Hi all,

I've looked around and haven't seen a thread like this, so I thought I'd throw it up and see what we can come up with. Thought we'd be well off having a sticky'ed thread on Australian woods that we use in instrument building, their tonal and stability properties, grains/appearance etc, would be helpful as a reference to anyone looking for info pertaining to X wood as an instrument. I know next to nothing about Aussie wood, but I'm sure there's a few minds out there that could be tapped - so if you guys want to start putting forward a list of woods and comments, I'm keen to make this a work in progress, and keep updating the original post with new information.

Cheers!

Mitch

King Billy Pine................

cheers,

p

Lets see if this works. It's a list I downloaded from somewhere years ago.

On my latest guitar I've used some of the desert acacias, Myall for the bridge and fretboard, minnerichi for the binding. these are nice timbers to work with and the minnerichi bent quite well considering the amount of flame.

Attached Files

Oz timber for musical instruments.XLS (36.5 KB, 419 views)

Some good stuff there. If people are able to give a quick write up on whatever woods they've worked with and feel comfortable commenting on, I'll try come up with a format for each wood and condense everything into a sticky'able reference.

Mitch, theres other threads on this and a bucket load of info from pro luthiers suchs Cole Clarke, Scott Wise, Lloyd guitars at Montsalvat, Noyces guitars, Tim spittle, Peter Coombes and many others. Plenty of aussie woods are used in guitars and LMI stocks black acacia among others.

http://www.petercoombe.com/ant.html
http://guitarwoods.com.au/
http://www.australiantonewoods.com/default.htm
http://peterferrettguitars.com.au/Lu...gn/design.html
http://www.fims.com.au/tlg/school.html


Australian Timbers Tasmanian Blackwood Grading Characteristics Tasmanian Tiger Myrtle Characteristics Lace Sheoak (WA) Grading Characteristics Flame Sheoak (WA)Grading Characteristics Blackheart Sassafras Characteristics Jarrah
Tasmanian Blackwood 20 Flame Sheoak 25 Lace Sheoak 25 Mulga 30 Beefwood (when available) 35 Minnerichi (when available) 35 Wandoo

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"I am brother to dragons, companion to owls"

I have noticed that Warmoth sell solid bodies made of "lacewood" which they say is Australian (Cardwellia Sublimis - Northern Silky Oak) and sounds like Alder. Now, I like the sound of ALder, and have a heap of this Silky Oak in the garage. Anyone tried making a solid body from it, especially a bass?

Thanks

Peter

Lacewood/Silky Oak is an excellent timber for solid body electric guitars, also works for necks.

Also, Australian Tonewoods sell Alpine Ash/Vic Ash/Tassie Oak backs and sides and flamed neck blanks with this description:

"Alpine Ash new and exciting tonewood option for luthiers. It has a bright and lively tap tone and a striking fiddleback. Good tone, medium density, good working porperties and best of all: a very good price. This is a value for money!"

I have a fair bit of Victorian Ash (euc.delegatensis) that is very nice to work with and will be used as a body and neck wood in my next build using Aussie timbers. It has a nice tap tone and it really doesn't look half bad quarter sawn. Anyway it will be teamed up with a Queensland Maple top and a Jarrah fretboard (my first time slotting a board =|, hopefully it's not too hard to get right)

Anyway, i don't think it's such a bad idea to have a thread organised in this forum regarding tonewoods and their properties, it would be much easier than searching and it would be a great reference in the musical instruments forum.

Tasmanian Myrtle is a superb tonewood that has been largely ignored.
Tiger Myrtle is currently commanding huge prices and is highly sought after by many of the smaller luthiers in the States.

It's a pleasure to work with and doesn't need pore filling.

Here's a few pics of an OM that we've almost finished.

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Bob Connor
Geelong

Silky Oak cuts, planes, bends and sounds fine to me.



Looks OK too

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... double-basses only

So, do we want to discuss the desirable qualities of a good tonewood?

Or, perhaps easier, what makes BAD tonewood??

Matthew

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... double-basses only

Bob, what does the Myrtle sound like?

Peter

I think it's going to be a big project, so don't expect anything overnight - but if anyone's seen Warmoth's list of body/neck woods and their descriptions, that's something close to what I'd like to achieve, but for Australian tone woods. In my case, I think I'm a little biased to more mainstream woods used by the US, when there's like just as good, if not better examples here in our own soil. Anything you guys can provide will be helpful, I may end up even using another thread to post the results. This is an open project as well, so when I start coming up with a format and comments on wood, all comments are open to discussion and change, and anyone's help is greatly appreciated.

Good Top wood....light and stiff.

Bad top wood.....dense and floppy.

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Whatever note you blow youre never more than a semitone away from the correct one....(Miles Davis)

Plenty of Australian alternatives for back, side and back. For tops the choices are more restricted.

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Whatever note you blow youre never more than a semitone away from the correct one....(Miles Davis)

Excellent choices of timber in my opinion. I just love the ash varieties for several reasons, mainly because it's cheap (and so am I), but you can also get it at basically any lumber yard. It's used a lot in house building for rafters, lintles etc, and kiln dried.

I made a mock up neck from vic ash, and it come out great (exlcuding all my own errors of course)... I also made a copy of a Fender Jaguar/Jazzmaster from vic ash... it weighed a tonne though, so I ended up carving it with the rasp rather than using a plain beveled edge. Came up nice and took a bit of weight off. That's the main drawback of ash in my opinion. It's weighty.

I like your idea of jarrah for a fret board too. I've been considering some different aussie timbers to use in guitars recently, and jarrah was certainly on my list. I've yet to find time to look into the qualities. I was also thinking of using it in a laminated neck, with qld maple (like a maple/walnut laminate, but jarrah instead). Like I said though, don't know if it's suitable yet, as I have still to look into it.

Keep this thread going. I would love to see a list of native Australian alternatives to common guitar building timbers.