Planing My Own Acoustic Guitar Wood

[Mitch]

Would there be any problems planing up my own acoustic guitar wood? I would do the splitting thing to minimise grain run out. It's just i can get hold of enough wood to make an acoustic guitar for £5-£10 easily. I was thinking western red cedar for the top and cherry for the back and sides.

[jaycee]

As long as the wood is seasoned and you have the tools, skill and confidence to do it then why not, after all someone has to prepare the timber for final use.

I am no expert in seasoning timbers, but I imagine that it has to be stored in the environment where you are going to work on it after it has been cut from the main billet for quite some time to allow for acclimatizing .

So whilst you may be ready for it will the material be ready?

I got a nice piece of spruce from David Dykes for £25, check out my 12 string build in the "in progress" section if you want to see it.

[guitar_player]

That's what I do, my dad is a cabinetmaker and they have tons of quartersawn spruce and some western red cedar left from projects and I can always get some back and side wood for a good deal this way. He does all the resawing for me.

[truckjohn]

Hand Planing guitar wood works just fine. Musical instruments were made by hand for ~10,000 years before the advent of power tools....

It just takes some work and time... Last guitar took me ~16 hours of hand planing, scraping, and sanding on the back, sides, and top to get them to finished thickness (Total, not each.)

Just watch out when you start splitting out 3/16" thick x 8" wide x 2' - 3' long slats.... tricky stuff.

Probably better to split out a billet, then resaw parallel to the split faces.

Good luck

John