Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

CTN

CTN

The Drama Dude
So at work today (oh yeah, I'm finally well enough to work again!), we were cleaning out a bunch of scrap metal and old crap from the darkest depths of the warehouse and amongst the pile of scrap wood, I found a really nice piece of lumber. It's old and doesn't look great, but it's straight and hard. Beautiful resonance. It rings like a bell. No knots, no major splits, and it's cut from the very center of tree. It's approximately 3"x3"x25.5" so dimensionally just about perfect for a guitar neck and it's heavy but not ludicrously so.

Coworker suggested it might be cedar or oak. I was so impressed with how it sounded I decided to bring it home.

I'm really not sure if it's a stable enough wood for a neck, intrinsically, but I could carve a perfect quartersawn neck out of this piece, reinforce with graphite if need be, or even make a laminate with some maple or something for extra stability.

Whaddya think, is it worth a shot to store it for some time and make sure it's properly dried and make a fender style neck sometime down the line?

It's just sitting in my car at the moment but if anyone wants to see pics for identification, I'll bring it in later and try to shave off a few mm's t get a look at the clean wood grain.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

I was gonna say, pics would help. Maybe one of us could even totally identify it. Cedar is usually pretty soft isn't it? I hear the neck on the Red Special is all oak and that's held up and sounded kickass for decades.
 
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Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

Yah my preliminary research has suggested it might be OK, but it might not. All comes down to how stable and stiff the piece of wood is, not necessarily how soft it is. Mahogany for example isn't especially hard but it can be stiff and those pieces make good necks
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

I love my mahogany neck on my strat...awesome wood for both body and neck.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

All comes down to how stable and stiff the piece of wood is, not necessarily how soft it is
Click to expand...

Yep. I've got plans (in my head) for building some guitars with fir and/or cedar (port orford) at some point.

Pics would be cool.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

Alright i'll go grab it and see if I can find my little plane
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

If we are playing the game "Neck Or Not A Neck?" The answer is:

Not a neck.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

Lol OK, I trust you guys. What's the reason, out of curiosity?
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

When you first mentioned the board being cut from the exact center, I was a little worried, but wanted to see the pic before saying anything. But now I see you really do mean the exact center, and that's not good. I can't give you a "science-y" answer as to why, except to say that a board cut from that part of the tree is prone to warping and splitting (first hand experience here). Also, looking at how the piece changes from one end to another, I'd say there is some grain variation that would make getting a nice, straight board out of it difficult...even if you added some carbon rods:biglaugh:

I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of building guitars out of reclaimed lumber, but I haven't done anything except look around at what is locally available to me. There is LOTS of old lumber out there, but very little of what I've seen would be acceptable guitar wood, even if you're willing to compromise a bit on certain properties. Gotta keep looking though!
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

I've seen necks made of cedar, spruce and pine on TDPRI and none of them have had problems...
A strong truss rod should keep it straight. Your only worry would be twisting which can happen to any wood really. Just do it and see how it turns out :)
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

I'm going to defer to brian's and frank's advice on this one. Maybe i can repurpose it to some other musical function, but my ocd is such that if i was building a neck i would NEED to know that the wood was suited to that.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

What you could build with that nice chunk of wood, is a nice guitar stand.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

It sure looks like Oak to me. Considering how inexpensive maple, mahogany, or walnut are, why not just use a traditional material?
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

I probably will end up doing that. It's just that this piece was a) found in a whole bunch of scrap, b) had a wonderful tap-tone, c) was free.

no biggie. nothing lost. I already have a guitar stand, so it's unlikely I'll make another one. But I don't wanna just burn it either. Maybe I can carve out an oak capo, or a set of sturdy chopsticks, maybe make a custom fitted piece to block a trem. Not really sure what else I could do, but I'm sure there's plenty of things.
 
Re: Neck wood types? Luthier advice needed

Once can never have enough guitar stands...

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