Basswood for a carved out hollow body design

[thefishinmusician]

I've made a guitar that basically started as a solid maple body...I routed it down and hollowed it out. leaving the back, sides, and bridge/neck/tail block...I then topped it with a mahogny accoustic guitar back..I want to build some more, and have found a source of either ash or basswood to make the initial bodies out at a much better price....Thoughts on using basswood for this purpose ?....Thanks , gang !

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

Test it, and tell us what you think of it! Not joking! About every piece of wood can make a good instrument, depending on how you work and the technical choices you make. Basswood can make good guitars, don't listen those who say it's cheap so it can't be a good tonewood. I use basswood, and poplar too.

I would avoid ash for that kind of work, because it's so brittle it can make the hollowing part of the work difficult, but basswood has very good machining properties, so it can be a good candidate.

[thefishinmusician]

The brittleness is a factor indeed...I've had to glue chunks back on when routing goes bad....

[Rob Mercure]

The thing about ash - never noted without good research - is that Fender used "swamp ash" (can't remember the exact species right off).  Swamp ash is pretty much local to the SW USA and, unlike our American, Black, or Green ashes - which are flexible enough to make shovel handles and dense enough to knock a baseball swamp ash has about 1/2 the density - .  almost exactly that of Alder( which is almost that of yellow poplar, which is a bit denser than basswood).  Think about it - as "heavy" as an ash baseball bat is, how the hell could Leo have made the very same guitar in blonde or an opaque finish without the blonde feeling like you were putting on a Les Paul if he used what are, to me, the more "common" ashes (then, again, there ain't no alder in the east either)?  So, your "source" of ash - did s/he specify the species?  If not they really shoudn't be selling wood to luthiers - you wouldn't want to get a "maple" neck for a guitar and find out that it's box elder or moose wood or striped maple or any of the other non-durable species. (Oh, and for the record, acer saccharum. Sugar Maple, isn't the same species as Rock maple, Black maple, Norway maple, or California maple although all of these are acceptable substitutes).

As far as basswood goes it's great, easy to work (Tilia species - here in the hills we call the "Lin" trees as they are called Lindens or "Limes" in England) but unless you're going for a blond finish I'd suggest yellow poplar.  It will be a hell of a lot cheaper and just harder and denser enough to hold up a bit better and take detail.  Also if you got behind any Sears dealer you'll find all the seasoned yellow poplar you'll ever want for hauling it away - the worst thing you might have to do is fill in a nail hole (and I can usually cut around these - lotsa black cherry also).  Any of the native forest magnolias also works essentially identicaly without the color streaks.

 

 

[Cyrus Comiskey]

Rob, not to divert the thread topic too much, could you give some details on the Sears/ yellow poplar connection? Do they use it for their furniture? There is plenty of Sears near me!

[Rob Mercure]

No they use it for packaging - washing machines, furniture, etc.  They also use some tropical and semi-tropical trees.  One thing that confused the heck out of me for a while is that there is another tree in the Lirodendron genus besides yellow poplar - a very similar tree that grows in South China and Viet Nam.  Finnally I figured out that this was the tree that Sears was using to package the imported machinery while the USA made stuff uses out eastern native hardwoods.  That's where the Black Cherry and hard maple comes in as well as some bass wood and other along with some trees from SE Asia that are "kissin' cousins of out Appalachian trees - so close that you can "almost" know what they are but the ain't.  Also behind a K-mart (associated with Sears oddly) I found a pallet so light that I just couldn't figure out what it was - I would have suspect balsa from my modelling days but I just "knew" that balsa was a SA wood.  Till I did a "wiki" and found out that Balsa has been widely transplanted to SE Asia and that was now the lead source!!  So I've built a few large solid gliders also.  Sears has to pay to get ride of their packaging wood so they area anxious for you to get it.

Tractor Supply also got lots and lots of crating wood for their lawn tractors and such in lenths and widths you'd have to have custom cut.  Sometimes their wood dumpster is over flowing and you can take all you want and sometimes they'd rather landfill it.  Their funny.  All of these assemblages are "one way" packaging, not reuseable pallets.

I've been using this wood for all sorts of purposes, mostly firewood, for years.  And once a pallet is damaged beyond repair it is firewood also.  Just make really sure not to take any useable pallets or you'll engender bad feelings for all the wood scavengers.  Otherwise you're doing them a favor as they pay to remove it and for heat using a "just captured" carbon source, not a fossil fuel, which is considered green house warming "neutral."

It's just a shame that I don't have the size workshop nor enough energy to utilize the wood I've wound up burning over the past years - pretty much everything but rosewood, ebony, mahogany (some close enough for substitutes) and walnut (unfortunately no spruce of table quality).

 

Rob