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With all the import restrictions going on in the world today we are going to focus more on US woods and FEC certified wood.
I was just wondering what people think of red oak? I know white oak is a good tonewood. I have seen some beautiful curly red oak but I'm not sure what you builders think of it. Your input is greatly appreciated along with any other suggestions for domestic woods.

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The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Ive used white oak and liked it . I dont see why red oak would be any diffrent . Pain to bend without splintering . But so are alot of exotics . I have a friend who has Hickory and Pecan and I will be trying Both of those in time .

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I haven't built any guitars with red oak, but I have done two kitchens with it and have started doing my own with it. I have set aside a few boards with the intention of resawing back and side sets. Red oak grain is a bit coarser than white, but the look is sometimes stunning. If or when I get around to building with it, I'll likely leave it open grained for a more natural look. Aside from the occasional pasture smell when cutting, it is very nice to work with and pretty cheap.

Alex

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I have used Red Oak - I really like it.... It makes a fine tonewood....
Pore filling is more of a challenge - as the pores are deep.....
Color wise - it is also quite a bit lighter than you expect it to be unless you stain it....

One advantage Quartersawn Red Oak has is that it bends like butter... I used sides 1/8" thick and it literally flopped onto the form once it got up to temperature.... No problem with spring back at all.... Once it set back up - it was as hard as you would normally expect out of Oak....

Unfortunately - search doesn't turn up anything about Oak... but there are many posts floating around and it is used reasonably often....

Here's link to a post with a couple pix of a small body I made out of QS Red Oak... The back is very nicely quartersawn - but it was also quite curly, so the rays don't really show.... The sides show rays very prominently....
viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=27809&p=373491#p373491

Thanks

I have seen a couple very nice guitars made of oak, but I probably won't build with it anytime soon.
I built a nice solidbody back in the 80's out of catalpa that the client provided for the build. Very nice stuff to work with. I'm sure there are plenty of domestic woods to build with. I'd like to try some sinker chestnut sometime, osage orange, persimmon, etc.

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Nice Guitar Truck. I also built my kitchen cabinets from Red Oak. I din't pore fill. Just used a satin poly and they look quite nice.

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Red Oak should be good for tonewood as it has huge pores like Ash(one of my favorite tone woods). You can actually blow smoke through it endgrain to endgrain. It also can be very attractive with lots of rayflake when quartersawn. I milled up some from a 200 year old oak on one of my properties to use for future guitars. I also think we all should consider building with local woods over exotic whenever possible. Glad to see you selling local sets Bob, as it's always better to support our local sawyers over forign ones when our economy is in such bad shape. Good MOVE!

Well! I haven't!!! Because nobody's posted any FREAK'IN PIX!!!

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I think either quartered and curly red oak and white oak should make excellent tonewood. Big pores, but so what. I have a few other suggestions you might want to consider

Boxelder - The red streakin in this wood make it quite striking. Don't know if is a good tonewood. Maybe someone else can chime in.

Black Locust - Tought wood with some interesting grain.

Honey Locust - IMHO one of the most beautiful domestic hardwoods available. Some board exhibit some great character and figure,.

Sycamore - Quartered looks awesome!!

Butternut - Kind of a nice wood. Not sure how good of tonewood. Again, someone else hopefully will know more than I do.

Sassafras - I have a couple of boards that have a lot of curl. I think the wood is nice looking. The plain sassafras is "plain"

Beech - Again, if you can find this with curl, it is a great looking wood.

Red Birch - Curly red birch is a stunning looking wood. The large curl pattern is different than say maple or even oak. More like a wide landscape effect.

Persimmon - It is part of the ebony family. Pretty plain stuff unless you can get a little black streaking, but I bet would make a great tonewood.

Osage Orange - You probably already handle this.

Sweetgum - Red Gum part of the tree l. Really nice looking wood. If you want some please come to NC and cut down the trees in my yard. The "witches eggs" that fall off the dang trees are everywhere and throw the belt off my mower several time a year. (just kidding about cutting down) They are the majority of the trees in my yard other than pines)

If I can think of any more, I will let you know. Maybe some other members of the form can comment on any or all of these woods and if they make good tonewoods.

Ken Hageman

Not so much what I think about Red Oak, or White Oak, but what GUITAR BUYERS think about it.

I like White Oak, and am hoping to build with a couple of sets I have, soon.
Not so sure about Red Oak...

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All the oak I've used has been really good tone wood. It's in the 'rosewood' class for density and hardness, but has more damping; more like maple or mahogany in that way. It's great wood for 000 size guitars. Quartered and flat cut oak might as well be two different woods; go for the quartered.

I made one persimmon guitar: if I were in the sort of venue where they put chicken wire up between the band and the audience, that's the guitar I'd want. It's dense, hard, and TOUGH, and makes a great 'street fighting' guitar. Sounds OK too. I use it a lot for fretboards (stained) and it's great bridge plate wood.

PLEASE cut Osage, if you don't already! It's a drop-in replacement for BRW in terms of stiffness, density, and damping.

Butternut is just about a drop-in replacement for South American cedar. It's a good neck wood. One of my students made a butternut Flamenco; it was light, and had a nice enough sound, but lacked some of the 'bark' Flamencos like, probably due to it's high damping.

