Well, I went to one place looking for timber... a bit too pricey. Sadly I will have to go back there to get one timber which apparently the next shipment they get will be the last... it's now listed. No one else has it, and the piece they had that was long enough is about 4 times as much as I neeed! I looked at average densities, and I'm thinking about using cherry for the sides of the body. It's a neck through .
Any thoughts?
Where did you go? Depending on where you are there are always options.
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FrankenLab
Hand crafting guitars, because Death Rays are expensive.
Trend in NSW.AnnaGoat and Mathews were a no go, and Harpers has turned into a hardware store!
I'm spoiled. Anagote is 15 minutes from my place, and Swadlings has two places within 10-15 minutes drive of my joint. I'd not come across trend or Mathews before. Picked up some nice slab sawn maple from Anagote a couple of weeks back. They also have boxes of offcuts which can yield some great little pieces for smaller projects and box work etc.
FrankenLab
Hand crafting guitars, because Death Rays are expensive.
Great little pieces? Unfortunately, little pieces usually means short. This is for the neck of a neck through bass... so I'm talking 1.5m length, x2 (I'm doing a rick 4001 replica later. Everything is a long drive for me, exept maybe Harpers. Both Harpers (when they were a decent soucrce) and Mathews cater more towards furniture maker. Mathews have way better prices, but the pieces are a good length. They have rock maple, cherry and mahogany in ample supply. Not so much some of the other exotics. When I built my canoe I had a hard time finding stuff like cherry, and every time I needed timber I had to order it and wait a couple of weeks or so for it to come in. It was never the dimensions that I needed and I didn't at the time have access to tools to take over sized stuff and cut what I needed, so I had to also spend money on wasting timber. White The white Oak I orderd I needed 16mm and it only came as 25mm, so I paid for 25mm, only got 16 and the rest became wood chips spat out by their thicknesser. Now I have access to a bandsaw so I could do something with the excess now.Originally Posted by FrankenWashie
Still need a few people chiming in with my question about using cherry for the body?
We went shopping!
I went back to Trend to pay too much for a piece of Ovangkol (pics of cutup Ovangkol posted on my second scratch build thread). Thursday I went to Mathews to get rock maple. I was going to get some cherry as well, but I only needed about a meter. This place caters for furniture makers. Prices are much more reasonable, but good luck getting anything under 3m.
Luckily they also are prepared to cut the pieces into sizes you can fit in your car (I could have roof racked it, but then I'd have to put the roof racks on and strap it down... better to get the 3m length cut into 2 x 1.5 meter lengths... perfect for cutting into laminates for a neck through bass. I got lucky in that the guy I was with was after 2m of the 50mm stuff and I was after 1m, so we pooled together to get a 3m length cut accordingly.
So, 2 x 1.5m x 36mm x 224mm and 1 x 1m x 50mm x 280mm.
I did a quick mock up of the side profile of Bomber (the bass for this build) and realised I didn't need to cut 100mm laminates, it will fit inside 50mm. The upshot is there is enough material for this build, my 2nd scratch build (precipice), and the extra material I need for my 3rd Pit Bull build (Mean Gene). The down side is ... Rock Maple = heavy.
Finally making a little progress. I cut my maple and got the glue-up going for the blank... it's a neck through bass.
And after the glue set, cut it into two blanks:
The one on the left is the blank for this build (bomber). The one on the right is for the Clifenbacker.
Last edited by Rabbit; 23-04-2021 at 10:15 PM.
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