Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi everyone I'm new to this forum so hi. I'm a wood working student in France and have been given a lot of yew, walnut and ash from england by a guy I know. I have a piece of rosewood too for a fingerboard. Anyway I was wondering if I could make my very first guitar with the following woods, neck back and sides in walnut and the top in yew. Does anyone know if the yew will one sound good with the walnut and two be strong. I would also like to put two ash strips down the back splitting the walnut into three sections. I plan on making an acoustic. I've never made an instrument before but play the guitar and slap bass. Also could I use yew for the bracing and kerfing or not?

Thanks
Jim

Don't really know if the yew will work or not. I have heard that it was common practice to use it for making lutes, but I don't know which part.

Guess it depends on the characteristics you need.
The wood is very flexible. It is very difficult to break; it just keeps bending. With all the talk about "stiffness vs. weight" going on concerning our soundboards, using it may require special considerations.

The most I have heard about its use is for making traditional English longbows- go figure.
Might want to use extra care if you decide to use it; it is very toxic.

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Always have plenty of sandpaper; it's rough out there!

I have never tried it for a top, but Yew might not be your best choice for a guitar top. It's pretty dense and Yew is one of the most toxic woods around according to what I have read. Spruce is pretty good for tops

Good Luck,
Danny

I have never tried it for a top, but Yew might not be your best choice for a guitar top. It's pretty dense and Yew is one of the most toxic woods around according to what I have read. Spruce is pretty good for tops

Good Luck,
Danny

Eye mite, oar eye mite knot. Wood yew?

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Because of the density I don't think that yew has been used for tops on acoustic instruments. This doesn't mean that it couldn't be done but for a first guitar I would shy away from it. Some use koa for tops and it is about as dense as yew. I have heard of it being used for backs and sides. http://www.guitarbench.com/2009/02/12/european-yew-tonewood-database/#high_1 I would use yew for backs and sides if I had some.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

No, not for the top, much too dense.

It is however a superb B&S wood, as good as any out there. Dave White made a superb little guitar using it and I have a couple of really nice sets waiting for a guitar.

It was a traditional lute wood as has been said, it is my default wood for lute bowls and I've used it on four. I use the wood from a 1000+ year old tree that came down in the 1987 hurricane. It finishes really well and can really glow under an oil or shellac finish

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Yew makes a very nice ukulele top indeed - a much warmer sound than spruce, but with more sustain and treble than mahogany. It's technically a softwood, which may explain why. I'd say it has some tonal similarities to koa.

I think it would make a very interesting guitar. I'd expect it to be strong in the bass and mid-range, but with less cut/projection in the treble. Walnut would go nicely with it.

I've found yew very easy to work, but the sawdust brings my face out in a rash (and it's not possible to pause and not scratch one's chin in thought). It bends pretty easily, but it's not nearly as elastic as a previous poster suggested (the longbow works by using a heartwood/sapwood combination, like a natural composite).

Here's an all-yew soprano uke I made, trying to imagine a UK builder in the late 1910, seeing a Hawaiian uke for the first time and wanting to make something similar.





This is how it sounds (try to edit out the singing):

Theres quite a bit of Pacific Yew in my area and Ive worked with it a bit - Ive never had problems with the toxicty, however its best to err on the side of caution - amazing boatbuilding wood and much too dense for a top - however for B&S its superb - however the reason it bends so well and makes good boats and bows is the oil content in the wood - I have personally scrubbed any finished surfaces that are to be glued with acetone thoroughly to remove oils before gluing - otherwise bedded surfaces can seperate, just a suggestion... very nice wood.... dense and taps nice!
Cheers
charlie

Thanks guys. I've had a look at my yew stock and it mostly has small knots. I hope they will be ok?

I have played a bouzouki with European yew back and sides (with a spruce top) and it sounded great. Very warm and buttery. You would probably want to stay away from those knots. They might be ok for the back but not sides. They could cause problems when bending.

When I was "home" in Northern Ireland earlier this year I visited Avalon Guitars. One of their luthiers Balazs Prohaszka told me he uses Yew for soundboards and gets amazing results. This comes from a rather talented fella - his guitars are simply sublime :

http://www.prohaszkaguitars.com/index.html

but the Yew he uses would definitely be "knot free"

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imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world

Chris,
Please accept my apologies for speaking in relative, rather than finite, terms.

