Official Luthiers Forum!

I have been going thru this incredibly adolescent stage where I am buying all these different wood species and bringing them home and stacking next to my bed....so my hand can lay on them.....while I sleep....

...and I haven't even finished my first guitar yet!

Anyway my question is what is the suitability of the following (steel string):

-Padauk for bridges
-Padauk for bridge plates
-Bloodwood for bridges
-Bloodwood for bridge plates
-Bloodwood for fingerboards
-Bubinga for bridges
-Bubinga for fingerboards
-Bubinga for bridge plates


I have so much stuff pushed under the bed....my wife is gonna threaten me when she finds it.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

All useable if you so wish.

i think paduak gets a bad rep becouse lets face it its not that pretty and it goes muddy brown over time.
its also a pain to work.
apparantly it has very good tonal properties but i have not used it for bridges and patches myself.
i do however get alot people asking me fingerboards and bridge blanks.
The electric guitar and bass guys love the stuff and even though i dont offer it on my site its a very good seller for me
The same goes with bubinga allthough not many people ask for it for bridge blanks (i love for bindings personaly).

Blood wood is great it makes wonderfull components for guitar and can be used for all jobs from binding to back and sides (not necks though ).

I hope that answers your question maybe someone else can chime and the specifics of each species.

Joel

Sniggly, in case you think you are alone in this malady, you aren't. Welcome to my world. Its a wonderful place. I can only hope that your wife looks at you and utters the same words that Sweetie did, "Honey, you can buy all the wood you want, after you build your first."
Do try and not to look like a guppy while you process the implications of what was just said. I failed miserably.

Label the wood and leave yourself a treasure map of where you squirreled it away. Keep a list of what you have bought and what you need to buy, so you don't have to keep exposing the wood to the wife. After awhile, questions will be asked if the wood pile gets to be too big.

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Aoibeann

(snicker)....thanks Lillian....I went out to the shop tonight and made some cuts on a piece of super curly Bubinga tonight...she saw me bringing it in the house and just rolled her eyes...

Joel, thanks for the input. The curly Bubinga mentioned above will be something...I just don't know what yet. I already got my back and side billets out of the board...so we'll see.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

One thing I will mention is do not use quarter sawn for bridges or bridge plates. This leaves you susceptible splitting along the grain at pin holes and high load points. Riff or Skew cut for these two items.

I decided not to use bubinga for bridges. Once I compared a Honduran rosewood bridge with a bubinga one and the bubinga seemed to have way too much of a damping factor.

Try it. Drop a small piece on a concrete floor: you want to hear it 'ring', such as glass would (come to think of it, glass would shatter on a concrete floor, but you know what I mean....). Bubinga will just 'plunk'.

That said, that's just me.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Must be a form of the Crazy Ritz.