structural wood question ( I swear its not about tone)

It's better not to start off with a neck that will have stressed pieces on it, so I would suggest you get them flat BEFORE you glue them up and not use clamping pressure/glue to hold them in place.

I recently made my first neck out of white ash. I was lucky enough to find very straight grained pieces and the outter laminates are incredibly consistent in density ...you know, ash most of the time has those different areas where it's less dense that give it that distinctive grain look, these don't have that.

 

constantly! jointer and planer are your friends.

 

The issue you come up with in this scenario is that the wood is then under tension. This could cause movement issues later on, I'd think...

 

I doubt that you could ever get a bowed piece of wood back straight again. As wilse® said. Jointer and planer

 

I'd say trueing it up with jointer/planer is best way to go since it takes the stress outwithout introducing new one like with bending. Watch for grain orientation too.

 

if the wood is only an inch thick and you try to plane out a bow...you might not have very much wood left...

 

It is a safe bet, after all it is the least expensive part of the process. Just get some nice straight wood.

 

Look at it this way:
when you string up a bass, the strings put some forward bow into the neck. We have basses from the 50's still playing well today. That wood has held its natural straightness, under tension, for all these years.
There's no easy way to straighten these pieces.

 

Those wore 1 piece necks take that in to consideration too..
He is talking about laminates

 

You could get an straight piece of iron, wet the pieces in warm water overnight and clamp it to the wood against the straight piece. It should straighten out (heck, if you can bend wood that way, why not straighten it). I've only done it with birch, but I has able to put a 180 degree bend (radius about 7 cm) in a 3 mm thick piece.

 

yeah, side's on acoustic stay stressed for years