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I am building an oak/red spruce guitar and wanted to put on an oak neck. Wondering about the weight, I asked the oak dealer that I bought the B+S from and he said he had some light weight oak. It is from the Spessart forest in central Germany and was cut off a plantation that has been active for 400 years. The piece I got was a little over 8" wide and had the very center at one edge and sapwood at the other, so this how big the tree grew. There were 260 grain lines in that 8 inches, with a remarkable consistency.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/ ... 776959267/

He said the that with hardwoods, most weight is in the fall wood and the spring wood has a lot of air, and slow growing trees have more spring than fall wood, and therefore are lighter in weight. Can anyone confirm this?

I did a quick check on volume and weight and the piece appeared to be 36 lbs /ft2, lighter than mahogany.

The neck is one piece, 12 fret, 1-11/16 nut, slot head and weighs 8.4 ounces (according to the scale at my post office). Anybody look at this sort of thing before? How much does a rosewood neck usually weigh? How much does an ounce or two of neck weight affect playing?

Thanks

Ed

Ed

Am I confused? It looks like you plan to use crosscut wood for the neck, which I think would snap.

Honduran Mahogany 12th neck about 9.5oz EIR about 13.5oz 42% or so heavier.

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Never weighed them.

I just weighed a neck for the first time "ever" a few minutes ago -- I extrapolated the EIR weight using the wood data base web site.

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Thanks Ken - with the frequent talk of weight of necks and tuners I would have thought there was a pretty big database. Looks like this oak neck is in the right neighborhood - by the way, I weighed mine without the fretboard!

Thanks

Ed

If you wanted a light weight neck that would be a good match for oak, I would suggest finding a piece of american chestnut. It would be about 1/3 lighter than mahogany (closer to the weight of Spanish cedar).

Ed, I use 1/4 sawn a,sycamore nice ray fleck. $,an lighter ,w oak. IMHO it/s too hvy unless you build electrix