Official Luthiers Forum!

Ok i know that i have brought this up in another thread 6 months or so ago but things are getting pretty desperate now.

honduras mahogany is now comercialy extinct.
yes we can still get plantation stock and will for the forseale future but the good brazilian stock is now gone apart stock piled stocks.

The fact is we have been spoiled for many years with very high grade stock coming out of brazil and south america. those stocks are now used up and brazil has banned export.
there will be stock comming out belize and guatamala for a while but it is very course grained and "straw like" in apperance.
there will also be the pacific stock that is full of knots and very variable in quality.

we will still be able to get the good stuff but it will go the way of brw and the prices will start to rise very soon.

i dont think you will have the problem so bad in the states yet but here in the uk the boat trade has bought up all the remaining brazilian stock.

The fact is we seriously have to find a viable alternative for our neck stock.

yes we have plantation stock which we will have to use if want mahogany we also have the mahoga-a-likes like sapelee,african mahogany, and even utile.
but these woods have not been used in the past for a reason.
mainly becouse the are inferior woods at the end of the day.

saplele is gaining favour with some builders and i sell quite a bit of it but it is brittle and very prone to checking.
it is also pretty heavy and kind of course in texture.
it also has the look of cheap 80,s furniture so i dont think it will find favour as a neck wood in the long run becouse of these faults.

African mahogany can be very nice and fine grained compard to plantation mahogany but if you have ever seen a large amount kayha stickered and stacked you would worry about building guitars with it.
it is knowhere near as stable as honduras and has a tendancy to warp and twist very badly.

utile or sipo is just too heavy and course for my liking so i wont be stocking it after a few trial runs.

so what is going to replace honduras mahogany as our premier neck wood.

cherry i can feel you all screaming at your screens.
well yes american black cherry is one option.
it is readily available its well priced and easy to work and american black cherry is probably stable enough.
the problem is i am not sure it will catch on in the mass market.
and the musicians need to be convinced that it will not effect the tone or quality of there instruments.
european cherry i dont think will stand up to sustained use as it is not as stable as a.b.c.
i will be stocking black cherry as an option when i can but i have trouble selling it now.

of course there is maple.
its tried and tested but not an alternative to mahogany so that counts it out as a replacement.

the one wood that i have the highest hopes for is tassmanian blackwood.
its a wonderfull neck wood and quite readily available at the moment especialy if are willing to use plain wood.
i will be stocking it in the near future and i intend to offer it an alternative to mahogany.

we also have walnut.
walnut is very stable and has a simmaler strength to weight ratio to mahogany.
black walnut is readily available allthough quarter sawn stock is not very common.
english walnut is rare now and commands a high price it can also be a little heavy.

of course we have cuban mahogany and the planation stock from palau is very nice as we all know.
but it is very dence heavy and expensive but again a very good candidate.

i am sure that there is something out there and the fact is that the time has come to seriously start thinking about what we are going to use.

as you can tell this is a subject i have realy thought hard about so i would love your input on this.

true old growth brazilian mahogany is now comercialy extinct we have to find and alternative.

the fact is that until the big companys start using something else people will expect mahogany necks and if the small builders want quality mahogany they are going to have to start paying and charging top dollar for it.

unfortunatly the big manufacturers dont care about quality so the will use the plantation stock to keep the price down.
but the fact is we wont be able to get the quality wood we have been used to so we need to think about this carefully.


any input would be great on this i welcome your veiws.

Joel.

Joel have you considered QLD maple. It is strong and light and more like mahogony than maple.

Regards

Craig.

Joel have you considered QLD maple. It is strong and light and more like mahogony than maple.

Regards

Craig.

Joel,

There seems to be a bit of a conundrum here. If the supply of Honduran is as you say then builders with stocks who can't replace them will need to value and price it accordingly (mahogany could move in price like oil currently is). In the mass market from what you say, guitar buyers will take whatever they are given that looks like mahogany and keep their prejudices intact. In the "hand built" market then buyers are either going to have to be prepared to pay the necessary price or change their views on different woods and building processes for necks - i.e stacked heels and scarfe joints. It will be painful but it will happen eventually.

