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I was wondering, how Y'all go about building up a stock of tonewood. I know at face value, that seems a pretty dumb question! Would it be a good to start it off by buying a few back and side + soundboard sets, and then just building upon that after each build. Do you just keep a constant eye out for a good deal?

Essentially, I want to know about tonewood, how to build up a collection, stuff to look out for, how to store it properly, HOW LONG to store it before use. How to gauge whether something is a good price etc. - Just anything anyone has to offer on the subject.

At the moment, my 'stock' is comprised of one extra set of rosewood back and sides. Impressive hey?

Thanks a lot for any advice,
Tom.

I've just been looking for good deals, (like $6 back and side sets) I had/have no intention of getting a wood collection, but it just seems to be happening . What a horrible situation I'm in

Hi thre! from your post, i´m assuming you´re - like myself - starting with guitar building. if i got it wrong, i´m sorry and pay no atention to what´s written below.

my collection regarding B&S, besides some EIRW, is comprised of a cocobolo, an Honduran and a Madagascar RW and two spanish cypress sets, so you´re not that far behind. each of them has cost me less than 80 euros (bought in spain, if you´re interested).
it´s hard when you´re starting because you still don´t know what to look for, you have to buy it first and learn later. it gets worse when you don´t live near a good seller (around here i can only find Australian BW and Port Orford cedar suitable for guitar building) and have to order on-line. places like this and other forums are a good help, though.

i suppose that in the beginning you should try to buy sets that have some minor flaws (like small holes) and save some dough. don´t try to look for brazilian RW, it will become an addiction and will probably get you nowhere. EIRW seems like a good bet for the beginning, as it is relatively affordable, easy to work with, bends well and is still easy to get quartered. i also have some Morado (bolivian / santos RW) planks that i intend to test - a friend of mine used it with great success. also not expensive.

it only pays to have a good stock, i reckon, if you already have access to a place suitable to store it in (humidity, temperature, space) if you´re making this as an hobby. i don´t know much about the subject, but i try to store my wood at least for 6 months before using it and i weight it regularly to check if it has been loosing (or gaining) humidity. if the weight does not change, i guess it will be OK to build with it.

actually i´m considering investing some money on tonewood, as i was told that wood (not just for guitar building) has been a better investment in the last decade as compared to investing in the stock market (here in Portugal).

cheers, miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Well, first of all, you need a little money in the bank. If you're really scraping by and making sacrifices already, then you probably need a different job Or you could look for free logs to process yourself, although it wouldn't be ready to use for at least a year or two.

Anyway, if you do have some money... try not to ever drain your bank account entirely. Always have cash on hand for when that super deal or holy grail set pops up.

Check your favorite luthier wood sites regularly for the best (but usually expensive) stuff. Helps get a feel for prices, even if you don't buy anything. Some sites (Allied Lutherie and Oregon Wild Wood, for two) do occasional sales, which can be a good time to nab a few things. Hibdon also has monthly specials. I got a bunch of 2nd grade neck blanks last year for $2 each. Some are usable as necks, others are usable as laminated heels on shorter length full price neck blanks.

Watch the classifieds on this forum for occasional deals, although they usually go fast. There's also the event known as Swap-a-Palooza, where many forum sponsors and members list bunches of stuff for cheap, and the rest of us have a feeding frenzy. I think it's normally an annual thing in April, although it never happened this year.

Ebay is iffy, but you can get some good deals there too.

You can also lurk around the local lumber yards and snap up the nice quartered straight grain stuff and slice it up yourself.

Hi!

I am a newb in guitarmaking, built 1 electric bass, a ukulele, an almost finished classical guitar and a SS at the first steps of building. I'm 22 and seeking for a serious career in lutherie.
Here my stock...

