Official Luthiers Forum!

I used locally grown walnut for the back, sides and neck , Adi spruce top and hard curly maple bindings and head veneer.
I originally planned on using maple and dying it black for the fretboard and bridge, but chickened out and used African ebony-maybe next time.

Brad, is that a Stella 14-1/2" box with the 26-1/2" scale?
Personally, I like white oak...

Should have some pictures soon-
building an OM from white oak b&s, yellow cedar top, sycamore neck, laburnum fb and bridge and walnut trimming. I'm really into building with European woods, the only real difficulty is the finger board and bridge not being dark enough wood. Laburnum seems really great- looks good and very hard but not too heavy. I'd buy as much of it as I could.
I have some hornbeam drying out.
I'd be interested in using some of blackthorn or hawthorn but haven't acquired any yet. Has anybody tried these?

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

I/ve only used the local hawthorn for a bridge on a uke , and for tool handles . hard to find anything over 4-5in wide. here in KC

Some trees here in UK grow wider but it's extremely hard to come by felled trees like that.
I like the romance of using wood like this. A Blackthorn bridge just sounds exciting. Or Glastonbury Thorn.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

[quote="Haans"]Brad, is that a Stella 14-1/2" box with the 26-1/2" scale?
Personally, I like white oak...

Hi Haans,
Yes, 14-1/2" Regal pattern-I am close to finishing my fist white oak guitar.

I think you will like white oak. It's nice and bluesy.

Beautiful guitar Haans! That's some nice Oak. Currently working on a couple of L-00s ... this one with curly Oak back and sides with a LS top:

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Jim Womack

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for. "
Will Rogers

Come on down to Texas, we have a gnarly little desert weed known as mesquite that just barely grows big enough to get a few boards out of. It's wicked hard, but very stable. With the exception of the top and braces, this little guitar is all mesquite--back, sides, neck, neck and heel blocks, fretboard, bridge, bridgeplate, linings, rosette, etc.... I got all the wood out of the dumpster at a local mill....

Nice curly oak yerself there, Jim!
S'cuze the ignorance, but what's a LS top? I'm sort of a red spruce, German, Italian kinda guy...

Clay,

What is your HPL exactly? It makes nice looking fake Alaska Yellow Cedar.

p.s. I pm'ed you about borrowed items.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Alan,
American hornbeam is the one referred to as 'musclewood', and often has interlocked grain in the trunk.
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/forestry/iowa_trees/tree_of_the_month.html
I have never had any American hornbeam, but hophornbeam is common in my area, and is usually straight-grained.
I have a long list of domestic woods I have used for guitars, including black walnut, cherry, elm, white oak, sassafras, maple, persimmon, black locust, dogwood, holly, etc.
I never think of spruce as an exotic, though high grade old growth spruce is getting harder to find. For my 'neighborhood' guitar, I plan to use Norway spruce from a nearby yard tree that was felled by a tornado. It is wide-grained, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

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John

Sorry Haans... LS = Lucky Strike (Redwood)

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Jim Womack

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for. "
Will Rogers

I know I've seem some better examples on this forum, but I'll go ahead and post my sycamore guitar since I really like the pattern of this wood. Kind of reminds be of snake or lizard skin. I've got some oak so I'm going to have to try it after seeing the above examples. Eventually I would like to get some mesquite. I grew up outside of Dallas, and am pretty fond of that little tree, and wouldn't mind having one made of this wood for myself.

Great looking guitars! I just build for fun, so no need to worry about what customers think. Wish I could say that about my day job! :-)

A couple years ago I decided to start experimenting with using woods that are domestic to North America. I recently finished a dread with redwood over walnut and am just getting started on another with spruce over cherry. I have a few pieces of "exotic" woods left to use up, but everything I've purchased in the past year or so has been of the "alternative" nature: cherry, maple, walnut, oak, sweet gum (liquidambar), persimmon, Texas ebony. The more I see of sycamore, the more I like it--lovely wood.

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George :-)

Just clamped up a cedar top salvaged from an 80 year old post from a barn on the family farm. Certainly not exotic wood but interesting nonetheless.

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Doug

Don't let fear or common sense stop you from trying to build something

Hi Jim,
That particular HPL is an Alpi product. It is a prefinished wood/HPL composite. The wood is processed to give a uniform appearance (not a natural veneer), bonded to an HPL substrate and a finish applied. Alpi makes a lot of different colors and patterns, but it is one of the more expensive HPL materials. I'll try to bring the guitar when I stop by to pick up the form (no hurry - some time after the snow melts).

Wow, lots of great guitars people are posting!



Nice one! I think it's kind of cool as a hobbyist and/or small scale builder to be able to build with wood that you have a personal connection with. This manzanita came out of my (childhood) back yard.



By now it's probably obvious to the OP that lots of people are building with "non-exotic materials". The usual difficulty is finding local hardwoods of the darkness and density needed for bridges and fingerboards. That mesquite looks like the ticket if you're in TX or the southwest. Anyone on the west coast tried Toyon? It's everywhere and is supposed to be hard stuff. Grain is often twisted but not always.

I select wood by rapping it with my knuckles and listening for a long resonant tone. If you apply this test to some strange source (broken furniture, firewood, attic floorboards, a bin at the lumberyard) it is amazing how a few boards will sound much better than their neighbors which may be the same species, maybe even the same tree. I also believe in taking care not to glue parts together in a way that adds stress to the joint.
Generally, wood with straight grain and without knots has a better chance of sounding good.
I made an electric bass with an amazing tone and sustain using maple from a Model A Ford car body mount, some unnaturally dense cedar and pine rescued from a carpenter's scrap pile plus some genuine exotic wood.
I've found lots of individual pieces of traditional woods that sound horrible and that I would never use in a guitar: mahogony and maple pieces that don't ring at all.
The rap test is scientific. You can't blame customers for wanting rare woods with bragging rights, but great sounding pieces can be found among very humble sources.