wood suppliers?

[FLUTE HEAD]

Hey everyone, I Just wanted to start a thread to help people, like myself, find good sources for wood blanks. Also, I'm curious as to what are the more common woods to use for guitar bodies and necks. What about, neck through body, wood choices. I live in Lafayette, Louisiana and we have: live oak, water oak, & pecan trees amongst others. The most I here about are maple and mahogony. I think my neighbor wants to take down a nice size pecan tree. I was thinkin of getting a few slabs. hehe

[sdantonio]

for acoustic instruments.

Oak has acoustical properties about half way between mahogany and rosewood. Good bendability and makes great instruments. But you will practically have to give them away.

Lacewood is the same and you will sell then easily (as long as you don't tell the customer that lacewood is a mutated oak species).

mahogany is softer and has a more mellow tone. Great for studio instruments since the recording proces seems to emphasise the trebble (especially the digital process).

Pecan and maple work great as does walnut. Butternut and persimmon also work great too.

If your talking solid body electrics then anything that is hard and stable would work good. Necks I prefer a 3 layer laminate of maple or maple and walnut.

I only have 2 instrument pics up on my site right now (digital camera is a new thing for me) but I will be adding more over time (like the electric uke with the shell inlayed fingerboard that I finished up 5 months ago made from maple and peruvian walnut.)

http://www.theluthiersbench.com/

[FLUTE HEAD]

Thanks for the input. Sounds like many woods to choose from for necks & bodies. Nice website.

[turmite]

Are you wanting suppliers of a list of woods? While I am still in the building process of my first instrument, I have worked wood all my life, and I am old!

The list of wood is as long as you want it to be, but a few not yet mentioned, at least in detail are: Cherry, Eastern Hard Maple, soft maple bigleaf maple, with a wide selection of grain or figure, Myrtle, Koa, and the list goes on.

As far as suppliers goes I will have to compile one.

Mike

[sdantonio]

This is a site that I like to post when I can. The guy here did a huge amount of work. Now, mind you , I have no idea where to find half of these woods. But the pics are great.

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/

[luthier]

Your most common woods for Fender type guitars are Alder, Swamp Ash, and to a lesser degree basswood. Your Gibson type guitars are mostly mahogany and maple. In the acoustic world, Mahogany and Rosewood were THE woods that were marketable, although now most independent builders are considering different types of wood. Check out LMII.com and Luthiersforum.com. for more information on tonewoods.

[FLUTE HEAD]

Briefly looked at hobbithouse, looks good. Also trying to find a good "cheap" source for wood. I'll most likely find it here locally. I'm also throwing around different ideas to machine a guitar body on my cnc mill drill(harb freight). Not enough travel so I may have to mill the body out halfway turn 180 mill the other half.

[sdantonio]

I'm also throwing around different ideas to machine a guitar body on my cnc mill drill(harb freight). Not enough travel so I may have to mill the body out halfway turn 180 mill the other half.

If your going to make a lot of guitar bodies then I would suffest you take a quick look at Joe's CNC Model 2006.

I'm in the process of building two right now. One big enough to carve double bass tops and backs (50" x 32") and the other one for the girlfriend with a 12" x 24" cutting table. Their going together really nicely. Very sturdy and rigid. If you make one with a 24"x36" cutting table then it would handle all you guitar making needs including carving fender style necks (there is tested gcode available for fender necks on another thread here), if you want to make the necks by hand and just cut bodies on the CNC then you could easily get away with a 24"X20" cutting table giving you a machine with a total footprint of about 38"x31".

Steven

[FLUTE HEAD]

I'd like a router table but for now I'll just see what I can do with the mill drill. Glad I have one to make parts for the router later on. So far I seem to like the mdf material for the cnc routers.

[GuitarEng]

The other posts mentioned the most common wood types. guitar weight seems to be becoming a bigger factor in the market, so that will probably start influencing wood choices more and more.

I'm going to mess around with some carving wood such as basswood, tupelo, etc.. as these are pretty light.