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Thread: Sitka Spruce. Good for what?

  1. #16
    Dear Outlier,

    Wouldn't you be in for some serious waste factor if the blocks were rift cut? And this says nothing about the short comings of grain runout in the block format. Would you buy KD blocks or AD? I must know your secrets.

    I must admit that breaking out riven wedges is time consuming and tedious but I do feel that this format yields the best product. It does not lend itself to the TS or time efficient labour though.

    Framus made guitars with solid sitka necks and blocks - kinda gross guitars but neat looking necks.

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    North Central Wisconsin, and Antioch, IL
    Posts
    808
    Well, since this is 2" thick stock, maybe I will have him cut it into 2" x 3" x 24" blocks, and see how that sells for him.
    It really is clear, top quality wood.

  3. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Fournier View Post
    Dear Outlier,

    Wouldn't you be in for some serious waste factor if the blocks were rift cut? And this says nothing about the short comings of grain runout in the block format. Would you buy KD blocks or AD? I must know your secrets.

    I must admit that breaking out riven wedges is time consuming and tedious but I do feel that this format yields the best product. It does not lend itself to the TS or time efficient labour though.

    Framus made guitars with solid sitka necks and blocks - kinda gross guitars but neat looking necks.
    Absolutely. I wouldn't buy it without seeing pictures of the billet, a description and guarantee of the quality, or knowing the seller's reputation. Given that I don't know what KD and AD are, though, to be on the safe side I'd buy both

  4. #19
    Sorry John I love using acronyms to appear intelligent! KD = kiln dried, AD = air dried. Of course if you are 18 to 24 KD = dinner 5 night of the week!

  5. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Fournier View Post
    Sorry John I love using acronyms to appear intelligent! KD = kiln dried, AD = air dried. Of course if you are 18 to 24 KD = dinner 5 night of the week!
    I'm actually not sure how my tops are dried, and I generally have bought my bracewood at the same time so I assume they're handled the same way. I believe a lot of these guys use a "drying room", which I guess is like a room with good airflow and climate control. I would imagine that in the cold climates these guys are working in, it wouldn't take much heating to create an extremely dry atmosphere, and maybe that's enough. The acoustic tops always seem to show up bone dry. The archtop wedges and billets seem to show up around 12%, and then plummet to maybe 7% in a week or so, so that must just be superficial moisture picked up from the trip.

    I personally don't think KD vs AD really matters. Maybe it does, but I don't think it's, "Air dried sounds like this, but kiln dried sounds like that." I think it's more that if you were able to build a guitar with KD wood, go in a time machine and rebuild it identically except that this time you air dry the wood, maybe you might hear a difference. Then again, maybe a skilled luthier will intuitively adjust the thickness and the bracing to compensate for a small difference in stiffness or density, thereby making even that small change irrelevant. I've never listened to a guitar and thought to myself, "Hmmm, that sounds like air dried wood", so at the risk of highlighting my inexperience and lack of luthiery knowledge, I've sorta' put the drying method into the mumbo-jumbo category.

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Williamsburg,Va.
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    12,402
    My stepfather was in the Coast Guard. I was in the 4th. grade in Sitka. Liked it better than Ketchikan,where we spent the other years.

  7. #22
    I don't have any experience listening to AD vs. KD either. It's just that tradition leans so heavily on AD for the tonewoods.

  8. #23
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Huntsville, AL
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    1,244
    Quote Originally Posted by John Coloccia View Post
    I may be the outlier here, but personally I would prefer to have the wood in block form. Maybe 2" X 3" blocks 24" long. Then I could either use it as is, take the time to carefully split it, or whatever. You might get something like $5.00 or $10.00 a piece depending on the quality.
    Finally, I figured out what Chris was refering to with the "Dear Outlier" thing. Yes, I agree with you here. I really did not think that comment of mine through too well. Basically, the board's real value is in spar and brace building. Model makers would be interested. Its just not worth anything to people looking for tops.

    Mike

  9. #24
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Doylestown, PA
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    7,551
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave MacArthur View Post
    Very interesting posts in this thread. Now I want to know what George was doing in Sitka, what John was building as a plane, some more stats on the Mosquito, and would like to see some pics of spruce cabinet/furniture.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeHavilland_Mosquito

  10. #25
    As many know, Sitka spruce has one of the highest stiffness to weight ratios of any wood on the planet. One that I know is usually higher is Port Orford cedar (actually not a cedar but a true cypress). As such, for centuries Sitka's primary use in instrument making has been for soundboards: guitars top, violin tops, piano soundboards, etc. One area where I'd not seen it used and wondered why not was for a solid body guitar. Fender made the prototypes for the Telecaster out of Ponderosa pine, and spruce is in the same family, so when I obtained an 8/4 board of Sitka that was 15" wide and 7' long, I set out to try it. The result - all of the frequency response of lightweight alder, none of the scooped out midrange response of swamp ash, and the delightful snap and response that the spruces generally are known for.

    Here are a couple of pics of said guitar:
    B 009.jpgB 018.jpg

    The natural color of the Sitka lent itself to painting a vintage 2-tone sunburst in nitro lacquer quite nicely.


    Cheers,
    Jack Briggs
    Briggs Guitars

  11. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Briggs View Post
    As many know, Sitka spruce has one of the highest stiffness to weight ratios of any wood on the planet. One that I know is usually higher is Port Orford cedar (actually not a cedar but a true cypress). As such, for centuries Sitka's primary use in instrument making has been for soundboards: guitars top, violin tops, piano soundboards, etc. One area where I'd not seen it used and wondered why not was for a solid body guitar. Fender made the prototypes for the Telecaster out of Ponderosa pine, and spruce is in the same family, so when I obtained an 8/4 board of Sitka that was 15" wide and 7' long, I set out to try it. The result - all of the frequency response of lightweight alder, none of the scooped out midrange response of swamp ash, and the delightful snap and response that the spruces generally are known for.

    Here are a couple of pics of said guitar:
    B 009.jpgB 018.jpg

    The natural color of the Sitka lent itself to painting a vintage 2-tone sunburst in nitro lacquer quite nicely.


    Cheers,
    The model I'm putting the finishing touches on now is a chambered alder body with a carved spruce top. The result is a warm guitar with lots of clarity that never seems to get brittle on the high end. We're liking it so much that we decided to build the next one with a Baggs bridge.

    Do you have a reliable source for larger pieces of spruce like that? The thought had occurred to me to just make the whole thing out of spruce, but I decided against it because I've no idea where to reliably source suitable pieces of spruce. I'm also just a little concerned that the soft spruce will have endless dents in it, though most pro musicians I know couldn't care less about that.

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