I Have A Tree, What Should I Do !

[ohhmygod]

My friend are going to cut down all his tree from his new land. And he want to give me to do my first guitar. I already saw that tree and think its gonna be good ( i dont know what kind of tree is that ) . He's gonna cut down soon. So, after i got the trees body, what do i have to do ???

Thanks in advance.

[Nitefly SA]

saw it int guitar sized chunks (decide what ie bodies, necks, one pieces) let it dry or have it kiln dried

[Mattia]

If you want the best quality, quartersaw it (more wasteful), and cut it into appropriately thick boards (say, 2" in the rough should give you plenty to work with for both necks and bodies), seal the ends, sticker and dry them, or have them dried. Google 'processing lumber' or 'drying wood' or similar. How long it'll have to dry will depend on the wood in question, but for many domestic hardwoods, 1" per year is a fair estimate for medium-thin (2" qualifies) stock.

DO NOT pre-cut green wood into guitar-sized chunks, particularly in terms of length, though; by exposing unnecessary amounts of end-grain, you're risking losing most of your wood to end-checking as the stuff dries out; the first few inches of each board may very well check and crack, so you want to keep that in mind. Some acoustic guitar wood (Tops, particularly) is split into quarters and sawn wet, then stickered and dried, but there's still a pretty big margin around those for checking/splitting prevention.

[orgmorg]

Painting the ends with a couple coats of latex paint will help a lot. This keeps the ends from drying faster than the rest of the wood, which is what causes the cracking.

[erikbojerik]

First find out what kind of wood it is.

[mikhailgtrski]

seal the ends, sticker and dry them

Mattia, what do you mean by "sticker"?

Never mind - google to the rescue:

"Stickers, small uniform-sized boards, allow spaces for air to move across the lumber surfaces. They are used in stacks to separate the lumber so that air can move through the stack and to distribute the weight of the lumber vertically from top to bottom. They should be placed an equal distance across each layer of lumber and aligned on top of one another from the bottom of the stack to the top."

Edited March 6, 2006 by mikhailgtrski

[Mattia]

seal the ends, sticker and dry them

Mattia, what do you mean by "sticker"?

Never mind - google to the rescue:

"Stickers, small uniform-sized boards, allow spaces for air to move across the lumber surfaces. They are used in stacks to separate the lumber so that air can move through the stack and to distribute the weight of the lumber vertically from top to bottom. They should be placed an equal distance across each layer of lumber and aligned on top of one another from the bottom of the stack to the top."

Yes, that. It's how I store all my guitar backs/sides, all my drop tops/carve tops, and if I had more space, how I'd store my fingerboards and such as well (at the moment, they're sort of acting as their own 'stickers'). Here's an old shot of my acoustic guitar backs and fingerboards, weighted and stickered, with some fingerboards on top. It's tiny compared to what's there now

http://www.xs4all.nl/~mvalente/guitarpics3/tonewood02.jpg

[mikhailgtrski]

Ah, another good use for StewMac products.