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how to tell the Difference between spruce and pine timber

Visually they can be quite similar,
spruce is some what stiffer
pine has that unmistakable "pine" smell to it when tooled or sanded
both make good tops..just brace the pine a bit thicker.

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I didn't know you could use pine for soundboard and bracing, but I'm new to all this! What is pine like as a top and for bracing? Dose it produce a nice sound?

Yo, speedo,

Cedars, Douglas-firs, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauri, larches, lutz, pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces, and yews are all conifers, and all make excellent soundboards / bracing... provided one compensates for the different stiffness they have. And yes, they all have a different flavour in their sound.

Spruce in the most commonly used simply because it is the stiffest.

Yes Speedo...its true.


blessings
?adma

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Wow that is a really useful bit of information! So for example I have made my top with cedar and spruce braces can I use pine or cedar for the bracing on the back? The reason I ask is I'm not sure if I have spruce braces or pine? Coz I can't tell the difference? Nuff respect!!!!

You should ask this question in the guitar building section; you will get much more traffic. This section is for a challenge that ended months ago.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

I assume we're talking timber from North America. Get out your hand lens, make a very clean cut on the end grain and follow along ...

"hard" pines (lodgepole, red, jack, ponderosa, etc.): longitudinal resin canals numerous, quite evenly distributed in the outer portion of every growth ring, generally visible to naked eye as dark-or light-coloured dots or as small openings, relatively conspicuous with a hand lens; transition from earlywood to latewood more or less abrupt

"soft" pines (sugar, eastern white, western white): longitudinal resin canals numerous, quite evenly distributed in the outer portion of every growth ring, generally visible to naked eye as dark-or light-coloured dots or as small openings, relatively conspicuous with a hand lens; transition from earlywood to latewood gradual

eastern spruces (Englemann, white, red, black): longitudinal resin canals generally sparse, unevenly distributed, sometimes absent, invisible or barely visible and not conspicuous with hand lens; latewood not pronounced, transition early to latewood gradual

Sitka spruce is the tough one, as it sometimes has more numerous resin canals than found in other spruces, and so can be confused for a soft pine. Compared to the distinctive strong resinous odour of the pines, Sitka has a much more subtle fragrance.

Source: Panshin, A.J. and de Zeeuw, C. 1970. Textbook of wood technology. 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill.