masterblastor

My only experience with bamboo is building custom fishing rods. I'd poke around the custom rod building forums to get some more info on building with grass. There is a sheitton of knowledge out there on the properties of bamboo. Remember You're not dealing with wood grain and growth rings, you're dealing with power fibers and nodal dams. Bamboo is a grass not a tree.

No way would I build a guitar out of it. The stuff is hell on tools.

Wow, That's a shame man That was a nice block of wood. Looks like you can still salvage some veneer or possibly a fretboard out of it.

Sounds like a pretty big waste of wood even if It did work but couldn't you lam 2 pieces of wood with the grain running in different directions and then cnc it? I've never built an acoustic before BTW. Just curious.

A series of small rockets or flying saucers as fret markers would be sweet. The spaceships from Flash Gordon would rock. Google "flash gordon spaceship" and check out the first page of images.

I think we have settled on invaders from mars (similar to your idea), but this will be way beyond fretmarkers. I'm going to be doing a large planet Mars in the first three frets and them groups of saucers coming down the neck getting bigger as they near the body of the guitar. I may position the groups roughly around the fretmarkers positions, but I'm not going to let them influence the design. If I can play the Unicorn guitar, no amount of inlay on the fretboard would bother me.

That sounds badass man!

Here's the neck blank. This side will be the headstock, and the back side.

On the other side, its a lot lighter and a lot more like the back of the guitar. If i plan things out right, I can get the grain to match almost seemlessly

But I'm caught in a bit of a trap right now. The darker side goes more with the body, so it should be the side with the headstock. However, once I turn it around and the dark side becomes the back of the neck (because i'm scarfing it), the side that matches up with the body will end up under the fingerboard. Also, the dark part of the grain is pretty thin, as you can see in the following picture:

So, if i carve correctly, I can get the grain to match up anyway... maybe...

I'm gonna play around and see what I come up with.

Ooten, I checked out Ziricote. it looks pretty sweet! Unfortunately, the hardwood supplier in my area doesn't stock it... I'll have to try my hand at Evil-Bay I guess.

ScottR, I'm glad you agree. That raises my confidence a lot, as I'm not usually good with anything besides black & white as far as patterns and colors go! I'm not too crazy about black binding & hardware though... But hey, I'll give it a shot, and if you're right, then that's what I'll go with! Otherwise, I'll have some new hardware for my renovation of the RG-RR (I'm gonna remake it, neck and all.)

Is the neck blank thick enough for you to cut a thin laminant for the headstock?

A series of small rockets or flying saucers as fret markers would be sweet. The spaceships from Flash Gordon would rock. Google "flash gordon spaceship" and check out the first page of images.