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I am building my 4th guitar. (This could be addicting ) It will be a figured redwood on figured walnut. This is my first time with redwood.
Is figured redwood a bit weak and need to be thicker and braced a bit more?
For an OM, what thickness would you target?
Does anyone bake (season?) redwood before use - say 150˚F for an hour? I tried a set at 200˚F for an hour and it made it so brittle it broke.
Would you use sitka or cedar to brace?
I’m thinking maple would be a good choice for a bridge plate. Would rosewood be better?
Thanks!

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

I too am using figured redwood for the first time on a Sapele/Redwood SJ that is in process Don Williams among other recommended .140 starting thickness. I have not inlaid the rosette yet, but it seems that redwood is weaker through the grain but is fairly stiff cross grain and very stiff with the grain. So tear outs may be the issue Don was warning of.

Is Redwood the same as Western Red Cedar?

How do you guys bake your tops? In your kitchen oven? I was going to try this, but none of my tops would fit in my oven no matter which way round I put them.

Thanks,

My first guitar was Mahogany/Redwood & the though the wood looked great before the lacquer was applied, under finish the colours clashed badly, even with the plain Maple bindings to separate them.
The sound was absolutely phenominal though. Huge volume crisp highs, full rich bass... All the good stuff!
By leaps & bounds the best sounding guitar so far. (also the only really big bodied guitar finished to date)
Often, Redwood is very brittle & care is needed not to crack it before the top & sides are glued together.

No! Redwood is not Western Red Cedar

I do not bake any of my wood. if the moister content is right I do not see a need to dehidrate it more.MichaelP38722.6476157407

Steve I definately would not bake it. Start off thicker .135 or so. You can always sand wood off. Can't put it back. I would stick to spruce bracing too.

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Do not bake figured redwood!

In a nice piece of curly redwood, you are basically looking at pure
endgrain.

Even air-drying it can be problamatic, and shipping it from the wet
Pacific NW to a dryer region of the world is dicey as well.
It just loves to check on the top of each and every flame...

Good curly redwood, when hand-split, probably has the most variation
from
the height to the trough of the flame, sometimes measuring 2-3".
Good curly maple might be 1/2" or so...

So that's a lot of end-grain when planed smooth....

Here's a pic I just snapped of a moderatly figured piece of curly redwood
with about 1" of height-to-trough variation.
Still a lot of endgrain when planed smooth...

spruce38722.6859837963

That's a great looking piece of wood. Almost wouldn't want to cut into it. Just stand it up in the corner and admire it.

The first off-cuts of curly redwood go to a friend of mine who turns them
into wonderful art...

So, folks indeed do get to "stand it up in the corner and admire it"....

I'm also collecting them to put into my recording studio as sound diffusors...
They should work great in that application...

Speechless...

That is one wicked looking chunk o wood. I am starting another curly redwood topper as well, the sister top to one I used 3 years ago. I got them from Serge DeJonge, who when I asked said he wouldnt go below 130. Now that I have much better feel for top stiffness, I imagine that it wil be somewhere around 130-140. I brace a little thinner now than I did back then too. As well, I washed the whole top with CA prior to finishing in nitro. Hardened it up some and evened out where the glue and binding were glued with CA - it leaves a nasty colour difference, but doesnt affect the chatoyance at all.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Spruce,

Please post some pictures after you have cut this wood. It would be cool to compare the before and after shots.



Thanks,

[QUOTE=spruce]
[/QUOTE]

I don't know about an acoustic... but that would make an OUTSTANDING top for a carved top electric....   

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
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Here's an acoustic flamed redwood top that is pretty "busy" with flame......




Do make the footprint of your bridge plate bigger, especially below the bridge toward the bottom end of the instrument to help dissipate the stresses over a wider area. The top pictured ended up at about .130-135" thick and has held up quite well since built in 1999, but the owner is zealous about maintaining humidity in the case. I would not recommend a flamed redwood top for "the road"....too many climatic variables happening too fast, not to mention the normal wear and tear the "road" can generate.

OK, I now want a Redwood guitar. Grew up in Monterey/Big Sur and hugged my share. I WILL have a redwood guitar. Beautiful!!!

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Thank You and Best To All

[QUOTE=HankMauel] Here's an acoustic flamed redwood top that is pretty "busy" with flame......



[/QUOTE]

Shazaam--that's beautiful Hank!

Thanks for posting.

Steve

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Sound diffusers - cool. Natural egg crates.

So, a newbie question: How does curly wood get curly anyway? If I were wandering in the Redwoods (close by), what would one look for?

Thank you all for your responses
Let's see if I have this right.
For figured redwood,
1) Do not bake!
2) Start a 0.140" thick at center, can taper some towards sides.
3) Larger bridge plate towards the back.
4) CA wash before finishing to toughen up surface.

Does that make sense? Anything else I should know?

_________________
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

When I was building MacPherson prototypes we used a good deal of
redwood, and I haven't touched it since. It wasn't figured, and it was
baked, but all the seasoning and baking was done in Wisconsin before the
materials were shipped out to us. Unfortunately I don't know how it was
dried and baked but I have a feeling it was done too aggressively. That
particular wood had absolutely no outstanding qualities that could put it
above any other common top wood in any respect.

The worst part was that the bond between the fibers themselves were
rediculously weak. Binding slots were seeing tear out, braces were
popping off left and right (not the glue joint, but rather taking lots of
redwood with the brace). And they really didn't sound at all remarkable
when they did hold together. All this seemed to happen to the redwood
while the sitka and englemann models being build along side suffered
none. This experience seems to line up with the warnings above from
Spruce.

To be fair, this wood all came from one tree and was probably mistreated,
and I'm sure it is not representative of redwood in general. To be safe
however, this is one wood I would probably avoid baking. I know a
number of builders who enjoy working with redwood, but I still have a
bad taste in my mouth from that experience.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

"So, a newbie question: How does curly wood get curly anyway? "

I'm guessing genetics....

This is not reaction wood we're looking at here.
When a redwood tree is figured, it's figured throughout the whole log...

"If I were wandering in the Redwoods (close by), what would one look
for?"

The bark on redwoods is thick and shaggy, but on a well-figured tree you
can usually see the curly undulations peeking through...
I'll snap a pic of a chunk here in the yard with the bark still on it if I get a
chance....

Here's a pic of the manager at the Curly Redwood Motel in Crescent City,
California.
The whole motel, inside the rooms and out, is made from one very
curly redwood log back in the 50's....

Cool place...

Maybe we could put pull some money together and see if that guys would sell us his reception desk. You know group buy type thing....

Josh

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Josh House

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Hi Spruce

Do you guys harvest these Giant Redwoods or do you use wind fallen trees ?

I can imagine that one tree must provide a lot of timber or is it not all useable ?