Official Luthiers Forum!

There are a number of reasons for the lack of supply..

You get a much higher recovery when milling if you flatsaw, even if you just slice through the whole log you'll get a higher recovery.. Anyone cutting lumber is going for the highest possible recovery. It's hard to just come across what your looking for.. Other than instrument wood and the odd guy building slab furniture noone wants to deal with a 10+ inch wide, 3 1/4 inch thick plank. This stuff is heavy in 9, 12 and 14+ ft boards.

The fixed cost involved with cutting & drying wood for tonewood (logging, trucking, hydro, fuel, blades, etc etc etc)doesn't change so even though I can go get plain maple by the logging truck load at a fraction of the price my expenses are still high enough that I can't just give the sets away. It's almost impossible to get enough volume at a workable price. There just isn't the demand.

If you could even get a group together to commit to an order large enough to justify whole project it would probably be doable (I could even do something like this myself on the weekends as a side project) But you'd be looking at a rather large commitment (it would have to be in the hundreds of sets) and would have to wait for what your looking for.

Look at what people pay for an Alder body blank (these are flat sawn mind you) and use it as a start point for what your talking about.

I've been looking into supplying a variety of plain maple products for some time.. I really don't think there is the demand at a price I'd be able to do it at. I plan on putting it to the test sooner or later though, do a test run and see what happens.

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CVT Inc.
A tour of our shop (Somewhat outdated)
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What you're looking for shouldn't be that hard to get.Any lumber yard that deals in maple should have it.Even when logs are flatsawn you get quartered lumber in the middle of the log on at least two of the boards.I mill my own lumber for my guitars and get plenty enough quartered lumber from flatsawing my trees.I don't have spruce trees, but can go to any lumber yard and select quartered boards by looking through the pile.That's how i find my brace material.

Chris;
Have you e-mailed any of the OLF sponsers?
They would probably not list plain 1/4 Maple on their instrument wood links.
But I would think they have some-just take some time to mail them !

Mike

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Mike Collins

Chris, check out Old World If you let them know what you are looking for, they should be able to help you out.
And The Hardwood Store, is east of Greensboro, a little north of Burlington, and according to Mapquest, its just under two hours from Charlotte.

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Aoibeann

Chris, if Todd can get some 8/4" and resaw it to 4/4, I'd be happy to split it and take one of the top sets.

It's all these double-cut carved top guitars. They make me want one Plain maple would probably be a cheaper way to learn to carve. I'd only need one bookmatch though.

If the 8/4 board were wide enough (I guess it would have to be close to 8 3/4"), I would mind taking a section myself for carving a first archtop back.

(Heh James - I never have had a chance yet to work on the Heritage you sent me in the swap meet. There's a guy here who is pestering me to work on it, after I fixed up a 335 for him recently.)

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu