Where do you get brace wood?

[Seth Ellis]

I'd like to split my own braces out of billets. Is that the preferred method you all are using and if so, where do you source your billets from? How much should I expect to pay for brace wood these days. I'm really embarrassingly out of practice with my instrument building, but I want to get back into it. Thanks, Seth

[Charlie Schultz]

One source is one of our sponsors, Alaska Specialty Woods.

[Chuck Tweedy]

Yes, Seth, the preferred method is to start with a chunk of wood (that looks like firewood), and to use a split face to register against when cutting it up.
Most suppliers will sell you the raw materials.
If you have access to large spruce dimensional lumber (2x10 or so) you can frequently find sections that are very useable. If it is flatsawn, then you can split it down the middle, then saw pieces from that split with the blade running parallel to the annular rings.

[Seth Ellis]

My first guitar I split almost to exact dimensions. A little squaring with a plane did the rest. I found this to be fun, though not the fastest I'm sure. I don't know if this is a better way or not, but I'd expect that if there is not a lot of run out and it's pretty nicely quartered, split verses cut has no huge difference. Cut based on one side split probably yields less waste. I'm looking at several places to get billets to split, but I don't want to pay an arm and a leg for a box of brace wood. Prices seem high these days.

Cheers,
Seth

[Matthew Lau]

Seth,

I think that you're on the right track.
After some distasteful experience with a prominent luthery wood vender, I'll probably buy split billets exclusively from top-wood specialists.

Alaska Tonewoods sounds like a great vender.
I haven't built for a while, but I'd probably go with Old Standard Wood or the Old World Tonewood when the time comes.

Lastly, there's the Aircraft spruce grab bag (although I think that Alaska Tonewoods probably is the best value out of everyone that I mentioned).

[Bob Gramann]

I've been very successful selecting 2x6 and 2x8 spruce from the lumber yard and splitting braces out of that. I like getting to see the wood before I buy it. There's a lot of waste this way, but it's very cheap waste (that often gets used in non-instrument projects).

[Mark Swanson]

I do it that way too. It's easy to find good bracewood if you know where to look.

[Mario Proulx]

Bracewood is everywhere, once you start looking...!

[Alan Carruth]

The trick is to realize that _all_ softwoods have pretty much the same relationship between density and Young's modulus along the grain. What that means is that, whatever the name of the tree was, if it's got a certain density, then a brace of a given size will be just as stiff as a brace made of 'select' European spruce, or whatever, that has the same density (within limits, of course). At that point, you're thinking about things like toughness/splitting resistance,and avoiding extremes of density, runnout, and wavy/curved grain.

Alan Carruth / Luthier

[Simon Magennis]

I mentioned in a similar thread somewhere that I get a lot of my top bracing (for classicals) from the offcuts from the tops themselves.

I've also laminated these pieces together, just once so far as there are so many other choices its probably not worth the effort, for back braces. I put in a thin black veneer in the middle just because I wanted to see what a striped brace would look like. Other than that I got some billets of spruce from MadInter in Spain which I split for braces.

[Matthew Lau]

I just got an email from Brent, the owner of Alaskan Specialty woods.


In any case, let me clarify regarding my posting:

1. I tend to buy brace wood along with tops. I'd really like to try ordering from Old World Tonewood (Caucasian spruce) or Old Standard Wood (Adirondack).

2. When I said Alaskan Tonewoods--I'd meant Alaskan Specialty Woods.
I've heard nothing but good stuff regarding the quality of their woods, and they have some of the best prices on truly great bearclaw spruce and Alaskan Yellow Cedar. My friend Gary loves them, and has just bought quite a few tops from them.
In contrast, there's a similar sounding website "Alaskan Tonewoods" and "Last Frontier Tonewoods.com." It's run by some other guy, and I've heard a lot of horror stories about him from other forums.
Generally, if they care enough to sponsor MIMF--if Al, Mario, Mark, and the others have tried them and like them--I'll probably buy from them.

3. Good wood is good wood.
As others have posted, I wouldn't get to hung up if the bracewood is "Select," "AAA," "Adirondack" or whatnot. As Al Carruth (and many others) have pointed out: wood has variable stiffness, density, etc. It's very important to look at each piece of wood on it's own merits.
When I visited Brad Heinzen, I saw that he had pre-split braces graded according to stiffness and weight in little plastic tubes. Personally, I just hand-split all my braces and flex them. If it feels floppy, I toss them.

