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View Full Version : Sitka Spruce. Good for what?



dirk martin
03-12-2011, 1:30 AM
My brother has a 10 foot board, of Sitka Spruce.
It's 2" thick, 9" wide.

When I saw it was 2" thick, I immediatly thought that it would be good for bass.
Is Sitka spruce ever used for bass building?
Or would he be better off resawing it, for an acustic guitar/Uke/Mandolin backs and sides?
In other words, what's the best use of this board of his, for musical wood?

Mike OMelia
03-12-2011, 11:42 AM
Guitar tops, if it is quater sawn. Brace material if not.

Mike

Russell Sansom
03-12-2011, 1:12 PM
Soundboards in general. Masts and booms on sail boats. Wooden airplanes both competition models like hand-launched gliders and fully-sized aircraft. ( complete this phrase: " ___________ Goose" ). I've used spruce several times for the cases of Italian harpsichords. It is very pleasant to work, in my opinion. And while I'm prejudiced from staring into it's depths for many thousands of hours as a musician and as an instrument builder, it is intriguing and beautiful to behold. With a board that size I would run, not walk to my shop and throw together a truly gorgeous all-spruce cabinet.

george wilson
03-12-2011, 2:11 PM
The spruce goose was made of birch plywood.

I have many such Sitka spruce planks that I bought years ago from Condon Lumber Co. in White Plains,N.Y.. These planks were intended for decking and other boat work. I spent a day getting very nice boards. Some of them are bearclaw.

An aircraft enthusiast advised me to call "Aircraft Spruce" co. in California. The young dumb a$$ who answered the phone did not know what spruce was!!!! Incredible,since it was the name of their stupid company!!! I had to speak for a supervisor. Then,I bought a piece of aircraft grade Sitka spruce at a high price. It wasn't any better than what I already had. Just some guy decided it was free of defects,and safe to use on aircraft.

I lived in Alaska for 6 years. One year was in Sitka.

Chris Fournier
03-12-2011, 8:11 PM
Argueably the best aircraft of WW 2 was the Dehaviland Mosquito. It was faster than the single seater fighters, could turn a tighter radius than the Me109, could haul bombs like the heavy bombers and could fly at 36,000 feet (a special pressurized model). The Mosquito was called the "plywood wonder" and its fuselage was made of sitka spruce. One of the Mosquito plants was in Downsview Ontario Canada where I lived. Hey it's one of the things that Canadians can be proud of so I had to run the flag up the pole!

Aircraft grade sitka is actually graded for use in airframes and the grading criteria are easy to look up. Aircraft grade sitka will have an ink stamp testifying to the pedigree and it is indeed very expensive.

Really good quality sitka used for instrument soundboards should begin its life as a riven billet - this eliminates most of the grain runout. You won't really get this with lumber but the aircraft grade does indeed have strict tolerances regarding runout.

It's not a cabinet wood per se but I have seen a number of cabinets made with it and they are very beautiful - good call Russell! Alaskan yellow cedar and douglas fir would be equally gorgeous in a cabinet.

John Coloccia
03-12-2011, 9:03 PM
Some use spruce for neck blocks, and that relieves some of the criteria for grain. If you're going to use it for guitar tops, it really needs to be pretty straight grained and well quartered. Many will use only quarter sawn for braces as well, and some split their braces to insure this. Post a couple of good close up pictures.

At only 2" thick, it's not really thick enough for an archtop. You really want to end up with a 1" blank before you start carving, and if you're only 8/4 to start with, you'll never get there.

George: Back in my airplane building days, Aircraft Spruce used to get a lot of my business! I even flew down to their place once...it was only maybe a 40 minute flight from my home airport. If I remember right, I think they sent a car out to pick us up. They're only a few minutes away from the airport in Corona.

David Winer
03-12-2011, 9:59 PM
Sitka spruce is supposed to have the best strength/weight ratio of any wood. Hence, its well known use for making airplanes. This spruce makes a very special canoe paddle, where the weight makes a difference for long sessions on the water. I've made several paddles and the one from Sitka is my favorite.

It's very expensive on the east coast. I once found a pile at a dramatically low price in a lumber yard in San Diego while on a business trip. I had them cut the 2x8 plank into two six-footers, wrapped them in paper, and checked them as baggage on the flight home.

Mike OMelia
03-12-2011, 10:38 PM
John is quite correct about the bracing stock being made from split chunks. Just saying I would not use it for tops if it was flatsawn. Looks awful, and would not be stable. There is a great thread on harpguitars.net about the building of a spruce harp guitar. But lots of realistic, informed choices need to be made regarding the various components of a guitar.

