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Anyone want to share their secrets to keeping good brace wood on hand?

I’ve been lucky, I’ve used these wedges sold at my local hardwood store for $20 a set on 20+ guitars. but I got the last two today. Online spruce .75” x 21” x 2 is 4x that price.

I love the idea of old piano soundboard spruce but am not sure I’m up for moving pianos. I did use it once. Is nice.

Any other creative sources for guitar brace wood? I like Adi but might try others.

A piano repair shop should have 'rails' available. I got some very nice white spruce from Bolduc in Quebec Canada.

I usually buy "brace wood" from tonewood suppliers. It's probably not the cheapest way to get it, but it's a known quantity. I also happened to be at https://www.rarewoodsusa.com/ once, a few years ago, when they were having a sale on some 1/2" thick vertical grain spruce boards, which made excellent braces.

Here's where I get mine. Usually added to an order of tops. Sitka Spruce. https://alaskawoods.com/?s=bracewood&je ... gories=162.

airplane spruce
https://www.aircraftspruce.com/menus/wp/spruce.html

This is a source fit quality, true quartersawn, red spruce bracewood. His name is John Rossbach. You can email him for info: john@johnrossbach.com

tippie53 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 5:27 pm airplane spruce
https://www.aircraftspruce.com/menus/wp/spruce.html

+1 on that. the bargain bag of spruce, definitely is. haven't used mine up yet.

Thanks for all the great replies and ideas! Way to go team! I'll be swimming in spruce before long here!

I keep several different brace woods on hand. I have Red Spruce, Sitka, some really nice Engelmann, as well as the White Spruce I got recently. I believe in not only varying the size and shape of my bracing, but also type of Spruce in determining the final sound. In fact, I'm thinking of using some Red Cedar for tone braces as they don't have too much stress on them. Does anyone else do this ??

I’ve matched my bracing to the tops so far. And use adi braces under mahogany tops. I haven’t had a top I didn’t like yet so it’s hard to say that I prefer any of the spruce varieties but I’m settling on Adi as my main go-to more out of gut feeling than sound. Mine are vintage Martin style builds. I’d choose differently if I made another model perhaps.