Where I fall down with building guitars is wood knowledge. I have very,very little. Its one reason I ask so many wood related questions.
So you guys (trying not to be so southern United States here lol) saw the wood I was gifted yesterday and some pieces are long enough for a few necks. However, the pieces are made from approximately 42mm x 42mm x 100cm long pieces glued together. Since they are I thought it might be better to make laminated necks.
The pieces I mentioned are mahogany and I have some nice 1/2” sheets of poplar I thought about sandwiching between the mahogany. Would poplar be a good choice though? I’ve always been under the impression poplar was a hardwood and quite stout. Whether that’s true or not I have no experiential data to compare. Again, lack of wood knowledge. Weird feeling like a greenhorn at 62. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Anyway, any of you have advice on what would be the best wood to use as the meat in a laminated neck sandwich?
I've no experience of poplar but I think that it would be relatively soft in comparison to the mahogany. Personally, I would just use the mahogany for the neck. I'm assuming that the glued up boards have staggered joints, so cut out some full 100cm lengths to make a blank. Try to pick pieces with the end grain running near perpendicular to the fretboard.
It depends on the direction of the grain - we need to see a pic of the end of the block. If the grain is not visible on the end you might need to plane/sand it to be able to see. 🤔
Measure twice, cut once...
Rathius Topic starter
05/02/2022 6:09 pm
@markbailey here is one mahogany piece I picked up at the door & trim mill Thursday. This is their scrap. 😳 I literally was shocked their scrap was such good pieces. Well good for something anyway. Bodies for sure and hoping to conjure a few necks out of this and another longer piece. The one below is 107cm long x 24.4cm wide x 4.7cm thick. The poplar I have and was considering sandwiching between the mahogany is 1cm thick.