Dave MacArthur
03-12-2011, 11:10 PM
Very interesting posts in this thread. Now I want to know what George was doing in Sitka, what John was building as a plane, some more stats on the Mosquito, and would like to see some pics of spruce cabinet/furniture.

Mike OMelia
03-12-2011, 11:21 PM
Ah, the strange stories of guitar builders. Yes, Sitka, Alaska. A place to raise a glass of Yeagermeister no less.

dirk martin
03-13-2011, 12:55 AM
Yes, this board is not quarter sawn. It is flat sawn.
Sounds like that drastically limits its use.
I was going to suggest he cut it or resaw it certain ways, and piece sell it on eBay, but now it looks like it's not all that valuable.....

Mike OMelia
03-13-2011, 11:39 AM
Thats two bad. But people will pay for bracewood. The edge is probably between quarter and rift sawn. Cut that way, in 3/4" slices would yield excellent bracewood.

dirk martin
03-13-2011, 4:45 PM
ok, if he cuts it into 3/4" thick slices, what lengths and widths should he cut them, for bracewood?
He'll probably cut a bunch of bracewood out of it then, and either put it up here in the classifieds, or on eBay.

Seems such a shame to reduce 8/4 stock, thinner, when such care was taken to dry it thick.

Chris Fournier
03-13-2011, 5:05 PM
I have bought quite a bit of spruce over the years from a fellow named Larry Trumble who owns a company called Wood Marine in Klawock Alaska. Fantastic fellow to deal with, great sitka that has been riven and he can supply violin family builders all the way up to double bass size as well as us guitar guys. google him and give him a call for spruce!

And for Dave: the Mosquito required a crew of two which had great advantages over single seaters as complex tasks such as night bombing, reconnaisance, low level bombing and extended flights were more easily undertaken. The Mosquito was recorded at speeds up to 437 mph and could sustain speeds in excess of 350 mph with only one engine, set multiple trans Atlantic crosssing records and was highly regarded and purchased by the US forces! The Mosquito was so deadly that as a bomber it did not require a fighter escort, infact there are many accounts of a Mozzy dropping it's payload on a ship or airport then turning around to destroy planes on the field with its 20mm cannons only to then finish off by engaging the German fighters with its Browning machine guns. They literary came, saw and conquered. The Mozzy was put out to pasture as jet engine technology was on its heels. They say that the only thing that the osquito didn't beat was time! All this with a wooden fuselage.

John Coloccia
03-13-2011, 5:13 PM
I may be the outlier here, but personally I would prefer to have the wood in block form. Maybe 2" X 3" blocks 24" long. Then I could either use it as is, take the time to carefully split it, or whatever. You might get something like $5.00 or $10.00 a piece depending on the quality.

Chris Fournier
03-13-2011, 5:57 PM
Dear Outlier,

Wouldn't you be in for some serious waste factor if the blocks were rift cut? And this says nothing about the short comings of grain runout in the block format. Would you buy KD blocks or AD? I must know your secrets.

I must admit that breaking out riven wedges is time consuming and tedious but I do feel that this format yields the best product. It does not lend itself to the TS or time efficient labour though.

Framus made guitars with solid sitka necks and blocks - kinda gross guitars but neat looking necks.

dirk martin
03-13-2011, 6:15 PM
Well, since this is 2" thick stock, maybe I will have him cut it into 2" x 3" x 24" blocks, and see how that sells for him.
It really is clear, top quality wood.

John Coloccia
03-13-2011, 6:16 PM
Dear Outlier,

Wouldn't you be in for some serious waste factor if the blocks were rift cut? And this says nothing about the short comings of grain runout in the block format. Would you buy KD blocks or AD? I must know your secrets.

I must admit that breaking out riven wedges is time consuming and tedious but I do feel that this format yields the best product. It does not lend itself to the TS or time efficient labour though.

Framus made guitars with solid sitka necks and blocks - kinda gross guitars but neat looking necks.

Absolutely. I wouldn't buy it without seeing pictures of the billet, a description and guarantee of the quality, or knowing the seller's reputation. Given that I don't know what KD and AD are, though, to be on the safe side I'd buy both :D

Chris Fournier
03-13-2011, 7:25 PM
Sorry John I love using acronyms to appear intelligent! KD = kiln dried, AD = air dried. Of course if you are 18 to 24 KD = dinner 5 night of the week!

John Coloccia
03-13-2011, 8:05 PM
Sorry John I love using acronyms to appear intelligent! KD = kiln dried, AD = air dried. Of course if you are 18 to 24 KD = dinner 5 night of the week!

