My friend - I agree that this sort of thing can be found in specialty places. But most of us don't live in NYC... There are 2 specialty lumberyards like this in my whole state. 1 is 4 hours away, the other 2 hours away..
With stuff I can buy locally... I have a lifetime supply of spruce brace stock "billets" - Aka good looking construction lumber. I have resawn my fair share of split cedar fence posts - just to do it.. I can get decent results.. But it's hardly worth making a top out of 3-4" wide slats... I have a stack of these, though, and I am planning to try out one top to see how it goes... I have 1 pretty fencepost left to go...... Probably a fool's errand though...
If I could get prime shake blocks, Cedar, or Redwood 12" stock locally - maybe it would be a different discussion. I can't. The stuff I could get had a fairly high fall off for defects... Even when I carefully hand picked it... It's not worth spending hundreds of dollars to get a big stack of firewood, a large stack of low grade tops, and one or two AA tops... And Pressure Treated pine doesn't have the same sort of appeal to guitarists.
I can get really nice wood for backs and sides - QS oak, Cherry, Mahogany, Sapele, and African Mahogany... So there is that...
I do think my advice is sound for the average person.. Try it out... See how it goes.. And count the costs to make sure you really are "saving" money...
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Originally Posted by LouieAtienza
I've gotten pretty prime stuff with western red cedar billets, 2 x 12 joist, spruce spar stock... It's a matter on knowing where and how to look. Go to the building supply or lumberyard that stocks clear cedar framing material, and you'd probably be shocked how much a percentage are well quartered and dead straight grain. And I live in the metro NY area. You can find cedar billets for shakes, but they're usually wet, which is the way you'd want to split it.
To categorically claim that one cannot find high grade woods from billets is poppycock; the log brokers and log buyers and sawyers know how to look just from the outside of a log. They weren't born with an innate ability! People who deal with wood all the time can tell if a log is good and even the figuring. Of course there are always risks, but if you calculated the board feet of a top set - not even 3/5bf (22 x 16 x .18+.07 roughly for thin kerf carbide tooth resaw blade) - hunting down billets starts looking better and better. I believe Sitka spar stock runs about $15-18/bf, so about $9-12 of wood. You can't even buy mismatched sets for that. And if you have a decent resaw blade with a .035 kerf, and you finish off at .14 or so, then your cost per set drops pretty significantly.
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