Spalted/quilted mahogany and Engelmann 00 12-fret

[Tim R]

Hello all,

I want to first say that I greatly enjoy reading the blogs by David, John, Kevin and others here. I’ve learned much from them.

My goals here are more modest. I won’t be posting extensively on building steps, as so many of the basics are already well covered. Instead, my goals are more selfish: I’m mainly starting this as a platform to get advise from you guys as needed!

This project, my second, will be an 00 as a gift for my daughter’s high school graduation. The wood is from RC & Sons. John Hall contoured and bent the sides, joined the back, and supplied a neck and some other parts. I requested no back strip because I like the sapwood and the continuity. Shown with naptha in the pics.

I am considering using the “scrap” mahogany from the back and sides to make a head plate and wood rosette. I’ve not decided on binding, fret board, or bridge wood. Black plastic might look good for the binding (as Martin uses for some of their mahogany models), along with ebony fret board/bridge. But, I think the contrast with the rest of the guitar would be too stark. Iveroid would probably look good, but I’m over that one for now. Considering wood binding of some sort.

On possibility is to find a wood for all three of those parts (binding, bridge, and fret board) that roughly matches the dark color of the spalting/bear claw on the back and the bark bands on the sides. Any suggestions about suitable wood choices for this, or other possible approaches, would be appreciated…

Tim

That is some outstanding wood

tommy

[David L]

Personally I like the contrast of black details for the set of wood you have (but that's just me).

David L

[Tim R]

Tommy, my wife encouraged me to step up a couple of notches in wood expense/exotica for this special gift project, and who am I to argue with her!

David, black is very sharp looking, I agree. Haven't ruled it out.

Tim

[johnnparchem]

I think ebony binding would really pop the the beautiful back and sides you have. In any case I would go dark. I agree with your wife about building with really nice wood for this guitar. As a graduation gift you may be building a future family heirloom :). Working with really good wood maximizes the value of the considerable personal effort that will go into building this guitar.

My youngest is graduating highschool this year. I am not sure I am ready for it.

[David L]

Remember that for as many people that are building guitars there are at least that many different styles/designs. I happen to like bold contrasts and outrageously figured woods. Some folks like a more subtle or traditional look. That's one of the things that I like about building guitars, the options are limitless. Some peoples style types are constantly evolving and changing over time. Where I'm at right now I like for the headplate, FB, and bridge to be of the same material, to me it gives the guitar a balanced look, again, that's just me and where I'm at right now. That doesn't mean that I don't like the way a guitar looks that has these components from different species, it's just not my preference.

I think it was John that said (forgive me if I'm mis-quoting), "Put three luthiers in a room and ask them thier opinion on something and your sure to get four or more points of view".

It's good to ask questions like the one you posted here. The guitar that I'm building now is radically different than the design layout that I had in my head and most of the changes that I made came from suggestions from other folks. Hopefully some others will chime in and give you some more options/opinions as I am just one very inexperienced guitar building wannabe type kind of person!

David L

Bloodwood looks real nice in contrast with mahogany.

tommy

[Ken Hundley]

I have been enjoying using wenge for binding....really love the look and haven't had much trouble bending it either:

P1010021.JPG

I normally like highly figured woods with simple binding and tops, or figured tops and binding with simple woods. The guitar above had it all! What I really like about the wenge is that, depending on how you cut it, the figure blends in perfectly from joint to joint. In the first guitar, if you like at how all the binding comes togther, you can hardly see any joints at all, because the pattern is so wild. I suck at binding, but love working with this. I am not nearly so succesful with maple binding. Whenever I use wenge for binding, I also use it for the headplate. You cut it quartersawn, and get beautiful tight grain (as tight as a good spruce, or tighter), or cut it off and get the wild pattern you see above.

P1010026.JPG

For a balanced guitar in terms of using similar wood for binding, bridge, heatplate and fingerboard, you could use ebony and EI Rosewood. Ebony may be troublesome to bend, but John may be able to help you there. EIR will be a little less contrasting, and will also be a very commonly used material for bridges and fingerboards. Just a thought....

[Tim R]

John: I share your wood choice philosophy. The thing is that, seriously, I’m not sure I’m worthy of this very nice and unusual set. Perhaps there should be some luthiery mastery criterion before being allowed to buy such wood! Needless to say I wouldn’t pass.

Heirloom? Hey, that sounds good!

Ken, Amazing guitar. What kind of back and side wood? Love those streaks of red in it.

Lots of wood options to consider for binding, board, bridge, head plate: ebony, Indian rosewood, Honduran rosewood, cocobola, wenge, bloodwood

For ebony, a natural dark brown would not look as stark as the jet black ebony you usually see. The jet black look is nice, but I don’t think I want it for this guitar. Rosewood for bridge and board is a good option as Ken says.

In web pics, bloodwood sometimes looks a bit purple-ish, which I don’t want for this guitar, and sometimes more brownish red (see LMI binding photos) which might be very nice. I don’t know which color is true or if this wood just varies in color a lot…

Colobola: The color is the closest I have found to the darker sections of the mahogany set, though a super close match is not necessary. Might look very nice, using low figure for the binding. But, for board and bridge, would want to see in person rather than order online because there seems to be a lot of variation.

So many choices ☺
Tim

[Darryl Young]

Ken, that Wenge looks nice! Great suggestion.

A dark alternative to ebony is African Blackwood. It's very dark but not exactly black (varies some). Also, while Ebony is homogenous, you can see a little grain in AB. It's a rosewood and is much more stable than ebony which I like if using for a fretboard.

Cocobolo is nice with mahogany and it's what I'm using for binding/headplate on my current mahogany build. One difference though is my mahogany isn't as figured so not as much competition with the Cocobolo. I have some nice Brazilian Rosewood bridge blanks and I had always planned to use one of them but I can't match the Coco and since I used ABW for the fretboard, I'm starting to lean toward using ABW for the bridge as well.

ABW smells sweeter than BRW when you cut/sand it, nice! And it is very low dampening. You can get ABW binding from Hibdon.