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Curious if anyone deviates from the norm of Spruce for their bracing? I often see post regarding alternative tonewoods and tops but I have not found info on alternative woods for bracing. Specifically I have some redwood offcuts that I keep eyeing and thinking ....... what if .....

Mike: Check your Redwood for stiffness/weight ratio as compared to Spruce. You may be in luck. But be aware that Redwood is brittle and tends to crack when compared to Spruce. Have not used Redwood myself and maybe would be inclined to look at Cedar first. Try your Redwood and let us know how you make out.
Tom

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I like to use arched sycamore or spruce braces , or spanish cedar on my sycamore backs. I have also used willow it bends readily into a nice back arch on ukes. Willow is used for blocks and linings by violinmakers. Redwood IMHO, too soft, too brittle and the stuff I get , is too hard to glue,

Our sponsor Forgottenwoods has some alternative brace wood called achihua. I haven't tried it, but it sounds like a good drop-in replacement for spruce.

I also have a bit of redwood to try out. I'll try bracing the next top for my "retop test" guitar with it, and give it some hard percussive playing to find out if the brittleness is enough to worry about. My hunch is that you might want spruce for hard percussive (Andy McKee, flamenco, etc.), but for "normal" playing with occasional taps and thumps, probably a redwood plate would be more likely to split than a brace, especially if you don't carve them to sharp triangular cross section.

Douglas fir is another possibility. It's quite a bit more dense than spruce, but very stiff, so you'd basically just scale down your brace sizes a bit, opposite of what you'd do with redwood.

Port Orford cedar would work well too, I imagine. Unless you have a nice smelling back/side wood that you don't want to drown out

I don't know if brace material with similar stiffness/weight ratio actually makes any difference to sound, but seems like a fun variable to play with. Good vibe using matching top and brace wood.

Dennis am curious what is achihua ??? how does it compare to spruce /mahogany. Where does it come from. Remember the wood pcs I gave you are still (wet) Let us know how the hornbeam turns out for a plane cheers ernie

Spruce works really good for bracing. The stiffness to weight ratio is great, and it doesn't have much internal damping. It's also easy to get and not expensive.

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Well it might be easy to get and not expensive for those who live in the North America or Europe, but it sure ain't cheap nor easy to get here down under where Spruce trees don't grow. I have been using Douglas Fir for bracing after I ran out of Red Spruce around 5 years ago, and now wouldn't use anything else.

Peter

Peter - do you use Doug fir for top bracing as well, or just for back bracing?

Both. In my mandolins the only difference I can hear is a slight improvement in clarity with Fir, but there is not much in it. Have only used Fir for top and back bracing in guitars (steel string only) and they sound great, nobody noticed it wasn't Spruce and I'm not telling.

Peter

All I know about it is what's on the web site, http://forgottenwoods.net/index.php?main_page=page&id=23. Looks like it comes from Peru, weight similar to sitka. I'm not sure how close it compares in deflection tests, but they do sell sticks of it specifically for brace wood, so it's at least a good candidate for further evaluation.

Thanks again for the hornbeam block, and other snippets I'll keep tabs on the hornbeam's weight and see when it settles. Neat wood, I'll have to try a bridge from it sometime as well. Good substitute for the old ivory bridge aesthetic.

Dennis thanks for the explanation. I would like to try that wood achihua on a small instrument. Yes dug fir is also good .I found some really old fir about 10 years ago. Hornbeam can also be used to make bridges, pegs for lutes, plane bodies , and mallets. I also like osage for uke bridges , it has IMHO a similiar density to brazil rosewood, and is easily available here in MO. The small piece of tenn red cedar could be used for lining blocks in a uke, smells good ,and the locust makes an acceptable bridge for a nylon parlor gtr . I just finished a smaller locust steel string bridge for a 12 fret nylon guitar. I would say it is slightly less dense than indian rosewood and an acceptable substitute.

Achihua is a new and unique wood. I saw it is new because it is not harvested commercially for lumber. As far as I know it has never been exported from Peru previously. We selected it as a species to evaluate because of several unique qualities. It is a large fast growing "hardwood" tree from the Peruvian Amazon. The color of the wood is very light almost white. The grain structure is very fibrous and stringy. This string fiber produces a very strong light weight wood. The wood is very stable and machines well.

From a tonal perspective Roger Siminoff evaluated the wood and said this..
"Achihua is blonde wood with light grain flecks. The color is evenly distributed across the surface and there is evidence of occasional “silk.” Achihua weighs 28 pounds per cubic foot (which is similar to Sitka spruce at 27 pounds per cubic foot) and it’s light weight and flexibility offers possibilities for this wood to be used for soundboards as well as rims and backboards. This wood is very resonant and responsive and its density and weight lend itself for use as rims and soundboards for classical guitars."

Last fall Mike Baranik began using Achihua as an alternative neck wood and has since decided to use it as a standard neck wood choice (he really likes it). In addition Mike is now using Achihua for bracing on most or all of his builds. According to Mike he likes Achihua because it is lightweight, strong and very stiff but flexible enough to return to shape.

If you are interested in working with new species Achihua is a great choice. I am just on my way out to catch a plane to peru. So if you have any questions I may not be able to respond until after the 13th.

Here is a picture of Achihua bracing on one of Mikes current builds.

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Lance Peck

I'm with Woody on this. It's a good place not to experiment. You won't improve on spruce, unless perhaps you have good Port Orford Cedar. Redwood and western red cedar are too easily cracked. Others will add weight and not match spruce for stiffness, toughness and elasticity in relation to weight. There's a reason they use it for building airplanes.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

The legendary "spruce goose" of Howard Hughes wasn't even made of spruce. I've been splitting my own Port Orford and don't know if I'll ever go back (not that there's much "back" to go to yet). Port Orford was discovered by Sir Thomas Lipton over a century ago for it's superior use in America's cup yachts. The Japanese (and Chinese I think) value it for temple building and caskets. It is a highly venerated wood that is now endangered due to a kind of blight. Wonderful stuff. I have one growing in my back yard oddly enough, unless I misidentified it and it's really an incense cedar.

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Why do you want to use a different bracewood?
Spruce is good.
Spruce grows up in North America, right?
Why import some wood from somewhere else?