Having spent an hour today looking for suitable lumps of wood with the grain running in the right direction for neck blocks I had a thought. Is there any reason why I can't laminate a couple of pieces of poplar ply together and make the block out of of that instead? It's fairly lightweight (similar to spruce) and will be very strong in the two most important axis. Anyone tried this or have any reasons why I should avoid it?
Darren
I believe a few guitar companies have used in the past.
a discussion here may also
http://acousticguitarconstructionforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1886
http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/39130-the-plywood-discussion/
I have too many guitars...said no one in the world..ever!
Hi Deej,
There is mention of a potential issue in the first forum and that is that a lot of plywood is manufactured to be cosmetically pleasing rather than structurally perfect. This usually means that the internal plies are significantly lower grade than those on the outside and there are often small voids and other defects inside the sheet. The one exception that I have found to this is a very high grade beech plywood which comes in from Germany or Austria. Bloody expensive but a beautiful material and made with much thinner plies than usual plywood, I've just never had enough money in a project to specify its use so I don't even have any offcuts.