I'm interested in your comments on the stability of English cherry - is this based on lots of wood you have handled compared with American Black cherry or builders experiences using it? (that's a genuine question and not sarcasm by the way as I can't find an "honestly" icon). I know Colin has used cherry for necks and I had some from the same source that I would have happily used as a neck but it got turned into a Weiss.

It's all going to depend on the wood chosen - I've used sapele and it worked/carved fine and wasn't that heavy (it was used on a 16 frets clear of the body instrument and so excess weight would have been a killer on the instruments balance), and I've also used English walnut that I like a lot. One wood that I like a lot for necks is Sycamore (European that is which is a member of the maple family not the American plane version).

For the smaller market of hand-builders I suspect there may be the opportunity to find suitable materials that won't be available in the huge numbers the mass manufacturers will be swallowing up and the challenge is to change peoples often erroneous view of neck wood and construction in terms of suitability and tone. If you are a small builder that has no other source of income then this could be a bummer - the change in consumer attitudes will take too long I suspect and you may not be able to charge the "true" price of the mahogany stocks you have. So you either sell them "cheap" and blindly run to the edge of the cliff like a lemming as your stock runs out, or charge the true price and blindly run to the edge of the cliff like a lemming as you don't sell any or ... find some other way to supplement your income.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Yes, English (European) cherry is a fine neck wood, my favourite in fact, I've used it a number of times and I have a small stock of it laid down. As far as I can tell from the samples I've had it is as stable as any wood out there.

Ash is another good stable choice, think snooker cue. Also don't forget the African 'mahoganies', sapele and khaya, both will make good necks.

Colin

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

two points:

I think you underestimate the flexibility of the consumer on this. When I read "tonewood" discussions there is close to no talk at all about neck woods. At either the factory or the well-established handmaker ends of the spectrum, I think the consumer will accept what the maker says is OK. The not-well-established handmaker? maybe less so.

The other point is that the future of necks is already with us: composites of composites. Wood--a composite of cellulose fiber and lignin, and carbon rods--a composite of carbon fiber and epoxy. In this meta-composite, the wood does not need to provide the strength and stiffness that it does in a traditional neck; it needs to be a stable and reasonably attractive matrix for the carbon rods (or whatever replaces them in the future). This opens possibilities for woods that are lightweight, stable and attractive, but have been generally overlooked as lumber because they are rather soft and weak. A couple of candidates here in the States are butternut and catalpa. Spanish cedar is not an overlooked or cheap wood, but has the same kind of characteristics.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

american ash would be a bad choice to start using as a wood at this point...I was watching a show yesterday and the trees are being devastated by an insect, and they are even predicting it won't be available for baseball bats in the near future...

Howard,

Very good point about the impact of cf and other composites - maybe one of the few good "carbon footprints"! I thought that Spanish cedar was getting pretty close to Honduras mahogany in terms of wild supply and it was nearly put on the CITES Appendix recently - plus I suspect the biggies like Martin, Taylor and the Asian makers will be buying up stocks as we speak.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

FYI, most of the power hitters are using maple bats these days. Have you noticed the increase in shattered bats the last few seasons?

Sipo seems like a really good option. I have seen and handled a few boards and they have not struck me as heavy. I would like to obtain some lumber to experiment with.
Catalpa makes excellent solid body guitars, but is way soft and will dent if you look at it funny. I haven't tested it for stiffness, but my best guess is it is rather low. Hackberry, an ash relative, is about the right weight and is abundant, but it is white. Try selling that! Butternut is is soft and springy, not crisp like Honduras mahogany. I have said it before, but will say it again at the risk of being a bore, but there is no "Honduran" mahogany. I don't know who dreamed up that term, but it hits my ears the same way as when young people say "No problem" instead of "you're welcome".

