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Chestnut as a tone wood. Building new guitar.


MesaMonster

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A friend of mine has some 100 year old chestnut. He is going to send me a one piece slab of it to make a new guitar. I was thinking of a partscaster with a natural finish. Has anyone every had experience with chestnut and what are the characteristics of it? What are the recommended dimensions of the wood before I start?

 

Thx

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Is it true Chestnut, ie Castanea, or what is often known as Horse Chestnut, which is a member of the Sapindale family, of which maple is a member.

 

If it's the former, ie akin to Sweet Chestnut, ie the tree we get the lovely little nuts to roast at Christmas, then that is a true Chestnut native to mostly the N Hemisphere, and includes oak and beech, so it could be good, but my concern would be it's stability, so dry it carefully and season it before you work it.

 

A Strat guitar blank is 18" x 13" or 2 x 18" x 7" if you plan a two piece body. Thickness wise, dry it at around 3", so that when you thickness it down to it's correct dimension, around 1 3/4" the stresses set up by drying will have enough meat to keep it stable but not set up enough stress to split it.

 

Basically it's a bit of a crap shoot, but just be patient with the drying. I wouldnb't begi8n to use a piece of wood for a guitar til it's been dried for around 5 years, and that's what I'd still call fresh.

 

What will it sound like?:)

 

A guitar

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No experience with chestnut as a top wood but my opinion has always been that for a solid body the wood is mostly decorative and its the pups that make the sound. Most of the time when people use specialty woods they laminated to a solid body blank - think Les Pauls. Normally for a carved top (LP style) you will want two pieces 7 x 20 by about 5/8 thick, for a flat "drop top" that can be about 1/4 thick. Book match those two pieces and glue to a body blank (mahogany, swamp ash, whatever). Body blanks are usually 20 x 13-1/2 by at least 1-5/8 thick. I would hesitate building a completely solid body out of one piece of chestnut unless you know that it is perfectly dried and stable.

 

I you are curious about the whole process, you can either look up my old Home Made Les Paul thread or stick around until this fall sometime - I'm going to build a drop top LP Jr as soon as I finish the one on the bench.

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Chestnut is a very hard dense wood so beware when you attempt to cut and route it.

Hard north American maple has a hardness of ~1450

Oak has a hardness of ~1010

Black walnut ~1010

 

North American Chestnut is ~2670

However Domestic Chestnut can be as low as 500

 

If its the hard stuff and is antique it can be even harder. The last 5 guitars I built were out of antique wood that was over 200 years old and even with new router and dremil tips I had to basically burn my way through the wood cutting a neck pocket and neck pocket.

 

The main concern you'll have is the weight vs. size. I'm working on a Firebird shaped guitar made out of Purple Heart and its got a hardness of 2090. It came from an antique bed post and even with it trimmed to size I expect it to weigh at least 15 lbs. To reduce weight I'm probably going to leave the center thick enough to mount pickups, but I'll likely taper the sides down in the back as thick as the belly groove on a Strat except the top and bottom will be taperd that way all the way across and possibly the tail as well giving it a discus shape on the tail end and a neck through appearance in the center running up to the neck. If I can get the weight down below 10Lbs I'll be able to wear it playing. If not it will wind up being a lapdog for recording only.

 

Here's that wood hardness chart. It doesn't convert to weight exactly but hardness and density usually run hand in hand so it should give you some correlation between the two.

 

http://workshoppages.com/WS/Misc/Wood-Hardness-Chart.pdf

 

Here's a density chart that may be useful as well.

http://cedarstripkayak.wordpress.com/lumber-selection/162-2/

 

Not real sure how good a wood it will be for guitars. We had them at my Grandfathers house and from what I remember the wood as being stringy and having dark pores. When dry it has a dark gray color, but its been a long time so my memory may not be good on those details. It will depend on the species too.

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Being that this might be super heavy' date=' I might go with a chambered body or use it as a cap.[/quote']

 

If it were me I would definitely do a cap. Routing a solid hunk of something that I have no experience with would scare the heck out of me. However you might want to consider asking your friend for several pieces, one big enough to do a solid body and several that you can quarter and make into caps. Depending on the grain and appearance you might want to have your sawyer do several book matched sets of different thickness, sticker them away and decide after they have dried.

 

When I was in Nashville we visited the home of Andrew Jackson. On display there was a Les Paul that Gibson had made from an old hickory tree from the homesite. Might be somewhat similar to your wood.

 

If you get some photos please post - I curious to see what the wood looks like.

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If you're concerned about weight, then get a half inch square block sawn up and weight it, then you'll get a density reading that you can convert and compare against other woods. True Chestnut is basically Beech, so should be in the same realm as Oak and Beech, which in Imperial is around maximum of 56lb per cubic foot. Sweet chestnut comes out at 30lb cubic foot, so should be lighter than the lightest beech or oak and end up similar in weight to the lightest African mahogany.

 

The above assumes it is Sweet Chestnut, ie Castanea sativa

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There shouldn't be any issue with curing the wood seeing its 100 years old. The main concern will be cracks and fractures cutting an routing because the sap petrifies and the wood gets brittle. If its been stored in a damp area then of course it may have absorbed moisture and can warp as it dries. If the wood is heavy, making a chambered body is a great solution. If its got good texture a rear chamber is a good way to go. The rear cap wont be seen as often. You want to leave a solid block where the bridge and neck mounts. Routing the pickup holes is allot easier when its hollow below. Same thing for the control cavity. You could do the rear mount of the pots through the front and leave an access plate. The last couple I did I just used a tele plate from the top and left the backs solid.

 

Having a chambered body can increase the resonant tones you can get at higher volumes and give the strings a bit more jangle depending on how thick the top is. Anything over 1/4" will sound more like a solid body, but even a thin rear or top cap can do wondrous things for the sound standing in front of an amp.

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^^^ I assumed it was antique wood. I consider a tree to be a living thing up to that point of harvesting. Carpenters work with dead wood, so the clock for him starts at harvesting. Once you build it into something then that clock starts as a date of manufacturer.

 

Unlikely anyone is still around after 100 years to see when it was planted. I'm guessing you figured they just cut a tree down recently and counted the rings? Those trees do grow to be that old. The ones at my grandparents were very old and at lest 4" across at the base and maybe 70' high or more?

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...When I was in Nashville we visited the home of Andrew Jackson. On display there was a Les Paul that Gibson had made from an old hickory tree from the homesite.

 

 

I believe there were 150 of these made. It was the Gibson Old Hickory Les Paul.

 

I've seen an Old Hickory LP once, inside a glass case. From the looks of it, I suspect it weighed plenty.

 

 

 

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I'm not sure where the wood is coming from but in Pennsylvania all the chestnut trees died about 100 years ago from a blight.

I'm guessing 100 year old lumber not fresh lumber from a 100 yr old tree.

 

 

If it's freshly felled, it could be chestnut oak, not chestnut.

 

 

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