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I am thinking of building an OM with a Western Cedar sound board. Are there any do's and do not's I should keep in mind?

What Western Cedar sources do you like.

Thanks,

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EddieLee

It's going to pick up a lot of dents nomatter what you do. If you thickness with hand planes, try as hard as you can to keep chips from getting underneath.

Brace dry, like 30% or perhaps even lower. Cedar's humidity expansion is much lower than spruce, but it's also more brittle. It will split at about the same humidity % drop from where it was braced, but can tolerate a much larger increase without swelling excessively. Bracing dry will make it nearly impervious to humidity problems.

Use more than 6 square inches of bridge footprint, and be very careful not to cut fibers when removing finish for the bridge. The joint is only as strong as the cedar's splitting strength, which is very low.

Plenty of good sources. Alaska Specialty Woods, High Mountain Tonewood, Dave Maize, and others. The best cedar I have is from Alan Edie's auctions in the classifieds here, but he's all out. I'd be willing to sell one if you want. They have pretty stripey colors like this:

I've only built one steel string guitar with a cedar top. It is a good guitar, but the fragility and brittleness of the cedar made it a lot of trouble to work with. I think it will be a while before I try to work with it again.

Just adjust your work habits for the delicate nature of the material.

More important that the bridge footprint area is the width of the bridge; the depth along the line of pull. Martin added the 'belly' to their bridge to help keep it from peeling up when string tension rose with the advent of steel strings. Since cedar has lower peel strength than spruce you'll need to go a little farther with that. Also, as has been said, be really careful not to cut into the top fibers when cleaning up the finish on top, and particularly along the back edge of the bridge.

Check the top for dents every time you pick it up, and if you see one wet it immediately. The longer a dent gets to sit before it is swelled out the more used to being a dent it gets, and the harder it is to get it out. Sometimes some heat, as with a hair dryer, really helps.

Cedar tends to be lower in density and stiffness along the grain than the spruces. If you don't have any way of measuring the properties it's a good idea simply to assume it needs to be thicker than your usual spruce top. I'd start with 10% or 15% thicker, and maybe more if it's a particularly light piece.

Very interesting discussion. I have a cedar top from Alan Eddie and would like to use for a small body guitar but would consider making it nylon string instead of steel. Will see how brave I am.


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Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Based to your input I think I might hold off on building with cedar for awhile.

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EddieLee

Don't hold off Eddie. You've been given some really good advice here. You'll need to be more careful than if you build with spruce. But cedar is totally worth using.

On the high end a lot of great Olson and Ryan's have been built with it. On the factory end a lot of great sounding Simon and Patrick's and Walden's have been made with it.

Don't let the words of caution stop you if your gut suggests you want to build and play a cedar top.

Let me ask about bracing width. I have been building OM style guitars with 1/4 inch wide x braces. I was planing to use the same bracing with the Cedar top. Is the 1/4 inch bracing going to be enough area to get a good glue joint on the cedar?

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EddieLee

I've used 1/4" braces on 3 cedar tops and everything is holding fine. 2 of those guitars are a decade old.

Alan - I have the defection data I have used to thickness the spruce tops to. With cedar, can I just thin it until I hit that deflection spec?

Is there any extra difficulty in getting clean binding channels with Cedar?

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EddieLee

Deflection would be a good way to go: you're looking for a certain stiffness, after all. As far as I can tell, what counts in terms of longevity is mostly stiffness for bending along the grain.

We repair guys love it when you builder guys (meaning men and women) build with WRC. Be sure to scribe deeply too around the bridge foot print so that when it lifts it takes half the top with it too.

Seriously Phil is right cedar is a great tonewood and well worth using. Just use extra caution when scribing and clearing finish or you may find need to spend some time in the street defending your reputation from pissed off repair folks.

IME cedar has lush overtones, pretty good fundamentals, and is just as beautiful as can be especially the chocolate stuff! The last guitar that I ever built (along with many others) has a cedar top, I just need to throw a neck on it and call it a day.

Eddie buddy I used 1/4" braces on my OMs with cedar tops, no prob.

Thanks you, Alan and Hesh. To clear the finish off under the bridge, I have been routing the finish off that area and cutting a little shelve on the bridge as John Hall and others advocate. Does that method work for Cedar?

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EddieLee

You are very welcome Eddie.

What will work best for you and a WRC sound board is any bridge gluing method that uses as much wood-to-wood surface area for the glue joint as is possible and practical... AND does not cut through any top fibers in the finish clearing process.

With this said routing could work but it will depend on how accurate you are in both the size of the cleared bridge patch and the depth of the router bit cut.

I prefer a sharp chisel and feel as if I have more control with a chisel. OTOH I do this often, every week or so and practice does help in learning not to skewer your own hand, etc.... or wander into an area outside the bridge perimeter....

The ledge or shelf or rabbit on the bridge bottom is a method that we have advocated for a decade on this forum and it's what we do in our commercial repair practice and have done for hundreds of bridge reglues. It's done for two reasons:

1) exploits as much useable wood-to-wood gluing area as is available without.... clearing finish to the foot print perimeter. We don't like clearing finish to the perimeter because it makes any subsequent bridge reglues long after we are dead and gone dicy in terms of not having it show. Luthiers who have to reglue a bridge that has been already cleared to the perimeter usually have some colorful language for those who came before us....

2) cosmetically having a sliver of finish extend under the bridge looks nice and neat but our .050" sliver is way better in terms of expanding bridge gluing surface than the up to 1/4" that we see under f*ctory guitar bridges at times.

By the way this is how Collings guitar does it and Taylor too.

Nothing to be worried about just be careful scoring or routing off the finish particularly along the back edge of the bridge area.

Thanks Hesh and All. Fantastic info!!!

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EddieLee