So let’s talk about wood for a guitar. You will need several types of wood to build a guitar. Specifically you will need wood for the soundboard, the back and sides, the neck, front and back bracing, the bridge and fingerboard, tail and neck blocks, and then possibly some purfling and kerfing.
Before I start suggesting woods…if you aren’t aware yet, you should always get quartersawn wood for each piece of your guitar. Quarter sawn wood is much more stable and less likely to warp and give you headaches as you build your guitar. For a better explanation on quarter sawn wood, here is a link. Quartersawn Lumber for Guitars.
The soundboard wood could be argued as the most important choice you will make when building a guitar, although I personally think every choice probably needs to be made wisely. There are a number of woods that people recommend. Probably the most recommended is spruce. There are several varieties to choose from of spruce, but besides looks I don’t think there is a great deal of difference. Some other soundboard wood options that seem fairly common are red cedar or redwood. I have bought some pieces of redwood to make an attempt using that on my next guitar (or possibly some other stringed instrument). I chose to go with Engelmann Spruce. It is not quite the bottom end but pretty close. Again to me there did not seem to be a huge difference among the spruce choices. Make sure you get a book matched set unless of course you feel like dishing out some money for a solid piece for your top.
For the sides and the back you will have a lot more choices of wood to choose from. The general thought is that you want a hard wood that will provide great tone as well as look nice. And you will want to make sure you buy a book matched set. Mahogany is a very popular choice because it is relatively easy to work with, provides good tone and looks alright. It doesn’t look bad, but it definitely won’t stand out. There really is too many choices to list when it comes to types of wood you could use for your back and sides. You will just have to look around and see what you want along with how much you want to spend. I definitely suggest a good day or two of research as a minimum before purchasing your wood. I ended up choosing Walnut for my back and sides. I have always liked the look of walnut.
The third main wood you will need for your guitar is the neck wood. Now you can go about this two ways. The first is to use a solid blank piece of wood. If you choose this route you should again make sure you get quartersawn wood. The other way, which is the way I chose to go is to use multiple pieces of different kinds of wood glued together to make a single piece thick enough to make your neck from. Being cheap and having access to some decent hardwood of a couple different kinds, I opted for gluing pieces together. I’m sure some guitar makers might frown on this, but I found quite a few “professional” builders that do this. If you stick with a single quartersawn piece, your best bet is probably mahogany. If you choose to glue several pieces together, your choices and combinations are endless it seems. I went with Maple and Walnut in a 5 strip pattern. Outsides are Walnut and next layer in is Maple and the center strip is a thinner slice of Walnut sized to match the width of my truss rod.
Now we get to some of the smaller pieces of wood you will need. Bracing and kerfing are used to strengthen and attach the top, sides and back. Kerfing is the slotted wood that will follow the curved sides and is used to attach the sides to the top and back along with provide some strength. They pretty much follow similar recommendations as the top, back and sides. That is the bracing for the top will be similar wood to what you used on your top. For example software woods such as spruce and basswood are the typical. And then for the bracing and kerfing for the sides and back should be a harder wood such as Mahogany or the same wood you used for the back and sides. There really isn’t a lot of choice to be made here, especially if you are just going to buy the pieces online.
The tail and neck blocks are the next in line. The neck block probably be the more important of the two choices, although you might as well make them both the same type of wood. The neck block is where the neck attaches to the body of the guitar. So you really want to make sure this piece is strong and will hold up. Most builders seem to stick with a good string Mahogany for these two pieces.
The bridge and fingerboard wood should probably purchased together, or at least that is my preference since they are typically the same type of wood. Again you have a huge selection of wood. They should be a hardwood so that they hold up. I personally went with an ebony to contrast with the light colored soundboard, you could choose just about any hardwood I would think.
Purfling is an optional thing according to most, but some suggest that it adds additional strength to the guitar. I would be of half the mind to believe that it does add some strength to the guitar. If you don’t know what purfling is, it is the decorative (again possibly more than just decorative) strip that goes around the edge of the sides of the guitar. The kinds of purfling are almost limitless as well. You can even use plastic or leather purfling. I stuck with the same wood as my sides but I may switch that when I get to that stage.
So now where can you get all of this wood from? Well first I would recommend that you read my next blog post before going on to purchase your wood, which will be on patterns and molds. Perhaps I should have written that post first but woods seemed like a good place to start.
But I will point you at a few links to places you can purchase guitar woods so you can start browsing around them. I will mention that I personally bought most of my wood on EBay. I know most wouldn’t think about buying wood on EBay but there are a lot of people selling luthier supplies including wood on EBay. Obviously you need to be careful but usually if you red peoples feedback you can get an idea of the level of satisfaction that other have had. Personally when I am shopping on EBay I am looking to get a deal, so I would suggest becoming familiar with the pricing of these other online vendors that I will provide the links for below. I have order pieces and parts from some of these vendors, I just stuck with EBay for the main pieces of wood for my guitar.
Useful Links
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