Finally, we have to find better ways of utilizing the mahogany we have left. A bandsawn, 1-piece neck ain't it! This method of neck construction is a relic of the days when you could buy container lots of 3" thick mahogany in 18 to 30 inch widths. Put a minimally skilled worker in a room with a bandsaw and huge billets and you had a cheap way to make your necks. Flash forward to 2008. A standard 3" x 4" x 30" billet will yield two bandsawn neck blanks. You will waste about a board foot of lumber in the cutout between the neck blanks. Sure, you can cut it up for linings, but this is a very time consuming way of doing this and very few builders take the time. Plus, 3" thick mahogany does not come in multiples of 4" widths. To get a 4" wide piece, you may have had to cut a 6" or 7" wide piece down to 4", with the remaining strip being off fall, and not usable for very much.
Scarf joints and built up heels use far less wood. In fact, if the 3" x 4" x 30" billet were just a bit longer, you could get 4 necks out of the piece, doubling your yield. Taylor has built more guitars than I can count with this method and they would not be continuing this method if it were prone to problems.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

With all due respect for those that make 1 piece necks, but for me it seems to be an awful lot of waste. I'm pretty sure nobody will switch to scarfed head+stacked heel because of this thread, but they will surely do so when a mahogany neck blank will cost 100$ or more a few years from now.

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Build log

Two words - Monkey Pod.

well, I don't watch baseball, so I can't say I have seen this...but that subject was covered in the show I watched yesterday, so yes I am aware of it...when I played little league I know I preferred wooden bats over Aluminum, and can see how other players also hold that preference...skipping all the technical wording, wooden bats simply felt better to me when they made contact with the ball....

ash is preferred because it doesn't blow up into pieces when it breaks....it simply splits apart...

As a guitar player, I find it odd when necks aren't made of some sort of mahogany- but as a budding luthier I am open to using ANY type of well-seasoned hardwood for necks; but one thing I will never leave out are the carbon rods; they make such a difference to the neck's stability and playability.

Hopefully from now on, I will be trying to source more home-grown woods such as Cherry and Sycamore & Euro walnut for guitar necks

What about beech, birch or butternut?

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Aoibeann

Thanks for the comments folks,

My comments about cherry are based on experience of personal stock and feedback from customers.
i started stocking cherry about a year ago for necks after stocking back and sides for alot longer.
as a set wood english cherry was noticabley less stable than the black cherry but this did not seem to be the case when converted to thicker pieces.
that said though there can be no denying that cherry is alot less stable than mahogany but with truss rods and modern construction i dont see this to be a major problem.

but the fact is that when i offer people cherry as an alternative neck wood they very often think i am joking and as such i dont sell much of it.

(by the way colin i still have those highly figured black cherry neck blanks here for you i think they are pretty much ready for use now)

also i find i have to allow kiln dried cherry stock a long time to stabalise further before resawing or else it will warp when it comes off the saw.
but i think this is due to poor kilning tecniques rather than the wood itself.
The air dried english cherry i get from scotland does tend to be more stable than the kiln dried stocks i get from essex for obvious reasons.

Of course like all woods it can vary very much from piece to piece like all woods so i may have just had bad experiences with it in the past.

all this said i do like cherry as a wood and will continue to offer it.

As howard pointed out neck construction itself is evolving and with advent of carbon fiber etc then this issue of stability may not be of such concern. in which case we will be able to use whatever woods we choose within reason.

As for spanish cedar yes it has been put forward for cites evaluation but i dont think the case is as bad as mahogany.
but the problem with spanish cedar is that it is hard to get very good quality stock.
much of is course grained with gum deposits, staining, and excess sap.
It has a problem of expelling sap in service which can cuase problems with finishing etc.
This is not really a problem with good quality stock but i for one am finding that stock harder to come by.
Also while it has an allmost identical strength to weight ratio as mahogany it is much lighter which is why it has been traditionaly used for classical guitars.
i know some people worry about using it for steel strings for this very reason.

again its a wood i love if the quality is good and i will continue to offer it for the forseable future (its also easy to get in three or four ich stock so it can be offered for one piece necks if someone really wants one).

