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I apologize if this is not an appropriate question for this forum, but I have some wood that may be suitable for constructing guitars and such and I would just like some feedback as to if it might be, or not. I log and have been working on a huge tornado salvage project since June of 2007. This storm made a lot of unique and fancy wood available, only the best of which I hauled home. I currently have 40,000 or so b.f. to saw up of a variety of different species. There is some very large northern white cedar, some pieces being up to 36" & 150+ yrs. old that would yield some very wide clear boards. Is this suitable for stringed instrument construction? I have a number of pieces of good northern curly hard maple which I know is suitable for instruments but am unsure as to what dimensions I should saw it. I sawed a few pieces of highly figured maple which I have included some pictures of, I wasn't sure what to saw it in to, but I tried to obtain as many book matched pieces as possible. There where a number of very large burls and I am assuming burl would is not used by luthiers? If anyone could provide some input I would appreciate it. Thanks & regards, T. Clark

Burl could be used for rosettes! - looks like you have quite a haul!!

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Here is what a Parlor Guitar is for!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa8PkjO6_I

Tornado in the U.P.?

That's about as dense with eyes as Birdseye Maple gets. That has to be from somewhere near the Keweenaw Peninsula.

There are a few luthiers that will build something as wide as a guitar back from Birdseye Maple, but many fear using flatsawn wood that wide. I have seen some absolutely stunning Birdseye instruments, mandolins and a few guitars, but have no idea if they can withstand the test of time.

Some electric guitar and bass luthiers LOVE Birdseye Maple for neck wood.

I think the Northern White Cedar is used by boatbuilders, but I'm not sure about the acoustic properties for soundboards. It might be true that the species rarely grows big enough (in girth) to yield guitar-sized quartersawn pieces, so it might be non-traditional but still be high quality tonewood. Western Red Cedar is the Cedar species luthiers are used to seeing. Fire off an email, with these pictures, to Grant Goltz [ggoltz (at) a o l dot com] and he will give you a better idea of what you have there in the White Cedar, because he is both a boatbuilder and a luthier (and a tonewood vendor.)

I would recommend that you contact each of the tonewood vendors listed at the top of the page, and ask if any are interested. I'll bet you'll sell some of that Birdseye to any tonewood vendor that has luthier customers that build electric instruments. In fact, I hope it all ends up in instruments rather than a boardroom table top.

Oh, and burls are used to some degree by luthiers, for headstock overlays and such. Larger ones may provide slices large enough to become overlays (over stable core wood) for electric solid body instruments. Way too unstable to build an acoustic instrument from, but gorgeous for accents.

Hope this helps!

Dennis
p.s. The curly Maple (Soft or Hard) should be cut quartersawn. As close to 90° vertical grain as you can manage. You definitely have acoustic guitar wood in the curly quartersawn Maple pile, especially if you have about 1/2 of the material around 8" wide. Actually, it helps a lot to just take a "dreadnaught" pattern of 1/2 of a guitar body shape, and draw on the slabs. This isn't for furniture, so we don't need 8" clear for the length of a board. You'll find you can sneak a pattern here and a pattern there in a board, avoiding knots and other defects. You also need to dry the Maples quickly, or they get blue stain, especially true of Sugar Maple cut when the sap was flowing..

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Some really nice wood you have there! The cedar can be used for tops as long as it's quartersawn. The maple can be riftsawn as that makes the best figure on that.You will still get some quarter sawn on the maple in the center of the logs anyway.I would mill the maple at 6/4.As it will season better and can later be resawn anyway.You will get some shrinkage while seasoning, more so on the maple.Great looking wood! That burl would make some real nice pick guards as well as headstock plates.

"The maple can be riftsawn as that makes the best figure on that."

I never saw a piece of maple that showed its best figure when rift sawn.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Howard,Very seldom do you see highly figured maple quartersawn.Especually quilted or birdseye.I have milled tens of thousand board feet of maple in my life,so i do now what i'm talking about.

You may not see it often due to the practical aspects of milling. But curl will show best on a quartersawn surface, and birdseye or quilt will show best on a tangential surface.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I would suggest that you contact Bruce Harvie of "Orcas Island Tonewoods". He will give you all the information you may want...Gavin

A appreciate all the information, thanks everyone. Dennis, actually I am in northern Wisconsin. I really was unsure if the Northern White Cedar was suitable for tops, I'll probably flitch saw some of the best of it making sure the log is oriented so that the highest quality will be quartersawn for possible usage in stringed instruments. Mr. Howard Klepper, with all due respect, Mark Grozas comments are correct in my experience, which is extensive regarding the orientation of curl & figure in wood. Curl does in fact show up by far the best in slab or flat sawn wood. When I saw, I always focus on quartersawn wood, which I have to sacrifice curly figure to obtain. For good++ curly quartersawn wood the log has to be very curly to begin with, Where as you can get decent curly wood out of a so so log by slab sawing it. Personally if it has to be slab sawn to get the figure I won't even mess with it. The truth of this matter can be easily seen by simply taking a piece of fairly curly wood and making it into a cylinder which will allow you to see exactly which surfaces are the most curly. If you think about what curl is in the tree it is easy to understand why this is true. Thanks again for the info & regards, T. Clark

I'm no sawyer, just a woodworker, but your experience conflicts with mine. I don't think your example of a curly wooden dowel rod is a fair example. Because of the curved surface, there is only a tiny amount of quartersawn wood displayed, and actually, there is also an extremely tiny bit of flatsawn material displayed - most of what is seen is rift in varying degrees. A fair test would be a turning square that is well quartersawn on two faces and well flatsawn on two faces, sanded smooth on all faces.

But, that won't help you sell your wood. Luthiers look at the radial (quartersawn) and tangential (flatsawn) shrinkage values for a particular species of wood, take into account the width of the instrument back, and make a decision as to whether flatsawn material is stable enough to withstand the test of time. No one wants to spend 100 or more hours crafting a gorgeous instrument that cracks in the first winter. Also, flatsawn guitar sides tend to ripple when being bent. And finally, quartersawn wood provides a perfect mirror bookmatch that cannot be accomplished in flatsawn wood - not even in the thinnest sliced veneers. So, even if you sincerely believe (or know) that flatsawn curly Maple shows its figure better than quartersawn wood, you still have a vast majority of luthier/buyers that only want your quartersawn material.

But, I'll throw you a curve ball: 5/4" x 8-1/8" x about 26" planks of perfectly flatsawn wood - where the "cathedrals" or better yet "puddles" are right down the middle of the board, are perfect for laminated guitar necks. Cherry, Walnut, and Soft and Hard Maples - especially figured material - that is free from defects and fits the size and grain orientation that I mentioned are going to be of interest to luthiers (as well as to CNC companies specializing in guitar parts.) Note that he overall length of about 26" would be for completely dried material, with no end checking, because that length is required to get a pair of nested neck blanks out of the board. Some guitars (bigger headstocks, longer scale lengths) would need longer material, so it might be safer to supply 30" to 32" lengths as laminated guitar blank candidates.

You should talk to a soundboard tonewood supplier before you cut the White Cedar. If it has the characteristics to make great soundboards, then you need to be working from split faces, more like fat shingles (or bolts) than slabs. Otherwise, you may end up with more runout that luthiers will accept, and a pile of potential soundboards may become kindling. Actually you need to talk with a soundboard manufacturer - someone that actually has experience going from log form to guitar tops.

Hope this helps,

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia