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I just got three 20-30 year old Rosewood from a woodworker friend. One is rift the other two are flat sawn. Has anyone used flat sawn rosewood for backs and sides. I know that most of the Brazilian available these days is flat sawn and also Coco Bolo. East Indian is suppose to be more stable so I am trying to talk myself into using this. Thanks Bill Sterling

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Mistakes are mandatory-learning from them is optional. http://www.opensourceluthiersupply.com

West Penn sells some pretty sweet flat/rift sawn pieces that have amazing grain, and they compliment the nice grain of the backs with some quarter sawn sides

Good quartersawn EIR is so readily available and cheap that to me it makes absolutely no sense to use flat sawn.
Use the wood for something else.

There was a discussion earlier about stability of wood, quartered vs flat sawn, and many mentioned that they have had pieces of wood that were quarter sawn and were not stable at all, and also had flat sawn wood that wouldn't move anywhere. So if the concern is wheather the wood is stable or not, you have to see on your own how it reacts in your shop. If it is stable, and you like the look of flat sawn EIR vs quartered like myself, then go for it. If you think stability is a concern, use it for something else. The flat sawn EIR sure makes some beautiful guitars. But then again, there are many out there that prefer the straight grain, pre-war Martin BRW look. Your choice though

Frankly, as Jeff pointed out EIR is widely available in excellent quality and vertical grain for very reasonable prices. Why tempt the Devil and use flat or rift sawn stock? There is no argument that in service the most stable is vertical grain, followed by perfectly flat-sawn. Rift, or sets that go rift to flat are the worst, and I don't care how stable EIR presumably is.
The set pictured here is the beginning of grief for whoever builds with it, or worse buys a guitar built with it. And it may be fairly well quartered to rift for all I know.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I don't want to sound arrogant but there are some great looking and sounding BRW guitars out there that are flat/rift sawn and stable. Personally, if I was in your place, I would deffinately use the wood for backs and sides. If it worked for BRW, wht wouldn't it for EIR? There are many builders out there using flat/rift sawn tonewoods with satisfactory results. Yes there are great sets of EIR out there with perfect vertical grain at reasonable prices, but if you already have this wood in your hands, why not put it into use? Worst case scenario is that you will have a learning experience wheather to use this kind of wood in the future or not. This is just my perspective, if many respectable builders have done this with BRW and many other woods, why not give it a try? I sure would.


Here's some more that people have tried, seemed to work out fine.

Yes that sounds arrogant and like the voice of inexperience.

I was just stating an opinion.

Sorry. And thanks

Maks, the guitars you have pictured last are well quartered, but they're stumpwood with compression curl. Not flat, nor rift as far as I can see. The 2nd EIR pic is obviously flat in the middle, cut at the junction of a big branch, so the grain goes in all directions. Great for a coffee table, ridiculous for a guitar IMHO. Dealers are not builders… BTW I thought religious and/or political stances were a no-no on the OLF, even in signatures.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I'd hardly call that post arrogant. It may demonstrate inexperience, but aren't we here to exchange ideas and experiences.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

My Rosewood supplier sells flatsawn EIR as "High Figure" for about $10 less than the quartersawn.
I happily pay more for the plain quartered stuff.
Depending on the size of the pieces the original poster has obtained, it may be great for resaw into bridge blanks or fretboards

Would be worth remembering that whist there are lots of builders out there using flatsawn wood, that should not be considered as proof in the pudding for its suitability as that can only be revealed in time. Riff and flat sawn wood presents greater cross grain movement as it reacts to changes in RH. Just because all holds well in the first half decade or so means nothing if you want your finished work to stay off your workbench until after your dead and gone. The reason we see so many flatsawn guitars these days is simply because there are far fewer old growth forest left standing with the 400+ yo hardwood trees that have the girth to convert 9" 1/4 sawn boards.

The market gets what the market will buy. Once when there was lots of options, no self respecting tonewood dealer would ever consider trying to hock wood that was not well quartered but that had to change as those new to building demanded cheaper alternatives. I am sure most of us will live to see once again in our lives why the wrong thing at the right price is never a bargain.

Cheers

Kim

Well, experience will show that most famous (CG) luthiers don't give a d*** about being correct. I just opened the website of maybe the largest high end CG dealer in the US and checked a couple dozen guitars ranging from 8000 to "inquiry" meaning they were some 20-30 whatever K. Most of them, rift to flat Brazilian and only just a few straight grained Indian. And it was creme de la creme Hauser included.

Now this being said, I really don't like the look of cathedral grain or stumpwood waves, on any species. I've built one in cathedral Amazon rosewood and the flatsawn center section was obviously much more brittle and easy to break in offcut tests when compared to the quartered/rift ends. I hope not to buy such sets ever again.

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Build log

Bringing usage of brazillian on high end classical guitars in as an example is a red herring.

For many reasons the desire and demand for Brazillian rosewood is high and it is being met with wood which in the past would never have found it's way into a guitar. It is also being sold to guitarists who in general value their instruments enough to maintain them in a suitable humidity environment
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I can buy a good set of qs EIR for $100, why use flatsawn that will look like a veneered Fender Wildwood and have distortion/cracking issues?