Walnut i love its such a forgiving wood but its not particuly streight grained as a rule and is prone to knotting so wastage is very high if you are looking perfectly strieght grained run out/defect free blanks you have to factor in 100% wastage which pushes the price up.
but we do have the advantage that walnut is sustainably grown in america and europe so stocks are good for the forseable future.

As i said in the last post i think tassy blackwood is great option and i will have some good quality stocks coming from tasmania in the next few weeks

another option is indian rosewood.
we have been plauged with infirior sonokeling for a while now but stocks of sustaiably harvested old growth stock is now being exported from india in 3 1/2' and 6" wide "turning stock" i have a source of good quality old growth stock for necks ad electric guitars.
it is actualy not as heavy as you would think.
i did a test with a mahogany neck blank against one of my indian rosewood necks and there was only 2 grams wieght diference between the indian rosewood and the mahogany ( it was a dense piece of mahogany though).
again this depends on the specific pieces of wood but its worth taking into account as its been used by electric makers for many years now.

Sapelee is very variable but i for one am not a fan.
that said it doesent matter wether i like it or not i have supply it if there is a demand.
And at the moment there certainly seems to be many people who are willing to use it.
I suppose its cheap streight grained and readily available so i cant argue with that.

I have not used catalpa or butternut so i cant comment on these woods.

Another wood i am looking at stocking for necks is cylon satin wood.
it is very stable lovely to work and dense without being to heavy i think this is another good candidate.

of course there is black limba as well which has all the quality,s we are looking for in a mahogany substitute except that it looks nothing like it.
i think it may well be a good candidate but stocks are scarce (at least here in the uk they are) so that may stand against it in the long run.

English sycamore is another wood that i love it has such a fine texture. but the good stocks get bought up every spring by the veneer trade and the japanese so the price of high quality logs are getting higher.
that said i have two high grade scottish logs with my name on for next year and i will be importing logs from bosnia next year also for both back and sides and necks.
I will only buy logs with high grade figure but i may buy some lower grade stock for necks.

Another english option is london plane.
we have stacks of this wood in the uk and hundreds of mature trees that were planted during the industriel revoltion that are ready felling.
the problem is that most of these logs get mulched for some reason and very little makes it through to raw lumber.

The trees are huge and can yeild 24" quarter sawn boards with no problems.
The trunks tend to be streight as an arriw as well and timber is streight grained, pretty and quite stable.
it also has a lovely golden hue and wonderfull ray silking making it another lacewood like american sycamore (in fact i think london plane is a hybrid between american sycamore and another plane).

this is a wood i am keen to do more research with as it has a density and stability close to cherry.
so i will be stocking this wood soon and sending samples out to my testers to try.
I think dave dyke has stocked london plane for a while now.

Back to mahogany i must stress that the situation here in the uk is different from that of the states where the problem isn't as bad.
i think that are much larger stock piles in the states so you may not see the prices rising as quickly as will here in the uk.
Of course we will have the plantation stock which is fine as long as you except that its not of the same quality as the old growth stock.
we will use and probably come to love it as we forget what the old growth stock was like in the first place.

Also there will be some old growth stocks coming through with cites certification but we will find that that the quality will go down and the price will rise.

After all we luthiers only account for a fraction of the mahogany users out there and where there is demand there will be supply i just wanted to make sure that we are all aware of the situation and the consequenses that it will have on us.

i am sitting on the rest of my old growth stock for while to see what happens but i think in the next year or so we see some real changes in the market that will effect everyone from the large manufacturers to the small hobby builder to the end user that will force us to look at what neck woods we use what we deem suitable as a neck materiel.

Also i will not offer one peice neck blanks in most woods as it is wastfull and actualy in efficient compard to scarfe construction.

Any way thats my rant over now i know that many of you will not agree with i am writing but as a supplier of these woods i have to look very closely at the market and try to predict the future in terms of what will be selling tomorrow.

the fact is i respect the comments and veiws of the forum menbers here and your advice has served me well in the past.

Feel free to correct me where i am wrong i am here to learn as much as the rest of you and please bear in mind that can be may diferences between the trade from country to country.

