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Wood choices and considerations

#182
mrperkolator said:
I wish more engineering time could go into bamboo.... that stuff could solve a lot of sustainability issues. I've tried helping a friend get rid of it once in his yard....
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A few thoughts from my limited experience working with bamboo. There are at least two engineering problems here, one of which is properties of the bamboo cane itself, and the other is how the bamboo is formed into larger boards.

There has been quite a lot of work done on quantifying bamboo properties. But the word bamboo covers hundreds of species with wildly varying properties, some of which might be as good or better than wood for our purposes, but a lot are worse. So if you go out and just buy something labelled bamboo, who knows what you're going to get. We would have to buy specific species or have some kind of a standard where you could specify 'Grade A' bamboo and know that it was going to be of a minimum strength. Considering that bamboo is commonly used for construction scaffolding in developed countries in Asia, I suspect that such standards do already exist and are called up by building codes, but I haven't seen them used here.

The other problem is that bamboo's native form as a hollow tube is great for making flutes but not so useful for building stringed instruments. Commercially it's formed into planks by ripping it into strips and gluing them up in parallel, like the flooring I'm using for my EUB project, or into something like Oriented Strand Board, and probably into other forms that I haven't seen. But the details of how that composite board is made has a big effect on the appearance and bulk properties of the final product. For example, the stuff I'm using has a lot of voids in the interior layers, which is fine for a floor but kind of annoying for a musical instrument. And who knows what adhesive they used and whether it will creep under load.
 
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#184
mrperkolator said:
I'm not sure of the legalities of it... some states dont allow anything close. But from a business perspective, I bet it'd sell. From a quick google search it seems to be sustainable too. Easy way to try it would be an alder body with hemp top....
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It's legal now in the US to use hemp in commercial products as long as the finished products don't run afoul of federal drug laws. Prior to a few years ago, it wasn't legal to make products or byproducts from regulated substances even if those products were not intoxicating or harmful. It's a radical change in regulation that I wish was being capitalized on more broadly than CBD candy, but I guess there's more profit to be made there than in developing alternatives to wood products.
 
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#185
ardgedee said:
It's legal now in the US to use hemp in commercial products as long as the finished products don't run afoul of federal drug laws. Prior to a few years ago, it wasn't legal to make products or byproducts from regulated substances even if those products were not intoxicating or harmful. It's a radical change in regulation that I wish was being capitalized on more broadly than CBD candy, but I guess there's more profit to be made there than in developing alternatives to wood products.
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I figured there was something out there like this. I have a few questions about international travel as well...

but yeah, it would be cool to see more of it.
 
#186
Silly US "legalities" aside, hempwood is pretty dense at 55-60lbs/ft3 and a janka of 2200, but I've not been able to find modulus of elasticity info, which tells me that it's not great or it would be front and center in their ad copy and literature. They talk about flooring a lot so that sounds more like what they are gearing toward. The "grain" looks really cool IMHO and might make for an interesting top or top/back combo, inlays, headstock plate, etc.
https://hempwood.com/lumber/

Edit, I just got all excited about it and tried to buy a board, but the website is USA sales only. :( I've made an inquiry instead to see if they have any canadian distributors yet.
 
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#188
Beej said:
Silly US "legalities" aside, hempwood is pretty dense at 55-60lbs/ft3 and a janka of 2200, but I've not been able to find modulus of elasticity info, which tells me that it's not great or it would be front and center in their ad copy and literature...
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We've been reading the same PDFs. I also looked for MOE in vain. The flooring market probably only cares about hardness and appearance.

In some photos, the strands are sort of linearly-oriented, and in others, random. The random-oriented stuff looks way too much like OSB to my eye. The high density probably has a lot to do with the binder, described as "soy-protein and "cross-linking binders". Some kind of thermosetting resin, I'd guess.

Mildly curious...
 
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#191
I learned some new things reading this thread, so thanks to all.
I'm very agnostic to the tonewood debate, feeling in a solidbody it's a small effect and in a biological product will vary piece to piece more than can be ascribed to a particular species. But what do I know?

I love the look of this and want to make a similar guitar body. Just because and I have a nice maple neck.
 
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#192
well... there's something to be said for mechanical properties. balsa wood is too soft to make a decent bass. But if you know how to strengthen it similar to alder to make a bass... well I'm all ears. I've tried to guide (for my own curiosity) this thread down the line of "interesting wood discussion" instead of "tonewood discussion."

for the future's sake.... I think we need to have healthy discussions about alternative and sustainable wood practice for instrument manufacturing.
 
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#194
@Snert that's a cool video btw. the way he flipped the pattern for the plywood probably helped with stability too. I wonder how it'll hold up after a few seasons. Wet wood can warp and all. It's really cool idea. might make a cheap body to throw a top on.
 
#196
Snert said:
One question re the black detail veneers. I presume it really doesn't matter what wood it is in them; am I right? I can get the dyed poplar you used, but the shipping is 50% more than the cost. I can get hoop pine locally very cheap and can dye it, so I'm hoping that will be fine for such teeny thin strips.
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I thought this was a fitting question for discussion here, so I quoted it. In my limited understanding, it should be fine.
 
#197
mrperkolator said:
I thought this was a fitting question for discussion here, so I quoted it. In my limited understanding, it should be fine.
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Thanks. You had me confused for a moment wondering 'did I post that here?' until my sleep deprived brain worked it out. I read a lot of build threads yesterday, intending for it to be a linear progression until links had me hareing all over the LC.
The same supplier has a ton of other veneers at decent money so I might experiment with some as detail lines in maybe build 2 or 3.
 
#198
Any wood that's suitable for veneers should be fine. The trick if you're trying to do it yourself is to get the dye to penetrate the full veneer, otherwise you end up with a thin fuzzy white line in between two thin colored lines instead of just a thin colored line.

Commercially dyed veneers are dyed on a vacuum table so the color penetrates the entire veneer.
 
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