6 B/S (Cocobolo, maple, walnut, rosewood, etc...)
8 tops (Sitka, Port Orford, Redwood, Lutz...)
a dozen of necks (mahog, maple, walnut, Port orford, cedro..)
About 30 blocks of bracestock, Adi
about 20 bridge blanks (Madagascar RW, Honduras RW, EIR, BRAz, etc..)
an electric body blank
Few electric tops (flame maple, spalted maple, spalted mango, etc..)
A bunch of wood of many kind for any further use
A bunch of Black and White veneer, and some EIR, mahog, walnut, bloodwood, etc...


First, I keep in mind that you never have too much wood. The more you have, the more choice you have, the longer it dries. Also, that will never lose value. At any time, if you decide that you have to much wood, you can resell it at the same price or at a higher price (if it's few years later, I guess..).

I'm not always seeking for good deal, but every weeks I look at suppliers' website and facebook page, and if I see a good deal or something that I want to use in the future, I buy it, if I have the money for...

One thing that is really good too, is to do grouped buy. By example, with 7 other people, I just bought over 1000$ of bracing stock. We had a GOOD price. We also bought in the past large beams of mahog, for over 40 necks, and a bunch of peruvian walnut that we resaw in B/S (11$ a set...).

I'm not looking for the cheaper. I'm looking for quality. If it comes cheap, that's even better.

My 2 cents
Francis

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

One thing to be careful of is getting too far into a wood collection before you know who your target audience is. I started out with the notion that I was going to build steel string guitars, and have a good collection of a wide variety of woods that are all acceptable to the steel string buyers market. But I've drifted into building mainly classical and flamenco guitars, and now I'd trade every random B&S set and every Sitka top I have for some Indian Rosewood, Cypress and Euro Spruce. Don't go too far down the road before you know which road you are on.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

<sigh> You can send it all back to where you got it if you don't want it...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

If you buy wood before you can use it, you will build up a stash.
I bought wood when I found a good deal, or when I saw wood I really liked. I have more tops than I can use in 20 years at my current pace. However, I can always sell what I dont need at some point. Like when I am 90 or so.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Yes buy all you can. It's not getting any cheaper, and then eventually you will be like so many of us who have more wood than they can ever build with. I must have over 100 B&S sets at this point, as well as probably 60 tops of different varieties. I should just sell the stuff... and my stash is smaller than a lot of guys I know.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I am starting out, but I am not a complete beginner, I have built a sitka/EIR OM, and am in the planning phase of a OM Baritone with a cutaway.



I am soon going to be insulating my shop fully, so when that is done, I will be able to effectively humidify the whole space, so storage will not be a problem.

Building and repairing (and playing) is really what I want to do for a living, so I'm planning on accumulating my dough for a while, then buying a fair deal of stock, that way I will have a decent choice of woods for my second and future guitars.

I plan on making a few until I'm happy with my construction and then starting to (try to) sell them. After college (English college, not american) I hope to do a university degree course in instrument building, I really want to get a good head-start before then, so that when I finish the course some three years later, I'll have made a fair few guitars (I think you probably make 3-4 guitars on the course, a large part is acoustics and the science behind the voicing etc too) and hopefully will have sold a few, fingers crossed.

Sorry about the slight tangent in the last paragraph! But knowing my plans and seriousness might affect the advice

Tom

I am starting out, but I am not a complete beginner, I have built a sitka/EIR OM, and am in the planning phase of a OM Baritone with a cutaway.



I am soon going to be insulating my shop fully, so when that is done, I will be able to effectively humidify the whole space, so storage will not be a problem.

Building and repairing (and playing) is really what I want to do for a living, so I'm planning on accumulating my dough for a while, then buying a fair deal of stock, that way I will have a decent choice of woods for my second and future guitars.

I plan on making a few until I'm happy with my construction and then starting to (try to) sell them. After college (English college, not american) I hope to do a university degree course in instrument building, I really want to get a good head-start before then, so that when I finish the course some three years later, I'll have made a fair few guitars (I think you probably make 3-4 guitars on the course, a large part is acoustics and the science behind the voicing etc too) and hopefully will have sold a few, fingers crossed.

