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This is one of the 8/4 pieces of sapele (I think) I acquired a while back. Most of them are well quartersawn, and as such should be very useful for making stacked-heel necks. However, this one is fairly plainsawn, so I'm wondering if it could be used in the 90' orientation to make a neck with a center laminate, thereby avoiding stacking the heel.

Your input is appreciated as always.

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

I guess the way to use these is to cut it along the lenght, and flip one half. After that, the grain will look like this \\\\//// instead of /////////

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Build log

Yep, good point, Alex. In doing that, would the resulting grain alignment be adequately stable?

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

This is normally the way I make my laminated necks, and it does result in a very stable configuration.

That's the way I make them, too. If you mirror your neck template along the board at the same distance from the edge, the figure and the angle of the grain in the two blanks will be very similar, and even though it is not book matching it looks almost like that (I believe the English term is slip matching?). I also believe it should be good for the neck’s stability as any movement in one of the laminates will be opposite in the other, thereby canceling each other out; that’s the idea, anyways.

I have made them both this way ///\\\ and this way \\\/// (fingerboard on top), not sure which is the most stable orientation, but in the latter the grain will follow the shape of a tapered heel, which looks nice IMO.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

What they all said. In addition, by ripping and flipping, you'd have an opportunity to glue in a contrasting center laminate. I once ripped and flipped a classical guitar neck just to get the mirrored grain orientation illustrated by Arnt. I then stacked the heel in the normal way.
Patrick