Official Luthiers Forum!

I've taken the last two weeks off from building and worked on the shop and done lots of other things...

So I'm planning out a number of guitars I want to make this year, and one thing I want to do is a curly or flamed redwood top with walnut back and sides. I'm actually going in a week or two to dig through a black walnut collection a retired furnuture maker has, I'm hoping for some pieces I can resaw into backs and sides (you never know I could hit gold or just dirt ;).

But I can't seem to find any curly or flamed redwood tops, any of our numberous wood vendors here have any or know where I can do digging for some??

Thanks

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

I'm out of the curly stuff...but I think Hank may have some?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I have some...looks like this:

Did I just hear Paul's jaw hit the floor? Or was that mine?

Shane

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Canada

Imagine that top with some of that Bobc's rather understated sapele! I think you'd have to use very plain binding and rosette! (it should sound great though)

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Well...if you want all the gruesome details
It's flamed redwood on a flamed black walnut body, flamed koa binding (which goes quite well with all the other flamed wood) and donkey shell rosette/purfling.
Don't know if I still have a photo of the back, but the flamed walnut is as tasty as the flamed redwood.
It does a lot of work in DADGAD and the owner just loves the sound. It's on a Grand OM body (now called the McCloud on my website).

Yowza!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hank. PM me please


oops i will pm you MichaelP38596.5911226852

Jaw??? I fell over in my chair!!

Hank when can I come out to visit???

Michelle and I would love to come out and finish the trip out there we never got to finish a couple of years ago, this time the kids are staying home

Maybe visit some other builders while we are up there, I'll even take some pics for the peeps here.

PM me with details if your up for it, I want some of that wood for sure, I didn't know you had the flamed stuff....

Thanks

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Paul,

There are sellers on eBay all the time that sell billets of Curly Redwood, sometimes well quartered. Having said that you will still be much better off getting Redwood from Hank as he knows and has great redwood whereas most of the other sources around for curly redwood are usually not selecting for tightess of grain or other characteristics as a Luthier would.

I saw one eBay seller who listed a piece of curly redwood as being quartersawn and perfect for luthiers but you could see from the photo that the grain was 2-3 per inch!

Here is some info for the good of the oreder re: flamed redwood:

I only have 10 sets left. Priced at $150 each, shipped in the USA.
They are .170" thick.
Take a close look at the photo of the guitar I posted. The nature of that top wood is that it does have "wide grain" spacing...nowhere near the 20+ to the inch straight redwood I normally sell.
That said, it is still very stiff, though a final thickness would be in the range of .130" or better. The top you see here is .130", measured at the soundhole with finish. This guitar was built in 2000 for a client who has taken extremely good care of the instrument... stored in a case, humidified, not "on the road", etc. There is not a blemish on the top.
The guitar is currently in my shop, getting a new neck. The client was an "electric player" and used to thin necks. So, that's what he wanted 5 years ago. Maturity and aging fingers have led him to a bit more meaty neck, so we're doing a replacement.

If you decide to build with this material, do these things:
A larger bridgeplate to help spread the string stress...
Widen the base of your bracing...these are 3/8" wide, and 3/4" tall, nicely tapered toward the top of each brace and scalloped, but not radically.
Specify light gauge strings ONLY...
It will be a finger style instrument, no Tony Rice runs.
Don't thin below .130"
Make sure your client is acutely aware of proper instrument care and feeding. If you are building for personal use, you are already aware of these things.

I have built about a half dozen guitars with this wood...several OM (deep bodied), several 000-12 fret, a 000-13 fret with a 25.7 scale and a couple of Parlors. All are still in use, with no problems. But I followed my own advice on bracing/bridgeplate sizing.
The only problems...one guitar was dropped and subsequently retopped with another flamed redwood top. One was used on the road throughout Europe, and suffered from the extremes in climatic change, stage abuse, etc. All the others, in private hands and care, have held up with no problems.

Hope that is of help to any and all considering building with this style redwood top. A final note: I have found very little of this type of wood that I would use on a top. The nature of it's beauty is it's greatest weakness...that flame is a very wildly oscillting "runout" in the grain, usually from the stump area of a VERY large redwood. The flame, as best I can determine, has developed from hundreds of years of the trees weight on that area of the wood, distorting the grain and forcing it into the flamed figure you see.

If I can be of any further assistance in answering your questions, post them here so everyone gets the "benefit" of my $.02!

I will have some redwood tops available in two weeks if anyone's interested. They will look exactly like what you see in the photo.


Let me know if anyone's interested. I'll have roughly 10 tops available.
Thanks,
Steve

That's not wood, that's a picture of a fire!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."