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Anyone ever use American Beech for bridges.It has great wear qualities.It actually gets smoother with use.

I have lots of beech left over from a cabinet job and have already bent up a set of beech sides, made up a bridge and bindings for another experimental guitar in the works. I can't think of another wood that is as easy to bend. It starts to bend before I ever touch it to the iron. It is rather heavy and has a very woody sound in tapping. I expect it will be comparable to mahogany and soft maple. All of my stock is rather plain and very straight grained, no figure to speak of. But I want to see what it turns out like later this year.

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Nehemiah Covey
www.coveysacoustics.com

I haven't seen it sold for blanks,that's why i asked.I'm also useing it on my next guitar as i like to use woods native to america for my guitars.I made up some slightly spalted beech blanks to use that are well seasoned.It's important to use well seasoned beech cause it doesn't season well. That may be why yours bent so easy.It's real easy to bend when not seasoned.It is known not to move around much when seasoned though.Glad to see someone else useing it.

Slabmaster;
That's a cool touch building from native materials, I like that.
The beech stock I have has been stored for about 11 months in my shop, so it's well seasoned. I remember building barns in the bluegrass region of kentucky with my Dad back when I was a teen. We used beech for the siding and had to get it on fresh off the mill, green you could hand drive the largest nails (40d) and water would squirt out, but let it season for a few weeks and you couldn't get them to go with a 28 oz. hammer, we'd have to use a 3lb single jack and hope you hit it straight. It's very tough wood and green 18' x 1" x 8" boards would bend double without breaking.
I will try this beech bridge later and see what it does.

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Nehemiah Covey
www.coveysacoustics.com