Thanks for reading,

Joel.

A yes monkey pod i had not thought of that.

but is it readily available enough and streight grained enough.
i have seen lots of wavey grained monkey pod sets out there.

Joel.

I thik you are right about 1 peice necks they are wastfull and and they have short grain at the headstock which causes breakages.

i think most makers know this now and are converting to scarfe construction.
i sell many many times more scarfe neck blanks than one piece necks for this very reason.
but again its a different market here in the uk so i cant talk for the us market.

as for mahogany necks costing $100 or more they allready cost about $45 here at the moment and i have seen them sell on ebay for $80 so the prices may be rising quicker than you think.

I have also seen alot of people selling plantation stock as old growth which is very naughty.

Joel.

Monkey Pod is very available but has not been used, at least traditionally, for instruments. It is best known as being used for turned salad bowls.

My pal Jeff Yong built a Monkey Pod guitar that won Gal's blind listening competition two years ago. He loves the stuff.

As such I have a couple of sets in my stash from Uncle Bob at RC Tonewoods.

I think that the question, as to what we are going to use in mahoganies place, needs context here. In my way of thinking the major players in the guitar industry like Martin, Taylor etc. really tend to set the standard for what customers want and may believe is even possible. Mahogany has been used for all of time for guitars because it was cheap (as in inexpensive and available). Now that this is changing it is likely, don't you think, that the major players/factories will find a suitable substitute that is also cheap (again as in inexpensive and available).

This to me rules out Tas Blackwood even though i personally love the stuff. It is not inexpensive and it is not available in huge quantities to support the factory guitar industry.

It may be that buyers will need to be educated to accept a far wider range of choices in the future or something that we have not even discussed here - yet.

May I ask how can one tell apart plantation from wild forest stock ?

Obviously wider annual rings ? (=fast growth/small diameter tree) ?

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Build log

Hesh,
i think you are right the large company,s did use mahogaby becouse it was readily available and cheap.
in fact before martin started using it for back and sides it was considered an inferior wood becouse the base of referance at the time was the very best old growth brazilian rosewood.
That said they started using it on there low priced guitars and hey presto its the industry standard.

as far as what is next for the large company,s they will be looking a cheap alternative that they can market as the next big thing.
in fact i have seen one big company (i cant remember which) using shedua for necks.
if you think about this is the perfect option for the large factories as its very cheap and readily available.
In fact i actualy sell figured shedua to one well known maker who swears by it.
but would i offer it as one of my standard neck woods? i think not. not unless the big company,s really started marketing it heavily and i started recieving large quantity orders on a regular basis.

you are probably right the next new standard is probably something we have not considered but i have a feeling it will be kayha ivorensis as its still quite cheap at present and has the advantage that your average end user wont be able to tell the diferance between that and true mahogany.
the large firms will probaly market it as senegal mahogany or some such name to help it sell.

As far as my thought for tassy black wood this is something i will be marketing for the high end market and i think that if people are willing to use plain or low figured wood it will be an excelent wood for necks.
that said i dont expect to see gibson using it any time soon.

as for the question how do you tell the diference between plantation stock and old growth stock i wish i could say that you can trust your local supplier to know the diference but the fact is most lumber yards sometimes cant tell themselves.

As you have allready said plantation stock is wider grained due its fast forced growth.
it also tends to be alot less dense and lighter in color due the soil its grown in.
It is usualy courser grained aswell.
that said i have seen some excellent plantation stock from belize recently and there is some quite good sock comming out of java aswell.

you will learn to tell the differance between old stock and new the more you handle it but on average plantation is of much lower quality than wood that has grown in it natural habitat.

I know thats a bit vaque but i'm not very good at explaining stuff like that.

joel.

IIRC, Martin switched from Spanish Cedar necks with V-joined heads (well, modified bridle joints, really) to 1-piece mahogany in about 1915. I suspect the move was motivated more by a loss of skilled workers than anything else. Martin, of course, set the standards in the USA, but the object at the time was not to make a better neck.

