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Hello builders of ILF

I was thinking about building a guitar body from scratch in the summer so spend some time woodworking and whatnot. I could go to the guitar parts store and buy wood... buuut I feel like 100€ for a piece of wood seems quite unnecessarily steep. Last time I put a parts guitar together I learned that specialized guitar parts shit (screws, especially) are generally priced in a very expensive way and is still just a bunch of crap metal.

So I was wondering, where do you buy your wood for your builds? Any specific tips on what to look out for?

I've been buying wood at a local hardwood vendor, mostly just African Mahogany, they charge like 7 bucks a board feet of 6/4...it works out to about 30 bucks a body blank if the body is small like a Mustang size. I already had a table saw to cut it up, but then I had to buy a jointer and planer which was another 1000 bucks. Unfortunately, its worth it to buy a body blank for 50-100 bucks if you aren't going to be making a bunch of them.

I have no valuable information to offer, but would like to point out that this thread could have easily been named "getting wood". I am disappointed.

Schlatte wrote:I have no valuable information to offer, but would like to point out that this thread could have easily been named "getting wood". I am disappointed.

You are right and I take full responsibility for it. My bad.

repoman wrote:I've been buying wood at a local hardwood vendor, mostly just African Mahogany, they charge like 7 bucks a board feet of 6/4...it works out to about 30 bucks a body blank if the body is small like a Mustang size. I already had a table saw to cut it up, but then I had to buy a jointer and planer which was another 1000 bucks. Unfortunately, its worth it to buy a body blank for 50-100 bucks if you aren't going to be making a bunch of them.

Yeah this is kinda what I’ve been reading too.. it just doesn’t make sense that a body blank would cost the same as a body? I suppose with a CNC it literally is no extra effort to carve out a body from a blank so there’s no real difference in cost for the manufacturers. Cheers for the info anyway dude

Yeah this is why, with a CNC template and decent machine, the machining time on a generic body shape is going to be like, minutes. So they're going to be cheap. Economies of scale!

Makes sense. I am however gone disregard every single piece of advice and see if I can score a table or so of adequate thickness and just cut out a piece of that. Maybe. But just because it’s fun

Oh I forgot to actually offer advice. yeah I was gonna say to make it yourself anyway if you have time and think you'll enjoy the process.

Heads up if you want a cheap alternative to Rosewood try a wood called Padauk. Indian Rosewood is about $50 per board feet and Padauk is about $10 per board feet. I just bought 10 board feet and it feels exactly the same as East Indian Rosewood, it looks quite different ranging from cheeto orange to dark purple but it looks very nice as fretboard material (better than Pau Ferro imo). 10 boardfeet is enough for probably 40-50 fret boards or 15-20 complete necks.

re: padauk's color, i have an unfinished body in the stuff and it basically oxidizes brown after a while, which was cool by me. Much better for a fingerboard than a body (too heavy for the toan). I'd warrant it would "sound" and "respond" more like Brazilian than Indian on a fingerboard. Overall, I like it, just not so much for a tele....

I enjoyed this article about wood color change: https://www.wood-database.com/wood-arti ... tic-woods/

It smells really nice too!

Padauk’s dust was itchy and apparently it can be toxic. But so can most things in woodworking. Ymmv.

https://www.mountainwoodworker.com/arti ... _woods.pdf

Heres a chart of wood toxicity, doesn't appear any worse than common woods like rosewood. I do need a better mask though, those disposable N95 style masks are completely worthless imo.

https://www.millerwelds.com/safety/resp ... -m-ml00894

This one gets high reviews and is very slim.