Lacewood neck?

[toddler68]

I really like the pattern of lacewood and wondered if it can safely be used as the primary outside layers in a laminated neck. eg. substitute for mahogany or maple.

How does it take stain and finish? How does radiusing it (neck profile) affect the pattern of the grain? Anyone with experience?

[kings_x]

I'm using leopardwood as a top on my current project. From what I understand, its a more dense and darker version of lacewood.

My experience with leopardwood is:

1) It is very "spliter-ey". The grain between the leopard spots looks almost like fabric threads and it splinters when you rub your hand over it.

2) It is hard to sand. Like I said, it is dense. I would guess somewhere between ebony and hard maple.

As for use in a neck... Lacewood is softer than leopardwood so I don't know how stable it would be.

Stain... I've seen guitars with lacewood tops that have been dyed and they look great.

[Devon Headen]

I think it depends on how much of the neck is lacewood. I don't have any experience with it, so I don't know how stiff it is. if you used something like purpleheart or ebony as the other laminates, I think you could use balsa wood if you really wanted to.

[Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars]

Lacewood will work fine. Laminate it with wenge, ebony, purpleheart, bubinga, ect...HARD STABLE STUFF. Warmoth uses it and the showcase always has one or 2 necks in lacewood. It ctains nicely. Sand well too. Pore filler is almost neccessity. Yeilds a mahogany like sound.