old wood for guitar bodies??

Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

Are you talking about stuff like reclaimed wood?

Oh, I dig that so much. It's becoming a bit of a business, so you can either check at construction recycling stores or sometimes antique shops. If you're lucky, you're in an area with a large amount of old houses and barns that are getting pulled down for revitalization/etc, and the local area doesn't really care about upcycling.

As far as I'm concerned, floorboards from the 19th/early 20th century houses are going to be awesome, especially from the middle of the country. Local robust woods cut slab-style and thick, sometimes still with rough-sawn edges. In CA it's going to be stuff like pine, but I imagine there's a bunch of random decent woods. They've had 75 years or more of people creating harmonic content by walking on them and standing out from a lot of wet conditions so they're dry and getting strong.

The only thing I like better than reclaimed wood is lunker wood, but there are rules that apply to pulling lunkers out of the bottom of rivers; namely the wood still belongs to the sawmill. Lunker redwood is stunning.

Of course it's all conjecture to me as I haven't taken anything like that on. I do oh so love the look of a heavily aged workwood that's been cleaned and prepped and converted into a guitar.
 
Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

Yeah I saw some stuff earlier by a custom maker and it looked so awesome. If I could find a slab of something I would make a tele body for my current project. I'll post some pics later
 
Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

Yeah I saw some stuff earlier by a custom maker and it looked so awesome. If I could find a slab of something I would make a tele body for my current project. I'll post some pics later

One of my goals is to make a neck thru out of some ashen-colored woods with old wood that's basically been beadblasted and sealed for wings. I guess there's some good homebrew ways of making wood ashen color, so I may just build a Home Depot special and do that. SInce I got a righty and a lefty kid, I want to build it symmetrical. :X SGish doublecut with the volumes and tone in a line behind the string thrus. Weird, I know. Pretty metal though too.
 
Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

Fender did a run of 100 year old pine Telecasters as part of their 2012 Telebration series.

 
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Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

Fender did a run of 100 year old pine Telecasters as part of their 2012 Telebration series.

I have a huge stack of hoop pine from the house i grew up in. The timber was milled from the property where i lived and is at least 150 years old.

It would be worth considering for a future project.
 
Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

lunker wood

Sinker, as in sinker redwood. If you pull a lunker out of the water, it's probably a largemouth bass.

More on topic, I would love to, and will, build guitars with reclaimed lumber one of these days. Been keeping my eye on the local market for years now...just need the time!
 
Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

 
Re: old wood for guitar bodies??

Sinker, as in sinker redwood. If you pull a lunker out of the water, it's probably a largemouth bass.

More on topic, I would love to, and will, build guitars with reclaimed lumber one of these days. Been keeping my eye on the local market for years now...just need the time!

yea, that. (shrug)
 
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