Ash

[Dale Penrose]

I recently acquired a curly white ash board. The curl is as tight as high quality maple. I have never used ash before, plan on making a mountain dulcimer with it and was wondering if it is worth resawing into some guitar stock. Anyone with experience working with ash in acoustic instruments?

[Mario Proulx]

Ash makes wonderful guitars!

[David King]

It also bends pretty well in my experience. It's really just the grain filling that can take a little longer.

[Ed Minch]

A friend had an ash tree killed by the borers. He split me a piece that I made into a resonator - top, back, sides, and neck. It works great, bends great, and takes a nice polish off a scraper. And it sounds pretty good as a resonator, too.

[Joshua Levin-Epstein]

In the early 80's Guild made some dreads with ash back and sides. They sounded pretty good (like early 80's Guilds).

[Dan Smith]

The Ash in Central Texas is Arizona Ash, all planted by humans.
It has a bad habit of growing with forks in the branches.
After a storm, my tree lost one of the main trunks. It had nice curly figure.
Other trees that were damaged also had curly figure.
I sawed up my Ash and a neighbor’s busted Mesquite tree and made a guitar.
I wish I had a better picture of the Ash, it was quite lovely.
You can kinda make out the curls on the busted area of the tree.
This tree is still alive after 5 years, but I try not to sit under it or mess with it.
Dan