Source Of Tonewoods

[Acousticraft]

A friend of mine who is a piano tuner and strips old pianos for scrap metal, gave me three upright piano soundboards. The sound boards are in strips in varying widths that would probably require a three piece join for an acoustic soundboard. Two are spruce an the other is Cedar I have enough spruce with the 3"x 3" framing to last me a lifetime for braces etc. The tone bars on their own will give lots of resawing. These are really old pianos and the one I haven't stripped yet looks to have a bit of borer so will pick what is good out of it. There will quite be a bit of firewood left over.

The sound boards are all quarter sawn and no doubt a high grade would have been chosen for a piano. The down side is they have screw holes where the tone bars were fastened but i thought I could fill them or hide those with an inlay.

I am fired up to build a Gibson style jumbo acoustic now I have this wood. My next task will be to build a mould.

I thought about making the neck out of spruce as well as it is very strong and I have heaps of it. Has anyone done this successfully?

Edited May 3, 2009 by Acousticraft

[pariah223]

i am pretty sure that spruce is not a wood to be used for necks.. I could be wrong and would be very surprised but i am pretty sure i am right.

[Woodenspoke]

i am pretty sure that spruce is not a wood to be used for necks.. I could be wrong and would be very surprised but i am pretty sure i am right.

+1 Spruce not a good neck choice, Ask him for the top of the piano, probably Magahony or maple. Remove the paint then make a neck or two or ten.

[Acousticraft]

Thanks for the replies.

Ok so Spruce is not a neck wood but I presume it could be used for the neck block, tail block and kerfings. Yes I asked him to look out for some Mahogany, or Rosewood which Ive seen some piano cases made from.

[jaycee]

Thanks for the replies.

Ok so Spruce is not a neck wood but I presume it could be used for the neck block, tail block and kerfings. Yes I asked him to look out for some Mahogany, or Rosewood which Ive seen some piano cases made from.

Kerfing, neck block,tail block and side bracing is ok to use spruce

[Acousticraft]

Thanks guys.

[avdekan]

if the spruce ribs of the sound board are of high quality (they should dense, quarter sawn, straight grained and with no short grain), they are fantastic material for the bass bar and soul of violins, celli etc. they should be excellent material for classical guitar braces as well.

[GhostInTheMachine]

i am pretty sure that spruce is not a wood to be used for necks.. I could be wrong and would be very surprised but i am pretty sure i am right.

Actually some old flamenco guitars were made entirely out of spruce for massive treble response. In the steel string world Ron Steiger builds all spruce guitars with spruce necks (he's on http://www.luthierforum.com/index.php?. I imagine they would be plenty strong if cut from quartersawn woods. Why not?