Disclaimer, Brad is a much more accomplished luthier than I am (at this point).

[Ron Belanger]

+1 for Brent at Alasan Specialty Woods

[Brad Heinzen]

I often get wood for bracing from offcuts at work. For me, that's usually redwood, Doug Fir, and WRC. Around here, we don't see much spruce, so I have to buy that from one of the usual suppliers. Scavenging works out well for me, because a piece that's too small for anything on the exterior of a house can be brace wood for several guitars. I just pick out the chunks that will yield the cleanest, straightest stuff, rough-cut them into braces, and store them away in the shop. I've always got a good selection stocked in 'little plastic tubes' - actually I use 4" DWV pipe to keep everything organized. I have found some pretty wild variation in stiffness/weight of softwoods, with redwood being the worst. It seems to go from nice and stiff to noodle-soft.

Believe it or not, I did a really big job years ago that had all of the exterior moldings milled from Hond. Mahogany, and I ended up with quite a few pieces that were big enough for neck blanks. It's truly beautiful stuff. Of course, it's all pre-CITES, and I have no way to prove that it was legally obtained. For anyone with an old stash of wood, especially scavenged wood, those rules can be a real pain in the butt. I can make a good-faith effort, but no real proof, if it ever came to that.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Brad,
As long as the mahogany goes out as a finished product isn't it exempt from CITIES at this time? And my understanding that for Lacey the government has to prove that it was illegally obtained.

[Brad Heinzen]

Hi Clay,

I'm sure there are others here who have a much better idea than I as to what's involved. From what I've heard, there can be issues coming back across the US border with any plant- or animal-based materials that might be regulated by Lacey.

[Tom West]

Alaska Specialty Woods and Brent are top drawer......!!!
Tom

[Robert Eason]

You can always go to the flea market and buy some really old wooden doors. When disassembled, the rails and stiles make good bracing plus you could very well be saving the doors from either the burn pile or waste management facility!

[Dave Sayers]

I have split some spruce that I got from a friend who was taking down some spruce joists. I did it in hope of getting some useable braces, and I did. The thing is that the joists had knots, and the knots affect the wood for quite a distance in every direction. It just isn't straight grained. It was actually easy to split. I used an old sharpened bill hook to do the actual splitting and a lump hammer to drive it. I got quite a few useable small to mid size braces, but the practice I got in learning how the wood split was very valuable. If you can get a knot free piece of spruce with a straight grain running end to end I don't think it would matter if the wood wasn't quarter sawn. I actually quite enjoyed the process, which I did on a very solid and firm piece of concrete.

[Mark Swanson]

We have talked here before about how you can find spruce at many local sources, including the super stores. Regular construction lumber is mostly spruce, you can search through the stacks and pick out wood that you can split out. I look in the odds and ends, where they have discounted pieces and often can find a board or two the lets me get a lot of bracewood. Look for the stuff that is marked "S_P_F"...this stands for Spruce, Pine, Fir. From these most are spruce and it's easy to tell when a board is not. As long as you split it yourself, and understand how to do that, you can get good stuff. It is a good idea to keep this stuff around so that it can dry well, many times it isn't dry enough for a guitar, these stores sell stuff that is often too green.

[Alan Carruth]

The things I'm looking for in brace wood are stiffness along the grain, with reasonable density, and decent resistance to splitting. I have avoided using woods like redwood, cedar, and Douglas fir for bracing because they tend to split easily. Other than that, almost all the softwoods I've tested so far have displayed the same relationship between long-grain Young's modulus and density. Young's modulus is a measure of potential stiffness; two pieces of material with the same Young's modulus will have the same stiffness at given dimensions. So long as the softwood you get is in the right range of density and hardness, the species should not matter in terms of stiffness. If you want to get religious, you can look for Red spruce, or whatever your faith directs you to, but it should not matter structurally.

BTW, the only softwood species I've found so far that doesn't follow the density/stiffness rule is Eastern Hemlock: it's more like a hardwood. It's also 'way too splitty. Wood from the base of big trees tends to be rather dense, without a concomitant increase in stiffness; another reason to avoid redwood. You can tell wood like that by the heavy latewood lines.