Flat sawn American sycamore and sassafras

[Robert Eason]

Has anyone used either sycamore or sassafras as a neck wood. Sycamore is very light and similar to maple from the info I can find. My question pertains more to the dimensional stability of flatsawn sycamore and sassafras when used to laminate a neck. I am thinking a skunk stripe of wenge could help with stiffness. Any thoughts on this?

[David King]

It depends a bit on the instrument you have in mind and the scale length. Sassafras is pretty soft stuff but the sycamore can hold it's own. I'd say you are on your own regarding the dimensional stability. You can certainly check the numbers in the book but I doubt such a neck has ever been built.

[Joel Nowland]

American sycamore makes wonderful necks the problem is finding flat sawn stock. I have used quartered stack laminating it, sawing the blank down the center and then center laminating. I also laminated the back of the head when stack laminating.

Does anyone know a good source for flat sawn American sycamore?

Joel

[Mark Langner]

I have in the works an archtop guitar with a sassafras body,with some walnut accent stripes. I had planned to do a sassafras - walnut - sassafras laminate for the neck. That is coming up. (This is my "local woods" project - the walnut and sassafras came from places I used to live near here, and the top is white pine from my business property).

Have never done anything with sycamore, but a friend who is a cabinet builder says his experience with sycamore is that it is rare to find a piece that is not warped and twisted...

[Mark Langner]

This thread has sparked my interest, and I've been looking for relative strength properties of various hardwoods - maple, walnut (both used successfully for necks) and sassafras to try and make a judgement about using sass for a neck.

It raises a question: Which "strength" properties are most important for a guitar neck? I'm guessing they might be "tension / compression perpendicular to the grain". Maybe one of our more scientifically-minded builders will chime in...

BTW - here's a shot of the sassafras / walnut body.

[Bryan Bear]

Sycamore is very stable once dried. The problem is, it is very hard to dry without warping in anything but quarter sawn stock. My local wood cutter will only do quarter sawn sycamore for that reason.

I had some questions about using it for necks and doing lams with the less well quartered stock on the outside to make most of the wonderful figure the medullary rays produce (I was trying to devise a way to keep as much of the curved edge of the neck perpendicular to the grain as possible) . I knew Cumpiano like it as a neck wood so I emailed him. Below was his response (posted with his permission):

'Sycamore is reported to be extremely stable when well-seasoned, but even more stable when the growth rings are vertical than when they are flat. So my neck blanks are strictly vertical grained. I'm usually not particular about the aesthetics of neck wood—as I am about the aesthetics of body wood—so it never occured to me to go to the lengths that you seem to want to go to to get the "flame" all around the neck. My neck selection criteria is 100% utilitarian, which is why I select for stability and tissue uniformity on the neck, and appearance is pretty much at the bottom of my concerns. But I can't find fault with your three-piece neck scheme--or your effort to somehow contrive a clever way to get the flame to appear all around the shaft. I personally don't like to see two seams running down the length of the neck, only because it gives me a creepy feeling of two potential fault lines. But that's me. By the way, Santa Cruz has a Model Hs made entirely out of sycamore, neck and all. It looks like a one-piece neck. So you have another good precedent for Sycamore necks besides mine.'

[Nicholas Blanton]

Sycamore used to be used for drawer carcasses and other furniture parts, because it's reasonably hard, not too heavy, easy to find, in big trees, and it glues really well. Like the USDA Wood Handbook says, though, flatsawn it moves a lot with changes in humidity, much more than quartersawn, which means if you don't have something perfectly quartersawn or perfectly flatsawn the board will not be stable.

[Richard Eyman]

Quartersawn sycamore ?


It works well for acoustic backs and sides .

[Robert Eason]

Oh thanks for the pix, drool drool. Seems like it's difficult to find good QS stock that doesn't leave one with sticker shock especially when the shipping costs are figured in!

[Randolph Rhett]

This neck is Sycamore. Platanus Racemosa, not Platanus Occidentalis, but I believe they are very similar. I try to use local/urban wood as often as possible, so this came out of some park and was more riff sawn than flat. Still, it has been stable. No complaints and I think it is very beautiful. Looks like lacewood.