I played a 1882 2-24 at Eric Schoenberg's shop last week with a rift to flat sawn Brazilian back. Sounded fantastic with steel strings. Of course, this is the exception rather than the rule for Martin at the time, although Eric told me there was a bit of everything. This kind of figured back was traditionally veneered on a spruce substrate, however this 2-24 is solid. Today, vertical grain Braz big enough for guitar sets is exceedingly rare, 99% of it old stock, and priced accordingly.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I think we tend to exaggerate, and turn the old days into some mythical perfect-wood-era (same mechanism that turned 17th century spruce into "better/magic" and other examples)

I have quite a number of guitar photos in my collection as I regularly surf and save from all dealers websites for a few years now, and rift to flat Brazilian seems to have been common all the time. Actually I don't recall seeing perfect Brazilian on anything else other than Martins

I can produce examples by the dozen. I just looked in my Hauser folder and saw a 1931 and a 1937 both with cathedral and even knots. A couple of Simplicio, a couple Fleta, Hernadez y Aguado etc etc etc

When I was in John Ray's shop in Granada I saw a wonderful Vicente Arias made in 1900. Not only that the Braz back was text book coffee table grain, the neck was flatsawn as well!

A Bouchet sold at Christies for $122,500 has a very visible black pin knot in the soundboard and the back is guess what... big cathedrals. The mahogany neck turns to flatsawn at the heel end.

Alexander Lagoya's Bouchet is rift, showing cathedrals at the waist and lower bout edge.

I'm sure a corpus of the old masters work will show a better average quality of the Brazilian compared to today, but it was definitely not "90% perfect".

I'm not advocating the use of poor cuts, just saying all luthiers used whatever they had at hand and made compromises when they had to. Personally I'm not interested in such wood as long as nicely cut Indian/whatever else is still available (even so, I only once saw an Indian back nice enough to show much silk) and reasonable buyers still exist (those that don't consider Brazilian the only premier wood to use)

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Build log

Alex, is that silky enough?

Rift sawn necks are not weaker. Violin makers must know that long ago.

Thanks friends for your honest input on this subject. Sometimes I get carried away when I see nice wood. But I understand the issues and I agree that at my stage of the game I need the insurance of wood that I have a pretty good idea will behave. Especially if the guitar ended in someones elses hands and had issues that would be bad for everybody. In a project of building a guitar and all the time invested is it worth it to try to save $50 or $60 bucks and then potentially end up with nothing. So I think this wood wants to be something else. Also comparing this to Brazilian is like comparing apples and orange due to the rarity of Brazilian people are willing to take chances that a beginner like me shouldn't take. I am very able to mess things up without the help of screwy wood. I have to go and get ready for the hurricane coming my way. Best Bill Sterling

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Mistakes are mandatory-learning from them is optional. http://www.opensourceluthiersupply.com

You can't compare BRW to EIR when it comes to grain and density , they are in a different league. I will admit that I did try to make a guitar of figured flat sawn EIR. That guitar never made it to completion as the back was so unstable that I finally burned it . It may be nice as a veneer but it won't be stable enough for a guitar .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Unfortunately, you cannot predict stability just based on the cut.
Whether you use that wood or not, learning how to evaluate the stability is an important part of guitar making.
The most simple and elegant test involves laying the wood flat with only the top side exposed to the air. Watch the wood for an extended period. If it curls appreciably, then you know that it is unstable.
Wood tends to become more stable over time, so the fact that yours is 30 years old is in its favor. But without knowing more, it is still a crap shoot.
I have some slab-cut IRW backs that were rejected by Martin in the early-1980's. Using the above method, some have stayed nice and flat, while others have warped and curled. I would not hesitate to use the stable ones.
Another point I will make is that many problems with stability can be avoided if you have a workplace with a consistent relative humidity in the 35% to 45% range.

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John

+1 on that.

My point exactly, and this is from a man that knows far more than myself. If the wood is stable enough, why not go for it? Sure I agree that if woods with that cut crack, the cracks might go in bizarre directions, but you never know wheather it will or not. Personally, I really like the more figured stuff. Just personal taste. Yes it is usually less stable, but not unusable.

Its been my experience that even the most stable of wood will curl one way or the other if left on a flat surface. It just depends upon how much humidity is, or is not, in the air as to how much movement their will be and in which direction the wood will move with only the one side of the board being exposed to that variation.

Cheers

Kim

Stability in terms of does it warp is not the only issue with QS vs Flatsawn
Shrinkage across the grain with changes in moisture content is what is important here and in Indian Rosewood there is twice the movement in flatsawn as compared to quartersawn.
Lock the wood into a particular width by bracing across the grain and gluing it to the rims and this extra shrinkage (when dry conditions are encountered) will make it more prone to cracking.

+1 for Jeff's advice, why would anyone choose to invite more movement into their finished instrument when there is quarter sawn wood still available at reasonable prices? The 'look' if you like that kind of thing is not worth it, especially for someone just starting out.

Cheers

Kim

I'm totally inexperieced at building guitars but Isn't that the responsibility of the braces? I would think that once a piece of wood is braced and glued to the box that it's done moving. What kind of movement have any of you seen or experienced using unstable wood? Got any pictures?

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!