Where do you get brace wood?

[Michael Lewis]

Alan, I'm curious as to your reticence to use redwood for bracing. I have found it makes good bracing and doesn't give up with constant string tension. It does split straight once you get it started but I haven't found any braces coming apart.

I did a test of several varieties of wood one time, where I made the pieces all the same dimensions and clamped one end of each to a shelf and put an identical clamp for a weight on the free end of each. I measured the immediate deflection and then a month later measured again. The stiffest and most resistant to taking a set was the LS redwood, next was 150+ yr old deal pine from an old salvaged beam, though it flexed initially it didn't change much after that. The spruces varied from fairly resistant to not very resistant to the weight and time. I know it's only a stab at getting accurate information but it made an impression on me.

[Alan Carruth]

I admit that I have not done any testing of it. I base my preference for spruce on a generally higher resistance to splitting. I've never had a brace split on one of my own guitars, but fixed more split braces than I'd like to have over the years. Of course, those were all spruce, as near as I can tell, so maybe I'm using the worst stuff, rather than the best.

[Michael Lewis]

Alan, as you probably know after repairing broken braces, they get that way from the guitars getting squashed or sat on. I have not seen a split or broken brace due to just being the wrong kind of wood.

The redwood I use for bracing is from the LS tree, wood I got from Craig Carter, and later from Alicia Carter some years ago.

[Alan Carruth]

I've used several of the LS tops, and liked them. I had a big piece of redwood from the lumber yard that was the equal to that in every respect except cosmetics: it had more of the 'dirty' look, although it had tighter grain. Now that I've blown through that I wish I had some more: the last batch of redwood tops I got I had to send back. Time to cruise the lumber yards!

I've had a couple of split brace repairs over the years that were not traumatic failures. Usually they're splits out from the box joint where it was not reinforced and the brace wood had some run out. These were production boxes, of course; one was a Taylor, which surprised me. I don't think any luthier would use brace wood with that much run out.

Again, maybe I'm being over cautious, and maybe I'm even using the wrong stuff, but old habits die hard.