Quote:
Originally Posted by TomB'sox
Thanks Bill, you would know much more than I of course. What Ben told me is that he had a piece of Redwood that was particular stiff and light so he has used what he could of it for braces and has been happy with it. Worth a shot in my book. At 200 grams I think the top and brace combo would be considered pretty successful at this point. I know he does deflection testing as well (I had an email with pics of that, but I deleted it by mistake and could not get it back), so there should be consistency in the stiffness allowing it to be made as light as he can and fit within his parameters for stiffness.
Maybe Ben will stop by and expound some more on this?
Thanks,
Tom
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Yes, so redwood braces may be unusual, but a lot of our guitar building traditions are just that: traditions. I had this small billet of redwood for years, and I hadn't thought of using it for bracing, because, well, you use SPRUCE for bracing, right? But in my unending quest for the light and stiff, I decided to cut this billet up into braces one day. I do some rudimentary testing on my brace stock- deflection and weight. This redwood was only very slightly less stiff than my stiffest sitka, and weighed 30% less! Now, I must add that this in not common among redwood samples. But this wood was very fine grained- had to be old growth from a very slow growing tree. It allowed me to shed some 20 grams from the top
(i estimate here). My point is that decisions about wood should not be based solely upon species, but rather upon the qualities of the wood at hand. I wouldn't brace a guitar with just any redwood, but THIS redwood is it's own unique animal. The same objectivity should be applied to all wood that is going to end up in a guitar. Some BRW is nothin' great, and some Myrtle will make the best guitar you could hope for. It kind of frees you up to look at it this way.