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Hello, I’m a new builder and new to the forum. I’m diving into my first few builds with the knowledge that I’m going to make some epic mistakes that I’m eager to learn from. That being the case, what’s a good source of wood for some guitars that will never be good enough to leave my shop. Because I don’t have the cash to buy quality, properly dried wood, from a supplier, I’m left the option of using furniture wood found at Goodwill and yard sales, or (moisture laden) lumber yard wood (basswood and maple). Obviously I’m not going to buy plywood or particle board pieces. Grateful for any advice.

Welcome, Jerry. There is a well established tradition of building solid body electric guitar bodies out of all sorts of reclaimed wood - old buildings, old furniture, there is a guy on TDPRI right now who has just built one out of an old piano. Neck woods should be selected on weight and stability - I would stick with the traditional maple or mahogany there, however you can laminate other woods to make a good stable neck, but bodies can be almost anything.

I made a series of tele clones out of hundred year old pine barn wood and donated them to a fund raising auction - I was surprised at the price they actually sold for.

I'll add that the woods the Leo used for his first electrics guitars wasn't chosen for beauty or tradition or any reason other than it was cheap and available. And thats what they still use.

Welcome!
I've built some solid bodies (slab) guitars out of different woods that I liked,
which are vertical grained redwood, kiln dried vert grain fir from a lumber yard,
and maple too. Good idea to let it sit around for a while and see if it moves (warp/twist/bow).
Old furniture wood and old barn wood are probably done moving around, so,
that is a good option.
Good thing to do is collect wood you like, and let it dry, for future builds,
if you think you'll build more.
I have a piece of flat sawn maple I will use on my next slab git, for a neck, that is a year old, and straight as can be.
A cut off from a project I did.
Have fun, and post pics.
Freeman, more shots of that Tele?
Very nice.
I want to see the barn owl!
Alan

Fir from lumberyard.
Plain Jane, the way I like them.
Alan

First, my apologies to Jerry - this is a blatant snatch of his thread but it might show him the possibilities. I'll try to make it short. The barn is on property belonging to a conservation trust that I belong to. My wife and I have worked on the barn to help preserve it. There is an owl that lives in the barn





I scrounged up a scrap piece of wood while we were working up there - later I was told that it probably a piece of the trough that the draft horses used on the homestead drank out of. This is a solid piece of pine 2 inches thick and 16 wide - they don't grow trees like that any more. Cut it up and made a guitar





Donated the guitar to the Land Trust who auctioned it at one of their fund raisers



Paid tribute to the owl



The auction got kind of out of control, the guy who lost said he was bidding on it for a Christmas gift for his son. I said make your last bid a donation and I'll build him one. My son said "dad, I kind of wanted that barncaster". I said write a check to the Land Trust. The story got written up on a guitar forum and a guy from New Zealand said "I'd buy one of those". I had to deliver that one in person.

So Jerry, back to you. These were four pretty ordinary guitars built from some old reclaimed wood, but each has a story. Build something with a story and share it with us

I will assume you're thinking about acoustic guitars in wich case the hard part is going to be cutting/planing/sanding it thin unless you are tooled/skilled up.

Blemished body woods can be had pretty cheap compared to premium quality, but not Goodwill cheap.

You might be able to find someone to do the joining and thicknessing for you with some blemished pieces for relatively cheap especially if it was several sets. Then, you could at least focus on putting some guitars together.

First order of business is getting some kind of plane and learning how to sharpen it nuf to shave the hair off your arm. Then you can thickness. If there are two basic skills that will get you far in this craft, it's sharpening and planeing.

Pat

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Pat

The biggest challenge most beginners face is planing down wood to 1/8” even thickness. If you can do that, you can use almost any hardwood for back and sides. Oak, poplar, maple, etc. Stick to spruce for the top, but that can usually be found at a hardwood lumber yard without breaking the bank.

I have been building for twenty years and always start with 8/4 rough lumber. You don’t NEED expensive “tone wood” to build yourself a very nice guitar. But getting the wood prepped does take skills and, the less equipment you have, elbow grease.

Fingerboard and bridges are hard to find in reclaimed lumber or big box stores. I’m still looking for acceptable and available alternatives to tropical exotics.


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The OP should clarify that. I assumed that since this is posted in the electric guitar forum that Jerry was planing to build electrics, probably solid bodies. If he is going to build acoustics that is whole different ball game and I would have completely different suggestions.

Oh, I didn't notice that! [GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES]

Pat

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Pat

Freeman's on the right track. You'd be surprised what makes a good body. I've kind of built a career on building guitars out of reclaimed wood. I've used old flooring laminated onto a pine core, old beams salvaged from buildings being torn down, barns, etc. I even ran across a local supplier who deals in very large reclaimed structural beams. He usually sells to folks making architectural things, but he liked what I was doing and gave me a smaller piece for free that I built a really nice guitar out of. Here are a few pics.

Old pecan flooring sandwiched around a core to get the thickness I needed:





Pine structural beam:





Douglas Fir beam from a building being torn down. My first guitar build"



Barn wood and more barn wood:

Thank you for all the info. I’m only building solid body electric instruments at this time. My plan is for this to be an ongoing endeavor, hopefully building 10 or 12 instruments a year.

I’m well tooled up already, with the exception of a thickness planer (but a decent selection of hand planes) and I have started to collect wood to air out. Does anyone have experience with lumber yard wood builds? Am I right in assuming the problem with lumber yard wood is over time it’s much less stable. As long as I proceed slowly (shape wood in small increments, then let wood sit for a few days as tensions are released) I can expect an instrument to stay stable long enough to complete, set up, and analyze (several weeks)?

