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Picked up my kids from kindergarten a few weeks ago and noticed that on the next door from the kindergarten there was a quite big spruce tree cut down. I went to talk with the guy with the chainsaw and now I've got a few pieces of spruce in my garage.. The spruce was about 60cm diameter on chest height and I counted about 100 growth rings. Here's the pieces and one piece planed on the side to show the grain.

What do you think, are these usable in guitars? Not exactly AAA+ but usable?

I would definitely use it if I could. Big plus on coolness factor and after some guitars I have build from 'junk' wood that sound great I'm convinced you can make a good guitar from just about anything. I'd say cut your tops thick so you have a lot to work with. At 23cm wide you have a couple two piece tops off each of those quarters. I would love to see pics if you chose to build from it. Looks like some nice cross silk in that one round

I'd use it if it looked good after I sliced it up. At the least you should have lots of good brace wood.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Get those ends waxed or you'll lose it all.

I didn't have wax so I painted the ends about a week ago with yellow glue. The billets are 70cm long so a little glue adhesion shouldn't be a problem.

STevie....if you came to talk to me with a chainsaw, I'd give you my tree too :/
Just giving you a hard time....nice find.
I'm aware that waxing the ends prevents moisture absorption from the end grain, and I know that end grain absorbs faster than face grain, but why do you say that you'll "lose them" if they're not waxed right away. I would think it would just require more time to season if not waxed, but it sounds like there's a bigger issue than that.
Thanks for the information.

Just what I thought!

The ends will transfer moister at a faster rate then the middle and cause checking. You need to slow that transfer down. I suspect the glue will work out ok.

No I didn't have a chainsaw, he had. I only had my fists with me but I still got a piece =). I gave him some money and we searched for a good piece, the stump was all soft on the center so we had to saw a few pieces before we found good solid wood with the least amount of knots. Even still it's a bit soft on the center on one place but that's pretty small area.

I'm pretty sure the glue is fine because it didn't adhere too much and formed a surface pretty fast. At least they haven't cracked so far.

To be totally honest I am not sure that you will get much from them. There is knot shadow and pin knots in each piece as well as twist. Also, the size, at about 24" diameter is just too small for any kind of decent recovery. You never know with some luck you may get a couple of sets and you will learn a lot in the process so that alone may be worth the effort.

Just trying to keep your expectations realistic rather than bursting your bubble.

Good luck in any regard!

Shane

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Canada

I know they're not high quality pieces so I'm not waiting for a miracle but I'm pretty sure I'll get something out of these. The one I've got planed is probably the smallest piece. The heart of the wood was about 2" off-center so a few off the billets are over 30cm wide but the growth ring spacing on those is obviously even wider.

How long would you let these sit before sawing them into more guitar-sized pieces?

You can do three or even four piece tops too. If people make good sounding guitars out of 2x4's then you can make something out of this for sure.

Process them as soon as you can, you have less loss to drying defects as the pieces get smaller. I prefer to process right from the block as soon as I can.

Shane

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Canada

I agree with Shane, I don't think those look very promising for guitar tops. Too small, too many blemishes etc. A few mandolin wedges if you are lucky.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I think the grain looks good enough, but sawing it into 3/16" plates will tell you how stiff it is.

The size and the spiral are not the problem, since much of the red spruce we cut is similar. But the knots may be a killer. Spruce trees grown in the open don't shed their limbs as much as those in the shade of the forest.
In general, billets this size produce about as many wedges for mandolin and violin as guitar tops.
Too late now, but one suggestion I would have made is to split into quarters, rather than sixths or eighths. It reduces the waste, and a quarter split is enough to judge the amount of spiral.
Check out this thread for a photo essay on cutting red spruce from split billets:

http://theunofficialmartinguitarforum.yuku.com/topic/155030/Homegrown-woods?page=2

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John

Funny thing this internet, I post a few photos of spruce pieces I got from the next door kindergarten and then guys like John Arnold come and write a tutorial what to do with my pieces.. Thanks a lot everybody, I'm trying to find somebody with a big bandsaw so I'll get to process the pieces as fast as possible but meanwhile I'll go through the pieces and I'll try to find the best parts.

I've got some wood, I've got some wood! Not much because we broke the bandsaw blade on the second billet but I got 2 usable sets from the first billet. The second piece had a big hidden knot/branch and while we tried to find a clean cut the blade let go.

Awesome!

Looking good! Sticker them right away, and keep rotating the stack daily for the next week to avoid discoloring.

Glad to see you went ahead and sliced some up despite all the naysayers. I've gotten some -excellent- tonewood from logs that were under 24" in diameter. The yield in guitar tops is perhaps too low for commercial tonewood suppliers' purposes, but from a builder's perspective, it still makes sense. Plus, since I also build mandolins, I don't mind those, either. The smaller pieces get cut-up into neck and end blocks, braces, etc...

Next time for score a billet or log of this size, I'd recommend just splitting it in half, then "read" it for any runout, and begin slicing it accordingly if your saw allows. You'll get a lot more yield and much better quality(if you 'read' the runout correctly).

This may be impossible to answer without having a log in hand, but how do you "read" runout ? What are you looking for and if it's found, is it affecting the entire log or can it be localized? Thanks!

I cut some more tops with chain-saw =) Now I've got 4 pretty nice jumbo-sized tops and a few maybe L-00 sized tops.

I stickered all of them but then I realized that I had put glue on the ends of the billets but I sawed about 1" from both ends so the ends are now without glue/wax/paint. Do the tops still want to crack as bad now that they are somewhere around 1/4" to 3/8" thick? If so then I'll have to put some more glue on the ends.

Knots all originate at the pith, so if you cut off the point of the billet at the heart, you will know instantly whether there are any knots. Of course, many knots do not travel far because the tree will shed limbs as it gets older. But if you see no knots there, the billet will have none.

Check out my UMGF link.
Runout is caused by cutting across the grain along the length of the billet. This normally occurs with spiral growth, which is obvious when the wood is split. Spiral growth can vary throughout the log, but if present, it usually increases in the higher part of the tree. That is why splitting all the billets is important. By sawing parallel to the split, you are decreasing or eliminating runout.

No. I have not experienced any end checks in quartered spruce cut that thin....even when force-drying it with a fan.
That is a good reason for sawing up the billets right away. I have seen way too much ruined spruce that was left in thick blocks to season.

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John

I've got 9 1/2 tops so far, almost all of them are full dreadnought-size and maybe 5 are good enough to use without sunburst. Allthough I'm pretty sure none of these are of the quality that you guys would use or sell I'm pretty happy with what I got even though my shoulders are killing my after all this sawing and planing..

But it's the good kind of tired, right?
Do you know the species? Being a yard tree, I am assuming Norway spruce.

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John

Man, now I wish I had a log to billet up and resaw. Sounds like a lot of fun!

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Old growth, shmold growth!