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Anyone ever made a guitar neck out of Red Cedar? I have a 100+ year old board of it that I salvaged from an old building and it's the perfect size for a neck.

I know Spanish cedar has been used successfully, the builder chose it for it's similarities to Honduran mahogany.

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Spanish cedar is a wonderful neck wood, at least for a low tension guitar, but has nothing in common with WRC besides a similar color and being scented hence the common name of "cedar". As said above it is a mahogany relative while WRC is a softwood. WRC is very soft, and very splitty. It is the last species I would use for a neck.

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Build log

I thought that this wood was red cedar at first. I now think that it's douglas fir.

Here is the before and after.

Actually HERE is the real before. Before I jointed and planned into this old relic.

Wow!
I can't wait to hear what happens with this.
I think you might be okay,
because q sawn fir is quite strong.
I've never seen anybody use it for a neck,
but I wouldn't hesitate to try it.

I'm with Alan. I think you'll be just fine.
When i first joined here, there was someone(can't remember who) who posted pics of an all pine acoustic build, I think made from mostly local lumber. If I remember correctly, the guitar had been together for at least a year, and he'd had no problems with the neck or any other part of the guitar.
If it's quartered the only trouble you might run into is that, like Spanish Cedar, the back of the neck will dent easily, so you'd have to watch for that, but otherwise I think you'll be fine. MHO.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Even if the wood was not quartersawn and it was very soft, do you think it's something that a good double action truss rod can solve? Is it possible to build a neck from a wood that is so soft and pliable that not even a truss rod can help it? Tonal reasons aside, I am only speaking action and playability and structure.

Just give it a go.
Yer on new territory.
Just do a bolt on,
so if it doesn't work,
you be okay.

Yeah that's why it's exciting. I'm also making a neck out of something that may or may not be cherry.. haha Both very old wood. And they are both going to be set necks.

The thread title was red cedar guitar neck but what I actually had was Doug Fir. Here's the finished product.

Yeah baby!
How's it holding up?

Just strung it up for the first time today. It certainly bowed forward a bit more than other neck woods upon being strung up. With a couple good turns of the truss rod it gave it perfect relief though. 11 guage strings. It's probably adjusted 50% of it's backwards travel. It has a two way truss rod, but I'll clearly never use the forward adjustment.

I built a very similar guitar a while back that had a 5 peice maple/walnut laminate neck. And to get the proper relief on that thing I had to crank the truss rod nearly 100% forward!

Very pretty neck, nice lines, well sawn obviously.

What was the scale length on this thing? I would keep it on the short side with a wood like this, or consider a neck with two rods. The truss rod should keep it from snapping on you but I would worry a little about twisting, even if it is quartersawn. If the truss rod is a little off it could be an issue, or how your fretboard bends.

Just sharing my concerns.

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I was part of a group build along on another luthier website and we used western red cedar that was supplied by a wood harvester in Western Canada. The whole guitar is cedar. As recommended by the leader of the build along, I used two carbon fiber rods and a two way truss rod in the neck. That made the neck very stiff.

Any concerns on the suitibility of using Douglas Fir for a guitar neck can be eliminated with 5 short minutes of research on the good old inter-web. If we compare it to our good friend Honduran Mahogany, we will find that Doug Fir is stronger in rupture strength, elastic strength and compressive strength. Fir does have higher radial (Fir=4.5, Mahog=3.0) and tangential (Fir=7.3, Mahog=4.10) shrinkage rates so it will move more than Mahogany, but with a 1.6 T/R ratio (Mahogany T/R = 1.4) it is not a wood that will warp easily. Big leaf Maple which is used quite often in guitar necks is even lower in strength than Mahagany and has a higher T/R ratio than Fir (1.9).

Irving, regarding how much you are needing to adjust your truss rods. You need to spend more time truing up your neck blanks and fretboards, both before and after gluing them together and final shaping. Cool guitar, looks like a job well done.

Steve

It has a 25.34" scale length. The neck seams perfectly fine so far. I'll let you all know how it ages. I leave my necks on the thicker side as well, so I think that helps. .870" first fret to .970" at twelfth.

Keep in mind, this doug fir was cut down over 100 years ago, so I doubt it will do any warping at this point. If this fir is stronger than some types of mahogany, I wonder why we don't see fir necks more often.

I can't recall exactly what the problem was with that 5 piece neck. It was a neck through body first of all, and it was 5 pieces - three of which were quartersawn hard rock maple. I may have leveled the fretboard improperly or something, as it was one of my first guitars, but I think it was just incredibly stiff from the materials it was made out of. I'm generally pretty meticulous about leveling the board and frets with the two way truss rod in a totally neutral position.

It's pretty easy to get a laminated maple neck too stiff for strings to pull in enough relief...

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