The problem with lumber yard wood is that it’s grown fast, which results in wide growth rings, and it’s also very wet. All of that adds up to wood that’s going to move a lot more and not well suited to guitars.

What?! Sorry to disagree with you on that.
May be I'm fortunate to have good lumberyards around me?
Anyway, find the good stuff, and let it dry.
I got the piece of vert fir from Healdsburg lumber on the 8 string posted here.
How much tighter do you want?
Alan

I might consider building one or two guitars from lumber yard wood or something reclaimed, but if I was going to get into any sort of "production" (and 10 a year is production) I would probably want to use traditional woods that a potential buyer would accept. Building a few funky guitars out of funky wood is totally fun, but again, I think you would saturate your market very fast. My barncasters sold well not just because they are funky and have a cool story behind them, but if I may say so myself, they are pretty darn decent guitars - the rest of the components are good, they are set up well and play well. I must stay that I did not choose that wood because it was cheap.

I've only built 25 guitars in my short time learning to be a luthier - most of them are acoustics. Other than the four barncasters, every one of them has been built from quality wood, some of it quite expensive. I figure if I am going to put a few hundred hours of time into a guitar I don't want to scrimp on materials.

A solid body electric is so darn easy to build that if you build one out of fir or pine thats probably all you need. Necks are harder, and as I said before, I would only use maple or mahogany for a neck.

btw - if you are just getting started building electric guitars I highly recommend getting a copy of Melvyn Hiscock's book. And TDPRI.com is a very active forum for both beginning and experienced builders.

Thanks Roger, that all makes sense to me. Since my first few guitars are learning experience pieces that will never leave the shop, will lumber yard wood tend to stay stable during the construction process (4-8 weeks, in a stable temperature and humidity location, and allowing for wood to settle/release tension after cutting/planing/shaping)? Most or all of these first few guitars will be built, set up, tested through an amplifier, and stripped for parts for the next build all in a 8 week period. Can I expect lumber yard wood to stay stable for that long? If the general consensus is lumber yard wood if going to be shifting constantly during a build it's a bad choice for me because it will be hard to tell operator error from moisture induced complications.

Eager to hear your input.

Jerry, my local "lumber yard" sells a lot of wood to cabinet makers who build very nice stable cabinets from it. As long as your wood has been kiln dried it should be fine for a solid body guitar. In fact I'm going to run out to the supplier today and pick up some mahogany for the next guitar I'm going to build - I expect it to be just fine.

ps - you are in Portland, check out Gilmers. Also I just bought some incredible maple from NW Timber. Lots of good wood in your area (and a bunch of good builders)

It may be a matter of location. We don't get anything close to that around here. Here's a body I built from some construction lumber from the the local Lowe's about 7 or 8 years ago. It turned into a potato chip within a week, which is why it's covered in dust and still sitting on my shelf unused.



I still hold that, in general, my assessment is accurate. Lumber yard wood (especially big box stores) is going to be from commercial plantations whose sole purpose is to get wood out as quickly as possible, resulting in the wide growth rings which are inherently more unstable. Obviously there are exceptions, as shown by your example, though.

I guess going back to Alan and Freeman's examples, it just depends. The wood I used wasn't even stable for a week, so I would say no based on my experience. Obviously there are others who have had better luck, though.

When I first started, I drove around and looked for old buildings from where I could scavenge wood. I was certain in the fact that it would be stable since it had been curing for decades, and it was also completely free. The only pitfall to that was making sure all the nails, etc were removed before processing.

I'm going to offer a bit of a different perspective here. As I said, I've pretty much built my business on using reclaimed/unusual woods. I mainly started it because that's the aesthetic I liked. Turns out that a lot of others do as well. I didn't start with the intention of building for others, but people have sought me out because of what I specialize in. I'm lucky enough that I still do this as a side hustle, so I don't rely solely on this income which means I don't have to chase the cash, but I typically keep about a year waiting list, and I've turned down several jobs because they weren't projects that interested me. I've completed 32 guitars to-date with another 6 currently in the works, all of them electric but not all of them using reclaimed wood.

Now with all that being said with regards to reclaimed wood, I do think it's appropriate to know how to work with and get the most out of whatever you're using. If you have someone who wants something exotic and detailed, then you need to be able to produce it. If you have someone who wants something with a story and is more interested in the connection with the history of a piece of wood, then you need to know how to use and get the most out of it.

To the OP, It really depends on what you're ultimately looking to do. I will say this, though, if you worry about chasing customers and money, it's going to be a far more frustrating venture. If you stick to building what inspires you, customers will find you, and you'll not find yourself dreading going to the shop.

My $.02 from my experiences. There are loads of others with a varied array of their own experiences, and I would encourage to talk to as many folks as you can to get an idea of what methods/practices/philosophies appeal to you and your personality.

Thanks Roger. I'm with you on all of this. I've had a repair business for 30 years and the ultimate goal is to build affordable, unique, well set up instruments for kids and young adults, in my spare time. The plan is also to save some trees and build most, or all, of the for sale instruments out of reclaimed wood. Thanks all.

Hey Roger, I remember when you first did these.
Very cool and unique.
I'm glad you are doing well with that.
Good luck to you, Jerry!
Do you know Jennifer Faust?
She lives in Portland and plays music there.
Denim Wedding is the band name.
Just thought I'd ask.
Alan

Hey Alan,

I will check Jennifer Faust out. Most of my clients are from outside the Portland area and I'm surprising out of the loop on the local scene. Thx