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I went to a local hardwood dealer today in hopes of getting a piece of mahogany to start the neck. instead I found some match booked cherry that is 49" long by 8" wide and 6mm thick although there is one spot that is closer to 4mm thick. my father in-law has some hand planers that are 12", 4" and some 1". I guess my question is should I find someone with a planer-thicknesser to plane it to thickness, or would planing by hand and using calipers to check it? I know doing it by hand is more time consuming and labor intensive but really dont mind doing it that way. is there anything i need to look out for while doing by hand?

also what are your thoughts on cherry for back and sides?

Cherry is nice stuff, and has been used by many...though you will get a wide variety of opinions about the sounds and such.

The thought of hand planing that much makes me twitch a bit, as I am still not too good with thicknessing with one. That said, if you don't have access to a different method/machine (or you just want to give it a try) I would recommend practicing a bunch on scrap.

-Matthew

Cherry works. I would recommend that you browse the several tonewood suppliers listed above to compare what you are looking at to what is available from them. RC Tonewoods has cherry I know. Check it out. Sometimes you can find really cool stuff from your local hardwood dealer.

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yea ill give it a go. I'm a little concerned with the grain. its not as tight as I would like. towards the middle of what will be the joining peices, theres only around 5 grains per inch. but maybe good practice.

I checked RC Tonewoods and although my wood is rough cut, they look like the curly cherry for the dreadnaught shown on RC's website. Ill get it all cleaned up and try to post some pics when my wife gets her camera back.