selecting wood

Now that I've figured out what I want to make I can go ahead and start collecting wood and other materials.  Since I have been planning this for a while, I have had time to scout for wood.  I've been going into Macbeath hardwoods in San Francisco (thats where I live)  every couple of weeks to see what stock they have coming in.  I originally wanted to make the neck through body out of maple and the body out of Walnut.  Maple because that seems to be the traditional choice for guitar makers for neck wood and Walnut because Macbeath had a good selection of it and I thought it would complement the maple nicely.  From what I've read about guitar making and from experience as a carpenter, the best wood for a guitar is quarter sawn.  This means that the board is cut perpendicular to the grain, as close to the true radius as possible.  This is kind of hard to explain.  imagine the cross section of the tree as a pie.  Quartersawn pieces would radiate out from the center.  A slab sawn pie would have the cuts all go across the pie parallel to each other.

Quartersawn wood is much more stable and less likely to cup or warp over time.  Unfortunately it is more wasteful and less efficient to mill.  Therefore it is much harder to come by.  After digging through piles of maple and coming up empty handed,  I decided to roll the dice and order some lumber online.  Luthier's Mercantile International carries lumber for laminating neck through body neck blanks.   I figured since they are guitar building supply house,  the wood they sell will be the right kind of wood to do the job.  So I ordered 2 pieces of 3/4" x 5" x48" pieces of maple and a 1/4" x 5" x 48" piece of wenge to act as accent lines.  I'm going for that racing stripe look.  I also ordered a piece of ebony for the finger board.  I did come up with something from the local supplier though.  After almost giving up completely I found a beautiful piece of Bubinga (African Rosewood).  I decided that this would make an excellent body for the guitar instead of the walnut.

So while I was waiting for the lumber I ordered I cut he bubinga into shorter lengths for the body pieces.  I then took my drawing and cut out the two body pieces with a sharp utility knife and transfered it to the wood.  I then cut out the shape with a jigsaw.  I stayed pretty far outside the line because a jigsaw can be hard to control on a 2" thick piece of hard wood.  The blade can be difficult to keep cutting square to the top.  I  did not want to accidentally cut past the line on the bottom without noticing.  I figure I can clean this up later and slowly bring the shape in to where I want it.  I have found that it is better to cut things long and slowly whittle them down than to get greedy and lazy and cut something too short.

Then the Lumber came.  So the pieces of maple were pretty nice.  They were nice clear wood with perfectly flat top and bottom.  This saves me a lot of work in the process of laminating the neck pieces.  They are ready to be glued.  They weren't however quartersawn.  So I don't know if this will be a problem but I'm moving forward with it any ways.  The Wenge did not come and was backordered.  I don't want to wait so I took my Bubinga and ripped some 1/4" pieces since I had plenty left.  I ripped the maple in half.  I need 3 so I have one extra.  I might need this later to build out the headstock.  I used my small makita 8" table saw to rip these pieces.  These saws have been around for a long time and are easy to get used.  I got mine for 50$.  The neck will consist of three pieces of 3/4 maple with two strips of bubinga sandwiched between them Once I had my pieces I started gluing.  I used titebond II wood glue.  Mostly because I had a bunch of it.  I lined up the pieces as close as I could and clamped in up with what  was a available.  Lining up the pieces while gluing was a lot harder than I thought.  Next time I will prepare myself better for what a pain in the ass It might be.

Next I will start making the neck.  I included a photo of most of the tools I'll use during the process of building the guitar.  Here's a list.  Saws-Regular hand saw, I like my Japanese pullsaw, a gent saw, table saw, chisels, planes, spokeshave, rasps, drawknife, square, measuring tools, utility knive, xacto knife, clamps.  There are more I am just not thinking of it right now