Black Locust is a decent substitute for IRW; a bit less dense, but about right in the hardness and damping numbers. I admit to only seeing a few samples of that, and only making one guitar from it.

I'd like to see sources for 'Mountain Mahogany' and 'Texas ebony' fingerboards and bridges.

As has been noted, it'a lot easier to make good guitars from local woods than it is to sell them. Maybe the Lacey Act will be the laxative we need to get this end of things moving...

That's a crappy metafore there, Alan.

I know from your website that you carry mango and moneypod from time to time. The woods of Hawaii should be considered "domestic". That opens up a whole new group of "exotics".

Ken

Thanks for all the great suggestions. Most of the well known builders use Brazilian RW and are fortunate enough to have stashes set aside. All it takes is one of these guys to build with a domestic wood and have a customer rave about it on one of the forums that buyers frequent and voila' it becomes the I've gotta have tonewood. Eventually most of these exotic woods are going to be impossible to source.

@Alan I'm not sure what mountain mahogany is. Actually never heard of it.

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Anyone have any pictures of red oak builds? I'd love to see them.

Since Bob C was the only person to click the link I posted for my Oakie guitar....
Here's the pix from the previous post.....



I probably need to snap a pic of the back up close - as it is quite curly.... The "Rays" look more like leopard spots on it....

One comment on the finish....
I used Behlen's Rock Hard varnish.... In general - varnish is pretty thick... so you can just pile on more coats to fill up all the pores....

In hind sight - Next time, I will use some dark stain or pore filler - as it will highlight the curl and the rays a whole lot better.... Haans Brentup did that with his White Oak and it looks really nice.

Thanks

BobC asked:
"@Alan I'm not sure what mountain mahogany is. Actually never heard of it."

Rats: I can't seem to find the botanical right off the bat either. It may take me a while. It's a hard, dense, close grained and very slow growing wood from higher elevations in the Rockies. The first piece I ever ran into was a slat on a palette I was cutting up for fire wood: I though my saw had thrown it's chain. I kept a piece, and used it later for parts on my son's fiddle.

Actually, now that I think of it, another really nice fingerboard wood is soft-shell almond. Aparently almonds come in hard and soft shell versions, and soft shell wood is much harder and more close grained than the hardshell stuff. One of my students picked some up in a fire wood pile in California. It looks a lot like cherry, but browner, and it's about as hard and dense as ebony. He subsequently sent be a B&S set of the same stuff, but I have yet to try it.

I took part in Marc Saumier's 'Cherry 7' project at the Montreal show in '10. We all made guitars from the same wood. The fingerboard and bridge wood he provided was hornbeam, probably Eastern hop-hornbeam, Ostrya virginiana, judging from the grain of the wood. It was white, but stained up nicely with some walnut hull 'tea', and it sure is hard. I've got some up on the hill in back of my house: small trees that look like they're working hard, whence the name 'muscle wood'. It's also called 'lever wood' because it was the best for that purpose.

Has anyone tried elm? I have used alot of walnut and cherry. I have used butternut for the tops of a few intruments.

PT 66, How did you like the butternut? I got a bunch of that i've used for a rosette. Its really pretty wood.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

@Al
I found this
Cercocarpus betuloides
Mountain Mahogany: sg 1.10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cercocarpus_betuloides

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Chris Try to control your emotions.

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Al so what was the result of the test? I saw pic's of the finished guitars.

PS I love cherry

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

On the whole subject of "Alternative" tonewoods......

Let's not forget that Mahogany and every one of the American spruces including our heralded Red Spruce were all "Alternative" tonewoods about 150 years ago..... Mahogany got picked for their "Budget" guitars because it was FAR less expensive than Maple, Cherry, or Walnut - and in most cases, it still IS less expensive than these "Domestic" woods.... Large, clear planks were easily had for nothing or nearly nothing.... Same for our American spruces vs European Spruce..... 150 years ago - "Premium" guitars were either made of Maple/Euro or Rosewood/Euro - not Mahogany/Red....

Thanks

Bobc wrote:
"@Al
I found this
Cercocarpus betuloides"

Sounds about right. Hard, tight grain, walnut colored.

"Al so what was the result of the test? I saw pic's of the finished guitars."

They were all different, of course, since they were different sixzes and shapes made by different makers. The Red spruce he sent was quite low in density, and had good long grain stiffness, so I made a classical, which turned out very nice. I used butternut for the neck from my own stash, since I thought the cherry he sent along would have been a bit heavy. Anyway, the main thing was that they all sounded good and played well. Considering this was all wood Marc had salvaged in his neighborhood, that says something about the pursuit of high-end exotics.

truckjohn wrote:
"Let's not forget that Mahogany and every one of the American spruces including our heralded Red Spruce were all "Alternative" tonewoods about 150 years ago....."

...and a couple of hundred years before that, almost all instreuments were made of 'local' wood, often enough by the players. It was only the wealthy who could afford the fancy exotics, and often they got them with more than a bit of 'bling' too. I still can't get over the work of Joachim Tielke.

Hmmm? Was he legally licensed to salvage that wood? Maybe Lacey would not call it legally harvested. They don't seem to care that it's plentiful.

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