Sorry about the slight tangent in the last paragraph! But knowing my plans and seriousness might affect the advice

Tom

Hi Don, I think I'll still be able to make good use of the cocobola

For the OP, deciding what to buy, I'd say that Shane's Lutz (High Mountain Tonewood - see sponsors) is hard to top as a general purpose top wood. No affiliation.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

I started building about 20 years ago and it's almost been a constant search for tone woods. But mostly for good deals. I have enough laying around so I don't need to buy anything at a moments notice which is nice because then you have more time to find out good deals or even free stuff. I've managed to get a lot of free wood over the years.

I like what Todd said. I started out buying anything I thought was a good enough deal to reasonable be able to recoup my money without too much work. I wanted enough wood to be able to at some point be able to pick only from stuff I have had on hand for years. I am mostly at that point now, I think I have enough wood to build for a decade at my current pace and use only top quality stuff. That might be overkill but most professionals I know are in a similar situation. Not all of them though.

I realize now I was not as good at being picky as I am now when I started buying. I would say if it seems like a great deal and you are wanting to be building professionally at some level try to make the purchase. But, be very careful in your selections. It took me a while to appreciate the difference between great and excellent (excellent being better). It is not unreasonable to expect that at most of our paces of building you should be able to use only excellent wood. I don't regret too many of my purchases but when I buy now it is with that in mind.

I did at one point take out a small business loan to in part build an inventory. I do not regret that choice.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

That was really helpful thanks I really want to start building up an inventory early on A business loan sounds like a good idea for the future, especially when I've started selling my guitars at a decent price so I can pay the loan back!

Burton's got some great points here. I too have accumulated a stash over time, and made some acquisitions early on that seemed to be good deals, but I really didn't know what I was looking for and was less discerning about what I was acquiring. I'm still learning as much as I can, but now have a much better feel for what I'm looking for in backs and sides, and what I'm looking for in tops.

If you go to a number of shows (here in the states the GAL and ASIA shows are great opportunities to touch and tap lots of tonewood - assume there are options in Europe, too) and ask lots of questions, you'll learn a lot. Also, as you build more, test your tops, especially (deflection testing, etc.) to determine what you like in terms of density and stiffness.

For me, figuring out what was worth buying, given my objectives, and what wasn't, was really the challenge. Since I have a better idea of what I'm looking for, I can occasionally score great finds at lumberyards, and, more importantly from my perspective, I know which "bargains" to pass up at shows.

A longwinded way of saying that, for me, the challenge wasn't in acquiring the wood. It was in acquiring the "right" wood.

On the other hand, there's a LOT of very good quality tonewood out there, that will make a fabulous guitar, which because of cosmetic imperfections, is far less expensive than the "AAAA" stuff. For most of us, building the first 20 guitars out of very expensive, cosmetically perfect tonewood, is a waste. For me, it's taken almost 10 guitars just to get my processes down, and avoid the most glaring errors. So there's a very good argument for stashing some great stuff for later, and using sonically very good, but cosmetically imperfect stuff now.

Well Tom,

W.A.S. ....

seemed like a gooder idea at the time...me wonder if its part of our greedy consuming consciousness. Me gotts enough wood to last me the rest of me life time, yet me still looking around for what ever shows up. Fortunately, I build with local woods as in... that stick grew up over the back side of that mtn. and yielded me X# number of tops, backs or sides as well as the new top on the island in the kitchen and well all the doors, trim and stairs inside me house to boot. So me stock piles of tone wood just sits there getting better with age. Ya, its not exotic woods...but it was basically free. (well a few six packs of beer and smokes or a gallon of gas ... you know, the basic monetary system in these hills.)

Do I need it all? No.
Me ever gonna use it all? No.
Will me part with it? No.

So me look at it this way, me doing my part in harvesting the planet.

