the bridge? Although if it does work out I wouldn't mind trying it on a fretted guitar.

I was thinking hard maple. Can I use the walnut? I'm fairly new to this with only a handful under my belt.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or experiences would be huge help.

Thanks in advance!
_Mike

_________________
_Mike Tracz
MCT Guitars
https://www.instagram.com/mustcreatethings/
https://www.youtube.com/mustcreatethings

Sugar maple, oak, persimmon, desert ironwood. There was a thread on walnut fingerboards a while back, and the general consensus was that it's too soft.

Mesquite is pretty hard, I think. Anyone tried it?

I really like Texas ebony.
Not a true ebony, but it seems just as hard... perhaps harder.
It grows down in our Valley region, and is usually too small to make back and sides.
However, fretboards and bridges can be easily obtained.
It ranges from a dark mauve to a golden brown, which might represent two different species all sold under the name Texas ebony.
See if you can find some...or better yet, I might have a blank around here that's not spoken for.

Steve

_________________
From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Dennis, Steve,

Thank you for your replies and offer. I have been thinking about maple for as an bridge alternative for a while now and think you just pushed me over the edge. I imagine if the contrast is too much I could stain it first.

Do you recommend Sugar Maple?

Thanks!

_Mike

_________________
_Mike Tracz
MCT Guitars
https://www.instagram.com/mustcreatethings/
https://www.youtube.com/mustcreatethings

I have for a time been thinking about holly, and even gone so far as to make a pyramid bridge out of it, but as of yet, every time I get a guitar done, I've "chickened out" and gone for ebony. Still, I would like to try it sometime. It weighs 15 grams compared to a 25 gram ebony pyramid. Any thoughts from you pros?

Dang, I just knew you were going to be pushing oak Hanns!

Joe

'Texas ebony' is probably the other Diospyros, D. texana; common persimmon is D.virginiana. Both are true ebonies. I've never worked with the Texas type, but D. virginiana is a lot like Macassar ebony in mechanical properties, although it is seldom black. It makes good bridges and fingerboards

I don't see why you couldn't use walnut for a fingerboard on a Weissenborn; I've made dozens of mountain dulcimers with it. It's too soft for guitars, of course, but, as you say, if you're not actualy pressing the strings down with your fingers it's fine. Just don't get too vehement when you're putting in the frets: I had one young student hammer them right in out of sight.

Walnut makes a good bridge, too. The trick is to take into account the fact that it's lighter, and not as hard as most other bridge woods. Make the bridge outline larger to get some weight back without stiffening it too much, and set the saddle slot farther back from the front edge. It also helps to use skew cut wood, which is less prone to splitting.

I've used maple for fingerboards in the past, genrally staining it with a 'tea' made from black walnut hulls. It can come up almost as dark as walnut, but the stain is transparent enough so that the grain shows through if you use something like birdseye or curly maple. I'm using the same thing now on a hop hornbeam fingerboard for a guitar I'm putting together for the Montreal show.

I suppose some fine-grained Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) would make a good fingerboard, and bridge as well. It's about as close in properties as you'll come to Brazilian rosewood, but the color might be a problem. Some folks claim to have had good results staining it with tannin followed by ferric acetate, which is a tradiational black stain. I seem not to have the best tannin around.

Finding a good fingerboard wood is going to be the hardest challenge in the 'local wood' seach, I think. It's difficult to think of a North american wood that is both dark, so it won't show the dirt, fine grained, and hard. We've all been spoiled by ebony.

I made an all mahogany guitar including the top, with maple bindings, bridge and fretboard. It was quite lovely and sounded ok. That was about 15 years ago and it's still in great shape. So you will be fine with maple. However if I read you correctly you are not going to have frets on this instrument? If so I'd think that in fact you would need even more durability then a fretted instrument.

Actually, Texas Ebony is Pithecellobium flexicaule and/or Pithecellobium ebano.
It is a handsome wood, and the offer still stands, as it is rare that we can contribute something lutherie-related from Texas!

Steve

_________________
From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Thank you for the replies! Not only the encouragement but reason and detail behind your recommendations.

To hear that a bridge can be fashioned out of walnut is encouraging. For some reason I get so spooked when it comes to experimenting with materials. My worst fear is it will wall apart. The sound, good or bad, I can deal with.

So thanks again for pushing me in the right direction. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Hopefully I'll get past the planning stages...

Best,
_Mike

_________________
_Mike Tracz
MCT Guitars
https://www.instagram.com/mustcreatethings/
https://www.youtube.com/mustcreatethings