Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello everyone! First time poster here. Been reading on and off for a month or so. My question is about spanish cedar. i have a nice slab and would like to build a telecaster style body from it. I know it has been used for acoustic necks on occasions but has anyone used it for a electric body? My real question is about the sap or resins that have been know to ooze up through the pores on occasion in this wood and that it can gum up tool blades. How do you deal with this? I have read about wiping with alcohol and using a heat gun to drawl the resin out. I had an idea about baking the slab in an oven at a low heat. Any tips? thanks Mike

Hi Mike and welcome to the OLF.

While I have never used spanish cedar for a body Finnish builder Juha Ruokangas uses it as a body wood on many of his high end guitars. You can check them out at http://www.ruokangas.com/ .

Paul

Paul thanks for the response. I will check out his site.

Hi Mike!
The guy I work for uses it for his guitars' core... I'm not sure it's Spanish, but it is pretty close (red maybe? anyway) It gives a nice tone, but you'll probably want to top it with another wood since cedar is such a soft wood and can be dented pretty easily. As for the sap pockets, I don't know how he deals with them on cedar but on Douglas Fir I know that he cleans them as best he can (by opening the pocket and scraping the sap out) then fill the pocket with epoxy resin and let it cure. Hope that helps...

And welcome to the forum

_________________
Olivier Gauthier
Montreal, QC

Rick Turner's featherweight Model 1's are cedar core with rosewood cap on top and back. He's mentioned that you'll probably want to glue maple dowel wherever you'll have screws so that the screws don't pull out, but Brett Faust mentioned to me once that he and the guys at USA Custom Guitars have done a few spruce bodies and haven't had trouble with screws stripping out in the soft wood.

Guys, lets be a bit more specific about what Cedar we're talking about - neither of the types mentioned here are 'true' cedars, and they're about as different as they could be in terms of properties.

What the topic starter asked about is Spanish Cedar, ie Cedrella Odorata, which is a wood in the mahogany family, looks vaguely like mahogany, is a bit softer, a bit lighter, and can generally be used wherever mahogany is - I believe Gibson used it for solidbodies and necks in some of its models, and it's a traditional neck wood for spanish/classical guitar necks. I've got some, and I'll be using it for bodies and necks (with CF reinforcement for the latter) with absolutely no qualms. I currently use it for linings.

What James is talking about, Western Red Cedar (Thuya Plicata) is a softwood, looks different, smells different, different working properties, and while I'm planning on building some solidbodies (a la Turner) with it, with harder wood caps for tone shaping and dent protection, I wouldn't use it straight up, and I wouldn't use it for necks. Completely different wood.

Spruce is another one I'm interested in, as I love the tone in acoustics. Parker's done a Fly in spruce which is probably the sexiest in a line of already pretty dang sexy guitars.

Honestly, with solidbody slabs, if the wood's dry, leave it. Don't try drawing the sap out. Just work it, sand it, seal it (epoxy filler, shellac, your choice) and finish it.

Thanks for the clarification, Mattia.

Is the spruce fly their stage acoustic? I remember playing one of those a number of years ago and thinking it was absolutely amazing.

Hey Chris

When are you going to start sharing your pictures, man? They had a stage acoustic for a while, similar to the Gibson SST, Crowdster, et. al. I don't remember the name. It was solid spruce.

Mattia thanks for clarifying this...Mike

A UK company called Gordon-Smith guitars use spanish (they call it brazilian) cedar for their solid-bodies as standard. I've got one of their sg's and it's a fine guitar - nice light weight and snappy sound. If you're looking for lots of sustain it's probably not the wood to use - sound is probably more like poplar or alder than mahogany. I don't know how they deal with the resin issue, but mine has no finish issues and it's at least 10 years old.

Cheers,
Bri