Bamboo as neck wood?

[RD Yazidi]

This guy's fretless guitar build has been seriously intriguing me for a couple months. He uses "vertically compressed bamboo" for the neck underneath a zero-radius aluminum-bar fret(less)board. I have had no clue where to get the bamboo, the link he includes is zero help, but I'm picking up from repeated Google searches that it may be a flooring product.

I've also never built any kind of neck from scratch before but the way he's put it together seems like it might be an easy way to play with some basic neck-building concepts.

Would I be able to find something adequately thick at a flooring salesjoint? Or is there a better place I might be able to scare some of this up? (I like the idea of trying to build the body out of this as well if it's cost-effective enough and easy to work with.)

Also, and I know this is probably a seriously dumb question, but: Would the vertical "grain" of the lamination be best oriented running parallel or perpendicular to the frets that aren't there? I really can't tell what's going on from his photos where the "grain" is visible at the top of the neck.

[Charlie Schultz]

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[Mario Proulx]

I strongly suspect he simply used bamboo flooring and glued-up some pieces to get the width he needed. Or he found some countertop scraps(or maybe ordered some samples and they were large enough?). The link he provided is quite helpful, if you navigate the website a bit, like here:

http://www.teragren.com/products_countertops.html

Then again, you could also write the fella and ask him directly; anyone who shares a build like that is very likely to be very open to, and happy to, share and help out another fella wanting to try something similar.

[Andy Barnhart]

The bamboo panels and flooring are a lot like fiberglass using a natural fiber (bamboo) and some tough hard resin. When they align the strands it has some strength but it still has a little flex.

[David Hawn]

Bamboo flooring is made by cutting the bamboo into strips and laminating it together.Bamboo has a high strength to weight ratio,and is actually grass, not wood,so it could not possibly make a neck wood ,but might work as a neck grass.

[John Sonksen]

my two cents is I have no idea what "vertically compressed bamboo" is, but it sounds like a catch phrase or something that's just part of the manufacturing process. I would say that absolutely you'd want to orient the bamboo so that it's parallel to the length of the neck and perpendicular to where the frets would be.

One thing I would mention is you'd want to consider the weight, it is on the heavy side so I would think about chambering a body if you were going to make one out of that. There are also different types of bamboo available, different colors and different ways they make it up. The two most common are a series of narrow laminations about 1/4" wide oriented on edge to make a sheet, (just to be clear these are face glued to one another and run from one face of the panel to the other) and another with a thin, 4mm lamination on each side of face grain oriented material on top of an 11mm core which is oriented the opposite way to the face.

I would recommend using the type that has the laminations running from one face to the other and not the kind with the thin face laminations on each side. I think this will look better when you go to sculpt the neck, but also will be more homogeneous strength wise,

I don't know how well it'll hold up as a neck honestly, I've only used it to build cabinets. A couple things to consider is I have heard it can be hard on your steel cutting tools because it has a high silicon content and for this reason it's also a good idea to wear breathing protection when cutting and sanding it. It can be brittle when cross cutting or routing the edge grain so adjust your technique accordingly. It cuts great on the table saw, and sands pretty good although the factory finish sanding job is usually coarser than other materials, so you may spend more time sanding to get that smooth.

I'm trying to think if I've seen this type of bamboo in any color besides the blonde, I don't think I have although carbonized might be available. You cannot stain bamboo, well not if you want it to look good. If you want to change the color it will have to be lacquered first and toned or sprayed with tinted lacquer.

I don't really have anything to add about the aluminum from personal experience except I know of one guitar company that makes their necks out of aluminum and I've also heard that it can deflect and move with temperature and sunlight changes.