Official Luthiers Forum!

Have a look at Tim's website John.

Australian Acoustic Tonewoods

I think there are some pictures of some of these woods on there.

There is also a link to Tonewood data which gives some interesting information on weights and hardness of these timbers compared with traditional tonewoods.

A lot of the fingerboard and bridge woods are hardwoods from Western Australia (which is predominantly desert) so they have very little moisture content even when green and are quite a bit harder than ebony.

As for body woods you really can't go past Blackwood or Myrtle. I have been talking to Tim about Native Olive which is from Tasmania. He compares it to Honduran Rosewood tonally so I'm keen to get my hands on some of that.

He also has some Eucalyptus delegatensis, which is known here as Tasmanian Oak or Victorian Ash which is also promising.

Blackheart Sassafras may be OK. A little softer than Blackwood but visually stunning.



Queensland Maple has been a staple of Maton Guitars here for backs, sides and necks for a number of years.
Looks and sounds like mahogany.

Cheesewood would be good for bindings. It looks like ivoroid. I've just got some curly Jarrah which we're going to use for bindings and this may be OK for backs and sides too.

Hope this all helps.

Cheers

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

Thanks for that info Bob.

I am going over to Tin's site and have a look.

John

I've been out of town so I just saw this; wow! Great work as always guys, you contiue to impress!

I'd love to be able to use more local woods, but good quality is hard to come by. Up here we have lots of spruce and maple and I have built some instruments with it, but with all the work that goes into finding and processing it really makes you appreciate there are people who do this for a living and you realize their prices are reasonable.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Thanks Arnt
I was wondering if it would be possible to make a Norwegan guitar. The maple and spruce sound good. What hardwoods do you have that would be hard enough for a fingerboard and bridge?
I finally got that ash mailed. There was a run around with the US post office from the very beginning. They would not allow me to mail it in an express box until this past Monday. (You will see what I mean when it gets there) I did not feel like reboxing it so I waited until Monday. It was all about some postal regulation that was getting changed on Monday. Just surreal.

My family roots are from a town in Norway that is just a few miles from where Arnt lives in Norway (Trondheim). Because of my Norwegian roots, I have often included pieces of wood from my family's home in Norway as a way to infuse a bit of my family heritage into my guitars. I usually dont point it out and do it just for me.

This is sometimes difficult to do as I build mostly classical but use Maple and other woods from Norway in my guitars. The Spruce in Norway is good but most of Norway is so mountainous that it is difficult to get most of it and even then there is too little old growth to yield the sizes needed for most guitars.

There is a section of Norway that has Alp like mountains, the Jotunheimen that has valleys that could support the slow even growth of trees but most old growth trees are gone. The wood I have used in my Guitars is from a region in Norway known as Hordaland as my mothers side of my family is from Bergen and in Hordaland the wood is more accessable.

I have used local Norwegian woods such as cherry, alder, oak, maple, pine and spruce. This year for the guitar that I am building at the Romanillos class, I am using cherry burl from a family tree for part of the rosette, as part of the headstock veneer and as thetoeblock for the bridge.

I have a cousin that for years was the minister of agriculture so she knows alot of the forestry and sawmill people that has helped me to find local woods that otherwise would not have shown up at a lumberyard.

Beautiful guitar, Steve and John!   
I love the maple walnut combination, and it's also one of my favorite flavors of ice cream. There's a local guy here who makes ice cream and sells it at the farmers market. It's the best ice cream I've ever had, and his maple walnut is absolutely out of this world. But I digress...

Just how hard is that Texas ebony? How does its hardness compare to Indian Rosewood (which really isn't hard enough for a fretboard, IMO) and real ebony? I've been looking for a North American wood to use for FBs and bridges, and that looks promising. If you have any close-up shots of the FB or bridge that show the color and texture of the wood, I'd love to see them. Is it reasonably stable? And is it available?

Now, I should probably hold my tongue on this, but since you brought it up, I would encourage you to take the leap and make one with no pearl - or maybe only a pearl inlay on the FB. That rose is lovely. The whole guitar is gorgeous... and yet... it's my personal aesthetic preference, I know, but I'd love to see one similar to this without the pearl purfs. There's so much beauty in the woods themselves, and in the way you've combined the woods, and in the craftsmanship... okay, sorry, I'll shut up now, you didn't ask my opinion.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Todd, and Arnt too, many thanks guys!
The Texas "ebony" is much harder than EIR.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but they surely are up there with real ebony, perhaps in some pieces even exceeding them. Color ranges from a dark gold to nearly black. (It actually is a cousin to Mesquite.)
Stable? All I've got is the experience with this one fretboard/bridge, but I can tell you this, that board is mostly slab sawn, and it didn't move on us at all. And we gave it every opportunity to do so!
Availabilty could be a problem. Supply here is spotty.
Close-ups...I'll go see if I've got anything...maybe John does?

As for the bling, yeah, I know. In the words of Wind In His Hair, I hear your words, and they are strong.
We could build a guitar just for you!
(Course, you'd then have to buy it... )

ho ho...

KBW

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Here are some sample pics. The top two are desert iron wood, one of the candidates, ebony in the center looking nice and black, and Texas ebony below. The non-ebony boards look rather uninspired but they are rough cut. Finished smooth and oiled, they take on a very pretty luster and darken considerably. Both the DI and the TE are very hard, as Steve said, somewhat harder than Indian.



Here are a few shots of the fingerboard under construction.


Craig's rose in the TE before it has any fingerboard oil.


And, so you don' have to look back, here it is again with some fingerboard oil.


That's the best shotsI have on the fingerboard.

Shawn I completely understand the desire to include a little family in your guitars. As mentioned we have a little family in this one in the rosette and headstock veneer.

Work it bro. If you sell one to Todd I would be impressed.

Thanks for posting those pics, John. I appreciate it. That Texas ebony looks very nice to me. I'll have to see if I can find me some.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

So very classy.

/late to the party as usual.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

That would make you "The Late Steve Courtright of Evanston, Illinois", then!    

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I see news of my state of being late have been widely circulated and maybe even greatly exhaggerated!

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck