Official Luthiers Forum!

For those of you that laminate sides, what are you doing for the outermost veneer. From all the searching I have done on the site. Pretty much everybody recommends .04" -> .07" thick outer veneer so the chance of sand-thoughs would be minimized. Are you folks using guitar sets and thickness-sanding them down, resawing your own veneers, or is there a supplier I just can't seem to locate that has thick rosewood veneers?

Indian rosewood is really what I am after. Of course, Brazilian would be nice. The interior veneers are a non-issue.

Thanks, Peter

Seems wasteful to me, but that's what I've done. It would be nice if a supplier (Todd@Allied?) could get some EIR thinner, but I think EIR is sawn in India, so that may be tricky.

I do that if I'm using 'lumberyard wood' that's available in planks - stuff like cherry, maple, etc...

Cheers
John

I make 3 ply sides & buy veneer from "certainly woods" in Buffalo. They have BRW & EIR.
They are about .025 & sometime closer to .032.
B&B rare woods has some thicker stuff but I don't think it was very wide?
Sometimes Berkshire veneer.
Sanding through is not that much of an issue. After all building guitars is very precise work anyway.
MM

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Mike McNerney

I don't laminate sides but I have done Backs. I buy (usually figured Maple) standard sets and thin them. it is terribly wasteful. Certain types of wood are available in thinner leaves, anything from around .06 and upwards. in the UK they are known as 'constructional veneers' or double knife cut veneers.
Incidentally I was discussing the waste of my approach to one of my wood suppliers. I related how Lacote (circa 1830) laminated his Guitar Backs - one piece,no centre joint, around 12 " width.
"Ah yes" said my supplier " but back then they had those wonderful machines that were very accurate and gave a kerf of just 1 mm."

You can see one such machine here: (scroll half way down the page)

http://www.woodworkinghistory.com/glossary_bow_saw.htm

If all else fails. . . .

I make my outer sides about .010" thinner than normal, or about .070". I see no good reason to make the any thinner and good reason to leave them thick. My inner sides are about .025" thick.

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

Yeah, I just sand mine in the drum sander. I am less concerned with the amount of lumber used... it is the TIME it takes to sand two sets of sides down to about .04". For me that is the real drag.

I think the struggle using commercial veneers would be getting them to match your back. They should be fine for the insides, but I would stick with your sets for the outer layers.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

As far as matching the backs... I was going to laminate the backs as well (making Selmer style guitar). If I kept the back solid, I would certainly just use a standard rosewood (or whatever) guitar set and just thickness the guitar sides down.

Is indian rosewood possible to get in instrument grade but in billet form?

Thanks, Peter Z

The original Selmers had a veneer thickness of close to .8mm (aproximately .030), so that three laminations came to 2.4mm. Indian Rosewood veneer for guitar backs and sides sourced in India is normally only .5mm thick, but I managed to get some thicker stuff specially cut. It was supposed to have been cut .8-1.0mm, but ended up being only .7mm. This is thicker than anything I could get anywhere else. The mahogany and poplar veneers for the inner laminates I got from Certainly Woods, and they are 1.5mm thick, so I can reduce them in the sander to .9mm and end up with backs and sides of the right thickness.
Peter, I have a bit of the Rosewood veneer to spare, PM me if you are interested.