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I Have a beautiful pine board I found in a lumber yard that is just screaming at me. It's grain is perfect on the quarter and the grain width is not unlike many spuce tops I have seen. I want to build a tenor guitar out of it but would love some thoughts on if this is a good idea or not. I recently finished two guitars out of Doug Fir and was very pleased. It's got me in the spirit to try something new. Thanks.

Sam

I've seen stiffness/weight statistics that put white pine fairly close to the spruces, and I wouldn't hesitate to try it. I can't put my fingers on the document just now. You may notice a more streaked appearance when sanded out -- that's based on my 1-board sample.

Kent

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Kent

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Thanks. That's enough for me. If you come across where you found thoses those stats let me know. Thanks

Sam

I recently ran a test on a piece of White pine one of my students gave me, and it came out right in the middle of the pack for European spruce in terms of stiffness along and across the grain, and density. That's just one test, of course, but I have observed in testing other softwoods that the long-grain stiffness pretty well tracks the density. Pine can have quite low density, but that just means you'd want to leave it a little thick.

The only other thing I'd think about is that pine tends to be a bit soft: the surface hardness can be more like cedar than spruce. I'd suggest making a bridge wih a bigger 'footprint', and, particularly, make it deeper, with more surface along the line of the string pull. That should help keep it from peeling loose.

I'd go for it.

Quite an interesting tree! Have a read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_White_Pine

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Build log

I did some asking around at the lumber yard and I am starting to think that this board is hem Fir. Any thoughts as to if it will still work? Like I said it is beatiful. It is soft though. Certainly doesn't have the strength of Doug Fir.

Sam

spruce, pine, fir, larch, hemlock, cedar, red wood...all got a few things in common
1. they are all conifers.
2. they all will work..just differently.

Heck man...cardboard will work...not to well but it will work if prept and tooled properly.

blessings

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