One of my favorite woods for soundboards is Port Orford Cedar. Do some research, and one soon discovers such statements as "It doesn't split!"
As someone who has considerable experience with POC (I've even built a deck with it), I can certainly attest to the fact that it can split . But I can also attest to the fact that it seems to be more immune to splitting than other common "tonewoods".
It is on this premise that I understand that individuals are (hopefully) speaking in a relative sense.
So it is with my statement concerning yew.

In order to clarify, let me first state that I have no experience with this wood.
Much of my information concerning yew indeed originates from a traditional bowyer (my son). From that perspective, the wood would be considered to be "flexible", as a primary concern for such construction is low MOE in relation to high MOR.

While we're on the subject of bows, I am fully aware of the "composite effect" in regards to using sapwood on the back ("outside") for its greater degree of elasticity, while using heartwood on the belly ("inside") for resistance to compression. Consult with a mechanical engineer, and it will become evident that portions of the heartwood are also subject to tension.
My statement concerning the use of yew in longbows was not intended to be a suggestion of any mechanical properties, but rather that use was the one of which I had heard the most. (Please feel free to again read my unedited post.) Naturally, the wood has many other uses for which it is perfectly suitable.
Additionally, whenever I said "...making traditional English longbows- go figure", that was in reference to the fact that Jim mentioned he had sourced the wood from someone in England.

Regarding mechanical properties of wood, instrument builders need not be as concerned about MOR; I don't see where we should be concerned with stressing wood to the breaking point.
With that said, I can easily see where one could view my statement as a "suggestion", although it certainly was not intended as such.

So what exactly are the desirable properties we should seek?
"Stiffness" and "density" seem to be hot topics for species selection appropriate to soundboards.
We can easily access published data, and after doing do, the general conclusion can be reached that modulus of elasticity, specific gravity, and average dried weight of yew are extremely close to Honduran mahogany.

In his question of suitability of yew for a guitar soundboard, Jim did not mention exactly what type and size of guitar, nor what he expected out of the instrument.
I am one of those who believes optimum suitability may change as parameters of the instrument itself change.
As I mentioned in the post above, it really depends on the characteristics one seeks.

A "stumbling block" seems to be the rather limited information concerning the use of yew as a soundboard.
I have noticed that Jim has asked in another thread where he can acquire J200 plans. Not that it would give a completely accurate assessment, but more responses (and thus perhaps more information) might be obtained by asking a parallel question, such as "I want to build a large guitar (J200). Has anyone ever put a mahogany top on one of these?"
This forum has a large enough membership that I have no doubt that such a question would generate plenty of responses from both sides of the fence.

Good Luck,
Rob

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Always have plenty of sandpaper; it's rough out there!

Thanks for that Robert. I'm still deciding if I want to make a J200 or not.

Chris, interesting uke, and thanks so much for the song, which brought a smile to my face over breakfast.
Nothing wrong with the voice by the way!!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

There's an interesting paper entitled "An Enviroment of Tonewoods" by Ray Beattie which has some information about using Yew (and other UK native species) for instrument building. It includes the results of Chladni Tests for Yew soundboards.
Google "An Enviroment of Tonewoods" for the paper.

Jon

Yes, nice. Nothing says "happy" like a Uke

Well, thank you kind people! I'd spent years not singing until I took up the uke about 3 years back, and am just getting confidence that I don't actively repel an audience. This was an Al Jolson hit in the late 20s (and thank goodness I didn't try to sing it like him, or i would have sounded an idiot).

If the knots in a piece of English yew are small, dark pin knots (there are a couple on my soundboard) then I think they're likely to be pretty stable. I decided to live with mine because the wood was otherwise so nice that it seemed a waste to bookmatch the wood so I could avoid the knots (the back is thus the other half of what would have been the bookmatched top). I wicked some CA in from the inside of top and back to the knot area, just in case, and there's no sign of movement.

I think the comparison with mahogany is quite a useful one - I thicknessed mine to about the same as I would for mahogany and it seems to work well. In tonal terms, it seems as if yew is (sort of) half way between mahogany and cedar as a soundboard (I know there's not really a continuum of tone, but this might give you some idea of how it relates to the others).

Pacific yew sounds as if it's a little different, from what's been written earlier, but if I had some I'd certainly give it a go.