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I have built and worked on guitars for awhile. I am doing my first build from boards. Is there anything I should look for when picking out the wood I'm going to use. I will be buying Mohogany, Walnut and Maple. (grain, length, cut, variety etc.) Going to Peach State lumber in Ga. They have some real cool stuff! Thanks in advance for any tips.

That's a pretty big question.

First you need to understand what run out is and grain orientation - flat sawn, rift sawn, slab sawn etc.

Wood always has internal stresses that vary from species to species and even tree to tree within a species.

Boards with straight grain & no runout will be more stable or move more predictably than those without. Unfortunately these well behaved boards are uncommon, expensive, & usually don't look very cool.

Do you have a design? Is the body going to be a single piece or several pieces glued together? If you are gluing together smaller pieces, wood selection isn't as critical. Read up on gluing together boards into panels, like a table top, which will show how to orient the grain of the boards to counter each other & improve stability.

The other important issue is moisture content. If you're buying from a reputable wood dealer, all the wood should be "dry" unless they specify differently. Before gluing boards together, they need to be acclimated - kept together in the same environment so they are sort of in sync.

When buying wood, you will pay more for wood from the "instrument grade" pile. If you take some time & study, you'll know what is suitable & be able to find it in the regular pile, you just have to dig a little.

PRS has a video on their site about neck building which is helpful in understanding wood selection also.

Like I said, that's a big question. I hope this helps a little.

Kevin Looker

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Thanks for the reply. Those are good tips. Its going to be a one piece Mahogany body. Maybe a flamed maple top. (Depending on the wood available) If I dont find a cool top its going to be a gold top. The design for the body is a original "telecaster" like guitar. It has different cutaways.

If you just want some general information, this is a pretty good video:
http://thewoodwhisperer.com/episode-4-a-lumbering-feeling/
Other than that, my one tip is that if you are buying figured wood to resaw, look on both sides to be sure it goes all the way through (I learned the hard way) .

Buy Hickory ! That way when you Make that doofus move that we all make , you have material for your Barbecue !

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You mean to tell me this build will not go super easy and come out perfect?

Go in and ask them if they have a special section for Luthier Wood. It should only be 3 or 4 times as expensive as normal wood, due to it's intrinsic Luthier properties.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

You could always buy something you think is good,
and let it sit around a few years to see what it does.

It went very well. Thanks for all the input. I picked up 15 board feet of mahogany 5'x15''x2'' (enough for 3 bodies) and 4 board feet of curly maple. If you live near Metro ATL check out Peach State Lumber the selection, price and customer service were top notch.

Very nice.

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I have actually had the opposite experience on two occasions at different wood vendors.

One is a guy who sells wood on the side of his Door building business. I've chatted with him about figured woods. He avoids them and sells them cheap to make space for the plain stuff he likes to work with.

There is a place in Seattle called "Crosscut Hardwoods" that has a pallet in the middle of the floor near the checkout area. It has a sign on it labeled 'Hobby Woods'. It's a bunch of Maple back and side sets of various quality ranging from really really bad to moderately bad. This is what they will show you if you ask for 'guitar wood'. Needless to say it's really cheap :p

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Jim Hansen

I do all my builds with "lumber yard" wood. If it's dry, relatively straight-grained (except for topwood, in which case I am always looking for a "special board"), you should be fine. Only problem I have had is in looking for suitable figured top wood. There's enough "savy" luthiers about to keep most of the good stuff snatched up as quick as it appears, but it is out there and just takes a little willingness to look and be resourceful.