We are building a very unique pair of guitars for our customer using a rather odd and obscure wood that I have always wanted to build with, but have never had the opportunity until now, Olea europaea or Olive wood. I have searched for years for this wood but it was so difficult to find, especially sets large enough to build a guitar with and that had the quality to meet my expectations.
Most Olive wood on the market has been imported from the Mediterranean region of Europe and the wood that was available was either too small or riddled with internal imperfections that rendered it unusable for lutherie. However, a few years ago I stumbled across some domestic Olive wood grown on an Olive farm in Northern, CA. The farmer was culling out some trees that were no longer productive and we were able to procure a few pieces of Olive wood for this project.
For this build our customer chose to use as many West coast native woods as possible so these guitars will be mostly made of domestic woods. The body for the acoustic guitar will be our popular SDG shape of CA Olive and he chose an old growth reclaimed 1950 coastal California Redwood top. Bindings will be CA curly Claro Walnut.
Please join us for this exciting journey of this West coast guitar project.
Olive wood back:
Super tight, old growth Redwood top:
