Official Luthiers Forum!

Ok I have some adk red spruce and some white air dried to around 12%. They are about 12" wide x 6ft long and around1/4in thick rough sawn. The pieces I couldn't get decent width are 1" thick planks. All of it is QS. These are my questions.

1. Some of the pieces that are quartersawn piece have a slight angle to them are they still usuable for tops?
2. All I have atm is a 12" portable delta planer. How thick would do I need to plane them down to the 1/4in top pieces? Should also take em to friends shop and have them thickness sanded too or leave the the sanding to the potential customer?
3. 1in pieces I assume can be used for bracing how big?
4. Whats a suitable price for it all grade not being a factor. I'm not out to get rich but figure I have these trees save some for myself share the rest with the world to support my newly found guitar building addiction.
4. Would it be reasonable to give out free samples as I have 3 more 6ft logs sitting in the wings ready to be milled possibly more coming from friends as mentioned I would take any good size red spruce 24" from them.

Thanks for any positive input ahead of time. Frank

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Build it cause then you know it's Made in the USA or **insert your country**

Frank, I'd take them down to .180-.200"/100 grit since they are 1/4" rough, or plane one side smooth so every one can see what you get. I like to have my tops pretty thick in case I want to build a 12 string.
Couldn't tell you much about price as it depends a lot on grain, streaks of brown, degree of quarter, size and stiffness. Lesser grades can run $20-30, highest $100-150. You can get an idea by looking at some of the supplier sites sponsoring this forum.
Nothing wrong with slightly off quarter, I've made VG instruments with off quarter. Same with runout, but a high degree of runout looks pretty bad. Any other logs you have, should be split first to run along the grain, eliminating runout. I'd leave bracing stock as you have it and not try to size it. Two foot lengths are pretty good. Top widths should be anywhere from 7-9+" and you should save some as wide as you have it for harp and jumbo builders.
I can't tell you about free samples, but I'll take all you have!

Had this discussion before about splitting the logs into billets for bookmatched sets. My problem is my(dad's) Mill is a 30" Hud-Son bandsaw mill need at least 5ft logs to fit in the "dogs" for anchoring so doing it the way detailed in another post on this mill is quite dangerous unless someone has a recommendation/idea for a jig of some sort.

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Build it cause then you know it's Made in the USA or **insert your country**

We have a Woodmizer sawmill and we have a re-saw attachment. What this consist of is a set of bottom rollers with a set of top spring roller and what looks like a starter motor for a feed on the top side of the unit to feed the board. You basically place this unit on top of the mill fix the carriage at the center and allow this stockfeeder to feed the material into the blade.

I think that you could rig some kind of roller system and have some kind of hold down jig and then manually feed the board much like you would a table saw if you couldn't come up with a stock feeder that would propel the board into the blade.

Hope this helps, not sure if Woodmizer has a picture of this unit on the web or not but you might check.

Another thought would be to see if you have any pallet builders in your area, most of these guys have re-saws and possibly might do it cheaper than you could fool with.

Kevin Waldron