A lot of credit is given to the wood you choose in guitar making. Certain combinations or "recipes" of woods are thought to effect all sorts of elements of the sound production of a musical instrument. Different species and different pieces of the same species, even if cut from the same tree, can all have very different acoustic qualities.
I scour my super secret sources on a fairly regular basis for discarded and reclaimed wood, and have put together a pretty great collection old, well seasoned wood from trees most likely felled most likely long before I was born.
Over the last several years I've been doing finish carpentry work on my dad's garage. I've been working with this Beetle Kill Blue Pine for most of the project. This wood got realitivly cheap and plentiful a few years ago to control this beetle
Throughout this project I've been squirreling away some of the better looking/more sonorous pieces.
I had been saving a particularly holey piece for an electric guitar top and after finding a nice old wide-grain piece of fir for the back I started to assemble all the parts.
I decided to change things up with the inlays on this one and break the pieces instead of carefully cutting them out and it made for a really interesting effect.
I had some nice birdseye maple left from a pervious guitar to make the neck. I really like birdeye maple, its one of my favorite looking woods and take polishes so well.
I got these wood covered dominger pickups off ebay a couple years ago knowing I would build them into something at some point and this seemed like the perfect project to use them on.
I routed most of the back out and except for the upper bouts and a center block for the pickups and bridge to mount to.
To go with the re-use theme of this guitar found some Hagstrom tuners, a strange hardtail bridge, and these wonderful old wooden radio knobs all off ebay.
I also needed rings for the pickups to mount to, so I them out of cherry scraps from another project. This took some doing to get them to fit properly but i was really pleased with the way they came out.
I've been using tru-oil gunstock finish for the last few instrument and really like how easy it is to apply and the wonderful results it gives you. I think it really made this guitar glow.
Lastly I needed to make a panel to cover the large access in the back. I got several boards of this old, reclaimed, very tight grained, wavy pine that I've been setting aside to make acoustic tops out of. I decided to follow the style of the fingerboard inlays and break some more pieces into sort of poppy-like flower shapes. I made the stems from a new process I've been experimenting with using acrylic filler mixed with watercolor.
Soon I'll make a video so whoever is interested can hear the guitar and see some more of its features. Here is a small gallery of the guitar in all of its finished and assembled glory.
It is a wonderful sounding and playing guitar and my favorite to date
*Update*
Here is a video of me demoing the guitar, enjoy: