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I have an old exterior door I have been splitting up for bracewood. The wood is well seasoned probably about 4o years old fending off hot humid summers and cold dry winters. Forgive me as I know I am about to use the wrong terminology and likely ramble as I explain myself. One of the boards has some squirrely grain that shows in the flatsawn dimension. It splits very nicely when I split perpendicular to the grain. In fact, I was able to take a brace width slice that was 34 inches long and split it end to end. When I split with the grain, the split wanders back and forth along the width of the would be brace. This runnout isn't very deep but it reverses back on itself in a more or less straight line along the brace. When viewed along the flatsawn edge it looks like a hot mess.

Here is a shot of the flatsawn face. I split in this dimension and then sawed as close as I could to the average line the runnout made and ran it through the thickness sander hoping to get a picture showing the grain:



I tried to get a picture of the worst part of the runnout looking at the quartered face, you can see that at worst it runs about 3/4 the thickness of the brace before it comes back:



Other than looking bad, and perhaps being a pain to carve the parabolic profile, do any of you see a reason not to use this for brace wood? This particular rail has a few guitars worth of bracing. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

Okay, Bryan, I'm probably the least qualified to comment, but I'll comment anyway. I'd go all over the door scraps and split them this way and that, and then I would try to find appropriate lengths (with little or no runout) and use them in the appropriate places. You can probably find lots of short braces and tone bars in there. Long x-braces might be more of a challenge, but you'll probably find some. I would not use a piece with serious runout anywhere. Now.... that's just me. I am pretty sure people with much better qualifications will chime in pretty soon. They might disagree with me. Since most of them have more experience than I have, you should probably listen to them. In the meantime, I think your instincts are already telling you: "Don't use sticks with runout for brace wood." See what I mean?
Patrick

I would be inclined to avoid using that piece of wood. It may work perfectly fine as the runout is in the opposite orientation we usually avoid, but still you are going to have short grain in the piece. You could snap a few pieces and see how strong it is in either direction.
Found brace wood is cheap, the time we invest building things with it is not.

Clay, I couldn't agree mod about CPU d brace wood being readily available. This door has plenty of other boards that look good. I'm not at a loss for brace wood, more curious about potential problems. I often get caught up splitting little chunks just for fun and to get more experience "reading"
The wood. I was surprised to see that this stuff is difficult to snap even in the direction in question. Since the grain goes back and forth along the width of a brace it doesn't really break until you apply a lot of force. Twisting a brace makes it split along the direction you tipi ally split to avoid run out across the rings. It behaves much like the straight grained stuff. . .

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

Based on some of the stuff I've pulled out of old guitars it would probably work just fine. That said, I'm with Clay - too much time invested in the building process to use brace wood that isn't straight with little or no runout.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Another comment from someone without the experience of many others on the forum, but you asked, so.....

It seems to me that topwood and bracewood are so critical to the sound and integrity of the finished product that I wouldn't use anything looking like that. You want bracewood to be light, stiff, and stable. what are you left with if you use it and 6 months after you string it up, you get some of those "found braces' spitting? A very difficult if even possible, repair.

I'd be much more inclined to experiment with funky wood for back and sides than for braces. At least with back and sides, you can compensate for irregular grain with CA or hide glue.

also, the good stuff is so easy to find and cheap that I don't see the point. splitting it for fun, to see what it does is certainly another matter...

Hey, Bryan, here's another thought. I hope I word this in a way that makes sense:
If you have several long sticks showing that runout, split and plane a new edge that is parallel to the grain. This will obviously leave you with tapered sticks, but you'll have a new edge with no runout to register against your saw fence. You should be able to salvage some lengths of nice, potential brace wood from those sticks. Worth a try, if you like to do stuff like that. Of course, it might be quicker and easier to cut from different areas of your salvaged wood. It just comes down to how much time and patience you have.
Patrick

I prefer to use brace stock with as little runout as possible, not because of strength alone, but it's a heck of a lot easier to carve! I did some quick studies of brace stock by measuring the modulus of brace stock and did a side by side build with higher modulus vs. low modulus brace stock and I found that the difference in strength of braces is easily compensated with a little bit of extra height