Official Luthiers Forum!

For my oak barn wood parlor guitars I use white oak for the fretboard that is ebonized with vinegaroon and painted with india ink. The fretboard and bridge here are both White Oak.

Very cool. What is vinegaroon? Vinegar with steel wool dissolved in it?

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Paul, I’ll add that Mesquite is extraordinarily stable.
I mill my own logs and cut parallel to the rays, sometimes revealing very fine figuring.
I’m curious how it works as bridge material.
Dan

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Yes that's it. And in that pic it was just the vinegar stain. On more recent guitars I add the ink too just to be sure that it lasts.

Ferric acetate stain, the vinegar and iron stuff, is the traditional permanent black stain. Along with tannin, which white oak has in abundance, it forms a stable black iron oxide in the wood. It's the dye Strad used to make his black inlay lines out of white Italian poplar, and they're still black. You don't need any ink.

If I remember to take a pic later I will but the fret board on the very first one I did is starring to show wear through the stain in the usual spots. It actually looks kind of cool in the spirit of these rustic designs but I used the ink on future projects just in case. It could be the case of finger oil and or acetic sweat, friction or all the above, not sure

Sure; unless you can do something to get the chemicals to penetrate you're only going to have a surface stain. Strad made veneer strips (heavy plane shavings) of his poplar and boiled them in a copper trough with the tannin, vinegar and iron. They know about the copper because of a greenish cast to his black. I've gotten 'Ozark Ebony'; persimmon wood that has been dyed black all the way through, for fingerboards and bridge blanks. The fellow making it has pretty much stopped, though. It's an expensive process, and somewhat hard to control, and he had trouble selling a substitute for the same price as regular black ebony. Perhaps, as the legal situation around ebony gets worse, he'll reconsider.

White oak was my favorite!

there are a few woods worth mentioning
A Catalpa
B Sassafras
c Cherry

tops
Blue spruce
Larch

Neck wood
Walnut
Poplar

Fretboard
Gum
Elm
maple ( hard )

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I love how it looks like there is something wrong with the aspect ratio of that image but there isn't

I forgot that I once built a guitar from Catalpa though I believe it was not North American. Good stuff.

A top wood that I have been wanting to experiment that is all over Virginia is Paulownia.

Thanks for your reply. I wouldn't even consider using Gum, Elm or Maple for fretboards. We plan to switch to synthetic ones. Catalpa (I always thought it was spelled Catalba) or Sassafras are southern woods completely out of my knowledge base so I will bow to your superior experience. As far as topwood is concerned we live right in the middle of Western Red Cedar and Sitka spruce country so no shortage of high quality local woods. We have an attic bursting of billets of lovely cedar blow-down from the St. Helen's eruption in 1980. Spanish Cedar is one of the woods that is irreplaceable for neckwood (my opinion only) so as long as it's available we'll continue to use it. We received our first set of high quality beautifully quartered Eastern Black Walnut today and I must say that I am impressed by the quality and price. I've always liked walnut anyway and since we're planning to use only laminated backs and sides from now on I suspect the tonal characteristics of the exterior lam are pretty much irrelevant; but what do I know? This is pretty much unexplored territory for me, the one sure fire decision we've made in the last few years is that we'll make only double top guitars from now on.

[/quote]
This is pretty much unexplored territory for me, the one sure fire decision we've made in the last few years is that we'll make only double top guitars from now on.[/quote]

You may have mentioned this on another post, but I would be intereted in your reasoning.

B

_________________
My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

Nope, it's a copy of a Prairie State...I called it a mini jumbo.

My local urban log recycler has catalpa all the time. I never really thought about using it nor do I have any experience with it. What do you like about it for guitars? What would you compare it to? I may have to check it out.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

Unexplored territory since we've only made solid back/sides up until now. We started using double tops (WRC/nomex/WRC) about 3 years ago and the difference in sound was dramatic. Improved volume and absolutely amazing trebles with sustain all the way to the 19th fret. We only build classic and flamenco guitars so the effect of the double top on steel string guitars is unknown to me although I can't imagine it would be dramatically different. We're switching to laminated back/sides mainly because we plan to use the same type of sandwich for the back as the top (hardwood/nomex/cedar) and laminated sides theoretically are much more stiff and less likely to check as well as the benefit of decoupling the top and the body. As everyone knows the price of exotic hardwoods has become outrageous and at the same time the quality has declined. With laminated back and sides the type of hardwood veneer is pretty much unimportant soundwise, that's why we're switching to native woods.

I've built quite a few guitars with mostly domestic woods. Walnut is my favorite.

I recently built one with 100% domestic woods. The challenge, as has been mentioned, is finding a dark fingerboard and bridge material that the customer will accept as an ebony alternative. I ended up finding a piece of desert ironwood that fit the bill:





The biggest challenge in using domestic woods really isn't sourcing, but rather market perception. People are used to the look and idea of traditional materials. And while being environmentally conscious is a hot topic, when it comes to spending your dollars, not a lot of buyers are willing to get on the bandwagon. It's unfortunate for sure. I personally am a large believer that the industry needs to be pushing sustainable alternatives. But it's going to take a mindset shift in both builder/factories and buyers alike.

_________________
ELEVATE || Next Level Lutherie
http://elevatelutherie.com
&
http://ensorguitars.com

Butternut is a good substitute, IMHO. I have used it for back, sides, neck, and kerfing.

_________________
John

+1 on butternut. One of my students made a butternut Flamenco; it had a decent tone, but the damping was higher than cypress, so it lacked some of the 'edge'. It was hard to bend without crushing on the inside curve of the waist.

I've measured the properties of lots of different kinds of softwoods, and the general rule I've seen is that the Young's modulus along the grain tracks the density quite well. Any softwood that has a density in the range of spruce will make a top that weighs about the same as a good spruce top when it's made to the same stiffness.

White pine makes a good soundboard. It tends to be soft, and dents easily, but no worse than WRC. Most of the Doug fir I see is on the dense side, but I'm told that lower density stuff can be had. I've gotten Red spruce that was lower in density than much European or Engelmann, and made fine Classical guitars. With softwoods its more about the piece than the species.

I don't think I've ever seen any butternut. Live and learn. Another soundboard candidate is Tamarack, I had a chunk I retrieved from a friend's pile of firewood that rang like a bell. You're certainly right about "the piece rather than the species".

I use walnut for some of my necks (steel string) as a substitute for mahogany, but I would consider butternut as a substitute for Spanish cedar. Not as strong and colorful as walnut, but lighter in weight.

Our local beaver here in Mouse creek, chewed down a bunch of white willow trees . I plan to experiment and see if they can be used for necks with low tension e.g. ukes. Wood has about the same density as sp cedar. White willow is different from black willow it is mostly white with a purplish brown heartwood.

For those who want to try a native wood, I noticed this on Bob's website....

http://rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store/close- ... 12067.html

Try oak, you will not be disappointed!

_________________
Guitar Building = Continuous Improvement Process

I love the Black Walnut we can get around here. If I had resaw capability I'd definitely use it more. You can get it from luthier supply houses, but the cost is way more than if I were to buy it from the mill. That and good old American Cherry
That is a beautiful instrument.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Steeping the wood in the iron acetate solution results in far greater penetration than using normal wood dyes. After a few weeks I've had black all the way through 2 mm walnut (for bandings). Oak I've had it 0.6 mm deep (maybe deeper with longer steeping) - that's probably sufficient to glue a fretboard and allow for a bit of leveling. All this without the use of pressure. The technique definitely has merit.