I'm actually not sure how my tops are dried, and I generally have bought my bracewood at the same time so I assume they're handled the same way. I believe a lot of these guys use a "drying room", which I guess is like a room with good airflow and climate control. I would imagine that in the cold climates these guys are working in, it wouldn't take much heating to create an extremely dry atmosphere, and maybe that's enough. The acoustic tops always seem to show up bone dry. The archtop wedges and billets seem to show up around 12%, and then plummet to maybe 7% in a week or so, so that must just be superficial moisture picked up from the trip.

I personally don't think KD vs AD really matters. Maybe it does, but I don't think it's, "Air dried sounds like this, but kiln dried sounds like that." I think it's more that if you were able to build a guitar with KD wood, go in a time machine and rebuild it identically except that this time you air dry the wood, maybe you might hear a difference. Then again, maybe a skilled luthier will intuitively adjust the thickness and the bracing to compensate for a small difference in stiffness or density, thereby making even that small change irrelevant. I've never listened to a guitar and thought to myself, "Hmmm, that sounds like air dried wood", so at the risk of highlighting my inexperience and lack of luthiery knowledge, I've sorta' put the drying method into the mumbo-jumbo category.

george wilson
03-13-2011, 11:24 PM
My stepfather was in the Coast Guard. I was in the 4th. grade in Sitka. Liked it better than Ketchikan,where we spent the other years.

Chris Fournier
03-14-2011, 10:10 AM
I don't have any experience listening to AD vs. KD either. It's just that tradition leans so heavily on AD for the tonewoods.

Mike OMelia
03-14-2011, 5:00 PM
I may be the outlier here, but personally I would prefer to have the wood in block form. Maybe 2" X 3" blocks 24" long. Then I could either use it as is, take the time to carefully split it, or whatever. You might get something like $5.00 or $10.00 a piece depending on the quality.

Finally, I figured out what Chris was refering to with the "Dear Outlier" thing. Yes, I agree with you here. I really did not think that comment of mine through too well. Basically, the board's real value is in spar and brace building. Model makers would be interested. Its just not worth anything to people looking for tops.

Mike

Curt Harms
03-15-2011, 7:43 AM
Very interesting posts in this thread. Now I want to know what George was doing in Sitka, what John was building as a plane, some more stats on the Mosquito, and would like to see some pics of spruce cabinet/furniture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeHavilland_Mosquito

Jack Briggs
11-07-2011, 9:51 AM
As many know, Sitka spruce has one of the highest stiffness to weight ratios of any wood on the planet. One that I know is usually higher is Port Orford cedar (actually not a cedar but a true cypress). As such, for centuries Sitka's primary use in instrument making has been for soundboards: guitars top, violin tops, piano soundboards, etc. One area where I'd not seen it used and wondered why not was for a solid body guitar. Fender made the prototypes for the Telecaster out of Ponderosa pine, and spruce is in the same family, so when I obtained an 8/4 board of Sitka that was 15" wide and 7' long, I set out to try it. The result - all of the frequency response of lightweight alder, none of the scooped out midrange response of swamp ash, and the delightful snap and response that the spruces generally are known for.

Here are a couple of pics of said guitar:
212239212240

The natural color of the Sitka lent itself to painting a vintage 2-tone sunburst in nitro lacquer quite nicely.


Cheers,

John Coloccia
11-07-2011, 6:25 PM
As many know, Sitka spruce has one of the highest stiffness to weight ratios of any wood on the planet. One that I know is usually higher is Port Orford cedar (actually not a cedar but a true cypress). As such, for centuries Sitka's primary use in instrument making has been for soundboards: guitars top, violin tops, piano soundboards, etc. One area where I'd not seen it used and wondered why not was for a solid body guitar. Fender made the prototypes for the Telecaster out of Ponderosa pine, and spruce is in the same family, so when I obtained an 8/4 board of Sitka that was 15" wide and 7' long, I set out to try it. The result - all of the frequency response of lightweight alder, none of the scooped out midrange response of swamp ash, and the delightful snap and response that the spruces generally are known for.

Here are a couple of pics of said guitar:
212239212240

The natural color of the Sitka lent itself to painting a vintage 2-tone sunburst in nitro lacquer quite nicely.


Cheers,

The model I'm putting the finishing touches on now is a chambered alder body with a carved spruce top. The result is a warm guitar with lots of clarity that never seems to get brittle on the high end. We're liking it so much that we decided to build the next one with a Baggs bridge.

Do you have a reliable source for larger pieces of spruce like that? The thought had occurred to me to just make the whole thing out of spruce, but I decided against it because I've no idea where to reliably source suitable pieces of spruce. I'm also just a little concerned that the soft spruce will have endless dents in it, though most pro musicians I know couldn't care less about that.