I've selected billets, split out the wood for braces, measured, sorted, profiled, and matched the brace blanks for the guitar. Here is a picture of the back with the bracing being glued up:
On another note: For delivery next year I am building another "Tree" guitar. This is a custom order and we've been discussing which wood to use for the top. We started with Swiss Moon Spruce and have recently been discussing Redwood. Either wood can work great for making a wonderful sounding "tree" guitar. We're exploring the various looks of Redwoods to see if we can find a nice match and strong visual appeal but, too much figure in the Redwood could easily conflict with all the "tree" figure. So we're looking for the Goldielocks Redwood top.
I found a well quarter sawn Redwood board that is 2" thick and big enough to cut maybe 8 top sets from. It is has some curl and one side has some wonderful black grain lines. The other side is pretty clean but, still some curl. I'm thinking we'll get quite a variety of matched tops and I'm hopeful the perfect top is in there somewhere.
Here is one of the billets:
I think it kind of looks like Koa:
Super tight grain as well:
The re-sawing went very well. The center slices are pretty moist so I'm stickering it all for a couple weeks before making any judgements:
Lots and lots of sticks in this stickering process!
Thanks for viewing!
Mark