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I'm presently building my third guitar so I obviously am a novice.
I'm building a dreadnought with cherry sides, back and neck. the plan I'm using calls out mahogany as the head and tail block. My question is should I be using mahogany or cherry? I'm concerned about the dissimilar properties and the potential of the sides cracking. any feed back would be awesome.
thanks Recordking

Mahogany is very stable that's why it's become the default species over the years. I have used Walnut, Cherry, Spruce and even pine but imho mahogany is the best. There's also differing opinions on grain orientation but that would probably be more important then dissimilar properties especially when comparing a 1.5-2 inch block verses sides that are about 1/16th thick.

Forget about the sides cracking at the blocks. About the only time I see side splits at the blocks is when the guitar is dropped on the end pin (which splits the whole tail block), or the neck is impacted and breaks out of the dovetail.
Run the grain the same direction in the blocks as the sides.
If rosewood guitars with mahogany blocks work well, then a cherry guitar with most any reasonable block wood should be fine. I have built about 10 cherry guitars, and I have used Honduran mahogany, African mahogany, walnut, and cherry for the blocks. The stability of mahogany is top notch, but cherry is pretty stable, too.

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John

Awesome guys thanks for the help, I've already got the mahogany cut and shaped so I will use it.

Virtually all of Stanley's wooden levels were cherry and for a while they were stamped with "the most stable wood for the purpose" on the side

Ed

I think the head block wood matters more if you are going to do a dovetail than if you do a bolt on.

for bolt on's - even spruce and plywood work well so long as you provide for good gluing surfaces for the sides, top, and back. Cherry and mahogany work well. I have even used oak and it works fine.

The things I would avoid is very large knots and very switchy or burled grain.

For dovetails - you need wood that will hold the dovetail long term. Stuff too soft or too mushy will deform causing problems. Stuff that is too hard makes the fitting operations quite difficult. Stuff that expands and contracts too much will tend to loosen over time and cause problems with loose joints.

I like plywood for tail blocks.

Thanks

One reason to have the grain run the same way is to avoid a hump in the fingerboard over the body. It does not matter how aged the wood or how you attempt to control humidity, over the years you can have problems if the block grain runs top to back.