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I have a nice piece of rift sawn birdseye maple that I would like to use for a classical neck. I know, I know, neck heavy... but this one is for me and I don't care. What concerns me is that it is rift sawn. But it has been in my shop for a year and has not moved at all. A few weeks ago I planed it to thickness and watched it and it is still straight and has not budged. Seems pretty stable and I was thinking of adding a carbon fiber reinforcement anyway. Too late to split and flip, since I already planed it to thickness. What's the consensus?

Carbon won't stop it from warping if it wants to warp. I personally avoid rift sawn wood for necks. Flat sawn can work just fine if quartered isn't an option (see the millions and millions of fender electrics), but rift can be asking for trouble.

I make sure it's stable but I'd use rift sawn wood in laminated necks....cut so the grain is symmetrically opposed. For a single piece neck...I pick vertical grain. I do like to test all assumptions, one being that non-perpendicular grain should be avoided for necks, but there is a common sense argument to make about grain direction and moisture ingress and egress. For a customer...I'll take no chance and go with the best probability.

But if it's stable and it's just for you...do it and find out.

Rift sawn maple never stopped Fender when making single piece necks.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

It's a rather controversial topic that has come up previously. I've always oriented my neck woods so they are quartered, and I have split them down the middle and opposed the grain, too. Thus, I think Zlurgh has a good answer for you. But you will find numerous members who will absolutely insist that grain orientation doesn't matter on necks--and just as many who insist it DOES matter and that the grain must be aligned as if quartered. Just wait. You'll see what I mean about the argument. In the end, you'll probably have a successful outcome by building it as you wish.

i think maple is a bit of an exception, as it is so bloody tough along any axis, and it is very stable wood in general....i'd go for it

If you insist

I'm actually not sure yet, as I've stuck to using near-perfect neck wood so far. But most woods expand 1.5 to 2 times as much in the tangential axis as they do in radial, so in the case of a riftsawn rectangular board, it will expand/contract to a sort of parallelogram shape. The question is, exactly what effect does this have when shaped like a neck, with a fingerboard of different wood glued to one side of it, and a heel sort of locking one end in place? I haven't been able to mentally calculate the result, and haven't built a guitar to test it. My best guess is that it would be some form of twist... probably more like a "tilt", effectively reducing the action on one side and increasing it on the other.

If the guitar lives in a stable humidity environment, you'll have no troubles at all. If you have large seasonal swings like I do, then let us know how it behaves after a couple season changes. It must not be that large of an effect in any case or there would be more panic and fear surrounding it, especially in electric guitars where low action is common and humidity much less paid attention to than acoustics.

Also worth mentioning, Honduran mahogany is an exception to all quartersawing wisdom. It expands and contracts more or less equally in both directions, and not by very much. But hard maple expands and contracts a lot, and 2:1 ratio, so it's a good wood for testing the effect.

So would I.
My experience is that grain orientation in a neck is of no practical importance. Besides, if you quarter-saw birdseye maple, the figure is no longer birdseye. It becomes a very strange-looking curl.

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John

I'd like to add that this is for a classical guitar which has a lot less string tension than a steel string guitar and is usually wider and beefier. Go for it.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

If it seems stable, go for it. As John Arnold says, the birdseye figure appears mostly on the "flat sawn" surface, so with a rift sawn piece I would orient it for best possible visibility towards the player. Personally I hate neck heavy guitars (and heavy guitars in general), but if it becomes too uncomfortably balanced, you can always attach a counter weight at the tail block...

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

This often crops up in relation to Classical Guitars. I largely think it's due to the tradition of using Cedrela. In reality it matters very little because of the usual method of holding the Classical Guitar. Weight of the Neck only really matters if you are holding the Guitar in the traditional Flamenco position, not many do that whilst playing classical Guitar.

The OP doesn't say, but birdseye figure is most common in hard (sugar) maple, which is quite dense compared to some of the more usual neck woods, such as mahogany or Spanish cedar. If your lightest acoustic has a maple neck, my guess is it would have been even lighter with a neck made of one of those woods. As has been said, it might not be a big problem if the guitar is held in the "normal" classical position, but many players prefer a guitar that is balanced so the fretting hand doesn't also have to lift the neck, which could happen in other positions

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Build it - make it a bolt on (bolt-on classical ) so if it doesn't work out then you can change it. I don't mind rift sawn necks but laminate them so the grain is matched from side to side.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

And what is the weight of the guitar? I have a feeling our definitions of "light" are vastly different... My favorite is 1.8lbs/0.83kg, and lightest is 1.6lbs/.73kg. Tiny guitars, but using similar building style I think a full size classical would still be under 3lbs. Gonna have to build one one of these days.

The neck has a narrow range of dimensions to be comfortable... wood density matters here more than anywhere else. Tuning machines are the only thing that can affect the balance more, due to their position way out on the end of the neck. Wood pegs are lightest, geared pegs second. But make the headstock pretty thin, because otherwise having it solid rather than slotted will cancel out your weight improvement. You can even taper the thickness, which I find quite pleasing to the eye.