I've used a fair amount of butternut, which has properties quite like those of cedro. With a good truss rod you can use it on steel string necks. I prefer to V-joint the headstock: it's not the strongest wood. Of course (of course) there are supply problems with butternut, too. There's an insect pest that is decimating the population of the trees: I have been unable to find any butternuts for years. Too bad; they're really tasty. I have seen the wood in yards, though.

I read a while ago that almost all North American hardwoods are harvested from privately held plots of less than 200 acres. On the one hand, with so many small suppliers you can't say categorically that any particular board was 'sustainably harvested', but on the other hand, so long as the supply remains steady that is evidence that the species itself is sustainable. I'm moving more and more into 'local' wood, and the more of us that do the quicker the buyers will get the message. In fact, we may even be able to take advantage of the growing 'localvore' movement.

I had to Google that one Al:

Localvores ?

A Localvore is a person dedicated to eating food grown and produced locally. There are a lot of good reasons to eat locally grown and produced food.

I am glad that I just moved further away from Detroit - gives a whole new meaning to the term "bumper crop...."

Joel - you said "I know thats a bit vaque but i'm not very good at explaining stuff like that."

I think that you have done a fantastic job of explaining things here and wanted to thank you kindly!

I was not able to find any pictures of kayha ivorensis - anyone care to share please?

It seems that butternut may well be option for those of you in the u.s. but in the u.k. i have never seen it offered for sale.
i presume this is just becouse the cost of importation would make it too costly.

I like the idea of us all using our native woods and as such will be selling more native uk woods in the future.
we are lucky to have some very nice woods here in the such as cherry, maple, sycamore (acer psudoplatinus),plane,ash,oak,beech chestnut (sweet and horse) and even some small amounts of walnut.
while some of these woods are completly unsuitable some have proven track records and as i will be stocking them.

with native woods in mind i have started to establish links with local councils and tree surgons to try to reclaim some of the logs destined for the wood chippers (which is allmost all The urban felled tree,s here).

as far as walnut goes it is very very rare to get home grown walnut lumber in the uk and when you do its full of knots.
as such i buy imported stock from europe where there is some very good clear high grade stock available.
we all have heard of bastogne walnut which has very good rep (even though its a generic term for juglans regia and hindsii i think).

(talking of bastogne take a look of these pics from taylor http://www.flickr.com/photos/taylorguitars/ )

i think in the long run walnut will prove to expensive to be a viable option but its still one of my favourate woods.

That said taylor seem to be using it for necks at present.

i an sure we all find our own favourates in the long term espesialy as mahogany gets more and more scarce.

Joel.

IMO ash is a little coarse and heavy for necks, like oak it has large pores that require a lot of filling. Black walnut is heavier than Honduras, but very stable and readily available (at least here in the US).
Cherry is great, carves easily, is stable and light. IMO the best candidate to replace Honduras.
Actually I fell a (dead) butternut tree last fall and kept 4' of the trunk for neck stock, it seems a little on the soft side though, so CF rods for sure, and/or 12 fret necks. The colour and texture are pretty though.
I've used Khaya for a couple of necks and stability is not an issue, so far… A tad denser than the average Honduran, but nice.
A wood I would investigate is Angelique (Dicorynia guianensis). It is mostly used in historical boat building (as a replacement for mahogany). I've built two necks with it and like it a lot. It is heavier than Honduras, looks great under finish and sounds good. Only caveat is, it is full of silica so it dulls blades and tools pretty fast.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Tassie Blackwood is generally a fairly heavy wood Joel.

I've built a few guitars with it as a neck and they do tend to be a little unbalanced.

A lot of the guitar builders here in Australia won't use it due to stability issues
and use Fijian plantation grown Mahogany in preference.

The couple that I've done have been laminates, usually with Rock Maple, and one one with CF.

I certainly wouldn't use it without laminating it.

It's also very hard - not much fun carving this stuff.

As Craig mentioned above Queensland Maple is a much better alternative and has a proven track record here in Australia as Maton have been using it for years.

Bob

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia