Hearne Hardwoods

[ruby@magpage.com]

NOt sure where to put this question:

I will be making a trip to Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford, PA for some furniture lumber. They advertise all sorts of wood for guitar building. Has anybody shopped there?

Ed MInch

[tippie53]

you will be droolin

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Oh yes, but only online. I got two really nice billets of Honduras mahogany neck blanks, (one of the necks is on the dred I just finished and put in the gallery)and a really sweet Spanish cedar neck blank and block.
They have very nice looking B & S wood too. I'd love to be able to go in and shop with a satchel full of cash.

Kevin

[B. Howard]

Go there once a year to select and purchase all the wood fit my necks and other assorted needs. Let me just say, awesome selection.....

[ruby@magpage.com]

Saturday I went to Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford PA - they had an open house with tool dealers and acoustic bands. I asked a random guy with a name tag where they had the guitar wood, turns out it was Rick Hearne who owned the place. We talked guitars and he showed me a Bourgeois D body that was just completed. It was the most spectacular piece of Brazilian Rosewood I have ever seen - it looked like it was about 2 feet deep and had orange and yellow coming out of it like I had 3-D glasses on and it was going to hit me in the face. We talked technical stuff and I guess he decided I was worthy, because he took me to his private office to show his collection.

He had a triple O in Koa by a local guy that was top notch, a twelve string Koa D that was highly decorated - he called it his French Whore guitar, an electric with a cloud maple top that was amazing, and he had a Tim Teal ukelele that was unique.

The body and sides where a solid piece of Koa about 2-1/4" thick and hollowed out on a CNC machine so the back and sides were very thin. The back actually had 2 braces across it that were left when the back was thinned - all one piece. The top was also Koa, and the decoration was so delicate - the abelone purfling was about 1/3 of the width of what you would see on a guitar top, with tiny tiny b-w next to it. It had a very delicate vine inlay up the fretboard. And it sounded great. Probably most amazing is that the back and sides were spectacularly figured and when you think about, to get a figure showing on all surfaces of a block of wood seems very difficult.

And did I mention that he sent each maker the wood to build each guitar!

He said that he would take me back to show me the guitar wood - tops and violin/cello/double bass maple were in a small attic room. He gets $150 a set for Italian Red Spruce (all of his personal guitars had this wood, except for on that was American Red Spruce). This wood is much finer grained and smoother looking than the American variety.

Then we went to another warehouse and looked at his perhaps 300 sets of various wood - from ebony through bubinga through all manner of figured mahoganies and maples. I picked up a cocobola piece and rapped on it and it sounded like I had hit a steel wind chime - amazing.

And then they did a demonstration of sawing a 15 foot walnut log on their 63" band saw - and the log was 62" at the biggest. They sawed from one edge to the center, then flipped the log so the flat side was against the carriage, then went in from the other side. All pieces, including the last one, were the same at about 2-1/2"

Remarkable day

I am not too familiar with guitar wood prices, but they seemed high - but now I have to build a cocobola guitar.

Ed Minch

[tippie53]

good wood is not cheap

[B. Howard]

good wood is not cheap

Yep, not every tree can grow up to be a guitar.

[Darryl Young]

I didn't know that red spruce grew in Italy.......shows what I know.