My local wood miller is going out of business. My main source of local Koa. Bummer. All good. As a gesture of his appreciation from all the ukuleles and guitars I built from his stacks, he gave me a slab of Tabebuia. Kiln dried untouched for 6 years. Got some really nice spalting. Told me to make the most wicked guitar ever and that anytime I need Koa, I could always come to him. I am one lucky guy.

@clinton Oh man, that is one cool place, you are definitely the luckiest guitar builder I know, as well as being a Jedi level craftsman. 👍

I bought a plank of 27mm thick maple last week.  8' long, 8.5" wide.  It's a nice clean plank with only a couple of knots at one end.  Of course, you always hope that cleaning it up will reveal some stunning flame or quilt or other pretty features, but - really - I just wanted a clean plank with some classic maple grain pattern.

That plank will give me 3 tops, thicknessed down to 20mm, which is plenty for some decent carving.

Cost:  £28.88.

I bought it from my friendly cabinet-making neighbour who has a substantial woodstore all of his own and he just charged me what it had cost him.  Plus we then ran it through his industrial-grade thicknesser to clean it up.

But that only works (a) if you get lucky and the original timber yard supplies decent stuff and (b) you've got a friendly cabinet-making neighbour!!

I've bought other planks of timber (same source) that have probably worked out to ~£25/body blank.  If you've got the time and equipment to machine raw timber into build-ready blanks, then it's a fair bit cheaper. 

The risk is that you could reveal defects in the plank that make it unusable.  And you don't get to "tap test" it first!

Still, there is a special satisfaction to be had by undertaking the whole process.

@darrenking thanks for the link, yeah I’m aware it likely won’t save a fortune but doing everything end to end is the target. Does mean a fair bit of work to make the fretboard but that should be an interesting task too!

I've bought some lovely timber from https://www.sykestimber.co.uk/ in the Midlands

@darrenking.

Thanks for this tip Darren. 👍 

🙂🙏🎸🎶

Depends where you are. I've bought some lovely timber from https://www.sykestimber.co.uk/ in the Midlands and they are keen to supply instrument makers and understand our requirements - which many other timber yards aren't and don't! However, you may find that, once you've taken the wastage into account, you won't save as much money as you might have hoped. Still, there is a special satisfaction to be had by undertaking the whole process.

Good luck

Darren

https://guitarsandwoods.com/  

I use this one frequently. Recommended