wood I.D. American hardwood

[tommyb]

I'm brand new to the forum and glad to be here. I'm a luthier and guitar restorer, and I have a late '50s guitar in my shop for repair and refinish. I'm trying to nail down exactly what wood I'm working with , so I'm turning to the folks here on the forum for help. Here are some pics.  www.williamyoungguitars.com/woodpics.htm

The wood is a medium-density hardwood (I can make a mark with my fingernail), and the figure is faint. The pics you see are clear but the wood seems a bit fuzzy. The last pic is the end grain magnified 25X with our son's telescope lens. Ignore the red stain. I'm not done removing all the color. Can anyone definitively identify this wood?

William

[Texas Ranger]

Alder is the closest I can come to it.

[Tom]

Welcome to the forum, tommyb.  We've had some luthiers on here before and really enjoyed them.  woodbeard sold his mill and we seldom hear from him anymore. Getoverit sold his mill and moved to Nashville.  We don't hear from him either.  We have had some members that sell wood to luthiers.  One of them was from Hawaii, but he moved to the Northwest somewhere and we don't hear from him anymore either.

You'll find quite a few instrument players on here, from guitar to trumpet.  I hope you stay around.  Maybe the others will quit lurking and come back.

Welcome to the Forestry Forum.  

[tyb525]

Looks like it could be soft maple

[tommyb]

Thank you Tom for that warm welcome. I intend on sticking around. From what I've read already, there are some pretty knowledgeable people right here.

As for the wood, I too thought it was alder at first, but I'm suspicious now. I work with alder quite a lot and this doesn't have any of those tell-tale brown streaks or the odor of alder. What frustrates me is the fact that I'm in Europe, I don't have ready access to mills where I could buy scraps of soft maple for comparison. In France, we have Sycamore Maple, which is more blonde and definitely a hard maple. This stuff is softer with a faint grain pattern.

I wish I could positively identify it for future repairs on other guitars like it, plus the added knowledge of knowing what I'm talking about!

[SwampDonkey]

Looks like birch to me, especially the grain in the bottom half of the first photo, very faint growth ring and the large white pores that are visible (uniform in size and distribution in the ring), and much wider than any ray (which are not visible there) in the last picture, and a faint pinkish hue to the wood. It would probably be one of the denser birch species which are harder and heavier than some of the fast grown birch species.

In order to be maple there would have to be rays present that are as large as those pores and I don't see any (in last picture).

[tommyb]

Your answer is very intriguing SwampDonkey. I wonder if there's any chemical analysis I might try which would eliminate it being maple — something that might effect birch but not maple, or vice-versa.

[SwampDonkey]

If that last photo is an end grain shot as indicated, just not seeing rays as large as those pores is enough to know it ain't maple.  ;) Hard to tell the birches apart unless you are familiar with their relative weight, you can tell then if it's a hard birch (yellow, black) or soft birch (paper). Yellow birch is pretty close to hard maple and beech for density and weight.  I guess I mis-read your last posts as I was thinking hard birch, but read it again indicates a soft birch like paper birch. Still the same characteristics except weight and density. Just looking at the lumber of the various birches you would have difficulty separating. But sometime yellow birch is as pink as cherry, not always. It's a poor man's cherry. Although good hard birch is not cheap to buy. :D

[SwampDonkey]

Yellow birch end grain from my home made coffee table. Birch grain can bur up a bit when sanding to only to around 220 grit. You have to sand it with finer grit to reduce it.



About 20x


Soft, red maple.

[tommyb]

I see what you mean by the absence of rays now. Those pics help.

Two questions: Can a magnified image of the end grain determine what variety of birch we're looking at? Finally, any chance of it being alder, based on the end grain?

[SwampDonkey]

Birch has rays, but you need higher magnification to see them. Very very fine. No way to separate the birches unless you know a good geneticist. If it's heavy like beech or hard maple, and relatively hard, assume yellow birch. Otherwise, lighter, soft stuff will probably be paper birch. Alder has broader rays than the width of the pores, probably 3-4x as wide, seen with naked eye. Alder in my experience darkens up to light brown on exposure after fresh cut. Coloration can obscure the rays a bit though. Pith is star shaped if you have a piece with pith. If you look on the flat sawn face you'll see fine dark lines about an inch long, those are the rays coming out. They are longer and not as numerous as beech.

Here are the rays coming out of red oak flooring.



20x magnification

These are more numerous and broader than in alder.