And when the harvest is over, we is gonna do exactly what our ancestors have done for aeons and aeons, We gonna leave this planet.

The thing is, me not gotts no ticket for that ride. Oh well.



Blessings
Padma

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


.

Alot of good advice. When I look at my collection I think there is alot of wood I will end up giving away or selling cheap because I won't want to use it. Good wood is always a good investment but wood with issues is ok when your starting out but after a point you won't want to use it. So don't get to much of the stuff with issues and switch to a few nice pieces a year. What is the old saying penny wise and pound foolish. I have a hard time passing up a good deal but I am trying to bite the bullet and buy the good stuff now. From people I like and can trust.

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

Well my friend, if you should happen to regret any of that African Blackwood that we cut up on my saw, please do let me know. I'd be happy to take it off your hands...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Also a newbie who has the collecting bug... but within reason... I have tried to collect stuff that may become unobtainable in the next 10 years or so... or way too expensive... not to use now, but when experienced enough to ensure the wood is not wasted on poor technique. Getting advice from experienced folk on quality pieces is also a good way to learn about what makes a quality piece and for teh long term stash, investing in the best you can get/afford seems a wise move... I guess I dont want to be in a situation in future when I finally am able to build a quality instrument and find it almost impossible to find the more exotic stuff. .... and its fun

Don, I was going to use that to board up the windows this weekend but if you want some maybe I'll use the curly osage instead......

Another thing I think about a lot these days is Lacey. There were questions asked at the ASIA conference about our "stashes" and what to do with them and there isn't an answer that I see. There is the real possibility that I will take a risk using any of the wood I have purchased. And, to be honest, I don't know of anyone selling wood that comes with a documented trail except a few species with FSC certification and people like Shane or Tom Thiel who actually process the tree. To be honest, I am not even sure that an FSC cert. would fully comply with Lacey.

In my understanding of the rules, it is easier for us as Americans to send stuff out of the country but it will become harder for wood to come into the country. I have no idea what it will mean in the long term. I suspect it will continue to lie in waiting and we will all operate slightly nervously. Certainly many many builders have been shipping Brazilian guitars all over the place and not being prosecuted. Some even more or less advertise it on the web. We will be passing that risk on to the customer though now with Lacey and will have to educate them on where they can go with their guitar made with wood that we "trafficked", or laundered, or used or whatever you want to call it! We would need to understand the regs to be able to explain it to them and it seems very few do. I don't completely and in conversations with the people who seem to understand it the best it becomes clear that the people enforcing it don't necessarily either. That topic has been covered well in other threads on the OLF.

I think about this now every time I think about or actually buy wood or anything not made of metal that I will use on the guitar.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

I started out buying sets when I found a nice set of something I wanted to build with. I must have picked up a dozen or more sets this way. I then started looking for nice q/s, well dried boards that I could resaw myself. Since then my inventory has grown with numerous sets of individual species. Like others, I now have sets to last me years! Likely sets that I will never use, but in the meantime, the wood will sit in my climate controlled basement. And it is nice to have a variety of woods to pick from when starting a new project. I have woods I like, but those aren't always the same as what others like. When building for someone else, I try to steer them towards the woods I have. That doesn't always work though, and I end up getting more wood

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Leave the Osage...Use a Cannoli.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

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Lol......."The Godfather"....leave the gun, take the cannoli

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

My suggestion would be to buy a couple dozen modest priced soundboard sets. If you buy them 12 at a time you usually get a price break. These will last you through your college years and as you use them you will gain a better understanding of the wood. At some point you may want to add to them so you have some ageing as you are using the others.
For B&S wood you might do well to buy half a dozen sets of EIR and try some less expensive alternative species to give you a feel for working with different woods.
At this point in your budding career I wouldn't invest too heavily in wood. After the blush is off the rose your life goals may change and guitarmaking may become more of a hobby interest. And as Burton pointed out there may be some question of which woods we are allowed to "traffic" in.