You've got birch my friend, but your only going to separate them out by hardness, weight and strength. Yellow and black birch being the hard, heavy, stronger stuff. ;)

End grain is like finger prints in this business.

[tommyb]

Man, I love this forum already! I'm hooked on wood I.D. now. I need to find me a good resource book to get me started in end grain analysis.

Thanks for your clear, concise answers SwampDonkey.

[tommyb]

Don't go away SwampDonkey. I've got one more pic to show you. This is from the endgrain of the headstock. The neck is obviously separate from the body of the guitar. I scanned this at 1200 dpi. You can see faint rays in the wood here. Could this be something else?  ???

www.williamyoungguitars.com/pics02.htm

[SwampDonkey]

soft, bigleaf maple

Rays as wide as largest pores, require magnification to see. With birch you can see the pores with naked eye. I call it bigleaf because of the reddish brown color (in heartwood). Maybe that's your red stain, don't know from my end. The picture is a little fuzzy to be absolute certain that the rays are the same width as the bigger pores. If not, than your back to birch. I would have to say though, if I can see the rays in that blurry picture than it must be soft maple.

Is that site your linking to your own site? I ask this because if you disappear or that site does, then there is a big black hole in this discussion and we have no photos for comparison. My photos mean nothing if yours are lost from the thread.

[WDH]

I also think that it is a maple, especially since to my knowledge, guitars are not made of birch as a primary wood.  Maple and alder are two woods that are used for solid body electric guitars.  That last pic of the end grain on the headstock is consistent with a maple.

[SwampDonkey]

Now that I look at the first end grain picture again I now see the large rays of maple.
One coming down the middle of the image and one more faint off to the right side.

Very fuzzy images, so they can be easily over looked.

That being said, Birch is sometimes used as instrument wood.

Sometimes takes another set of eyes. ;)

[tommyb]

I've tried uploading the pics with my replies but I keep getting a "Windows has ceased to function" message and it kicks me out.

Those two lines in the first end grain pic are glare from looking through the lens as I took the picture. The last end grain pic is with a scanner. Yeah, they're fuzzy but there are no flat ends on this guitar. The rays on the heastock are clear through my magnifier. Their width is less than that of the pores, and they're tightly spaced too throughout. The red you see is the color still in the wood. There are no rays at all on the end grain of the body.

What really gets me is the color of these two woods is exactly the same, even the faint cathedral patterns on the facewood of each is similar.

[SwampDonkey]

If that is the case with the rays, then they ain't maple. Birch is the wood. The bottom half of the guitar with the cut out looks like the birch in my table top.



This is yellow birch and this board has got a pinkish hue to it.

Your observation of grain fuzziness leads me there as well.

The rays are there in your first pic, just too fuzzy. Even though you can't see them in my picture of end grain they are there. I can see them with my 10 x lens. Jpeg format inherently causes you to loose clarity.

[tommyb]

Yep, your tabletop looks like my guitar top. Okay, here's the best pic I can do. I sanded the body end grain to 1000 grit, scanned it at 1200 dpi and sharpened it. I see no rays, kimosabe.

www.williamyoungguitars.com/woodpics02.htm

[SwampDonkey]

Yellow birch.



The horizontal markings in the image are from my Japanese saw. Some of the rays are spaced about as far apart as the pore widths. :D Cause a guy to go cross eyed. :D :D

[SwampDonkey]

Your picture is still too fuzzy, but you can see'm in my last one. Barely. :D

[SwampDonkey]

If it's maple, you should see the "shadows" of the rays come through to the surface as very short chestnut brown marks. Under magnification and good light the shadows aren't there. They will be 1/32" long. It's shadowy because if you look under magnification there is a pit created at the end of the ray coming out of the planed surface. Again it can drive you crazy because it's so tiny. I can't even show it on here, the scanner lights it up so no shadows.

[SwampDonkey]

If there is a way to wet the wood with a little spit, it might bring them rays out better.

[SwampDonkey]

Gibson SG Zoot Suit made with birch  8)

As far as I can tell maple and alder are the traditional woods of the big names, but further reading reveals there really isn't any advantage. Also, many other species have been used by others. It may be more to do with beta versus VHS. ;)

[tommyb]

Nice guitar, and a nice suit to match! Structurally, birch, alder and maple are all woods that are good to go for guitars. They have to be straight and tight grained for the neck, but that's about it.

The education I've gotten here in the last few days is just amazing.