Required tools for building own fingerboards?

[putnamm]

For those of you who build fretboards out of green wood, rough lumber, "found" wood, etc... What dimensions do you cut your initial billets to to store them for drying? I'm dealing specifically with Bois d'arc. I have a variety: logs, half-logs, already milled boards, etc.

[peter.coombe]

That really depends on the wood. How much it is likely to shrink and warp and the accuracy of the cut will determine how much extra wood you need to cut. In my case the logs were small and had been drying for many years so they were not likely to move very much at all. The main problem was keeping the cut straight because a fence was useless because the log varied in size and had knotty bits that bulged out. The trees are only small. It was also very hard wood so the blade was stuffed completely after a few cuts. You can cut on a saw bench, but you need a big saw and it gets dangerous so you had better be well set up for that sort of thing. Better done by a saw mill, but they might not like it when their blade goes blunt. The size of the log and the amount of rot down the center determined how wide I cut the blanks so that they were quarter sawn. If you do this sort of thing you will soon discover that there is an enormous amount of waste wood. I am guessing but I would estimate the yield would not be more than 20% at best. With the imperfect logs I had it was probably more like 10% so there was a lot of firewood. You need to be keen to do this sort of thing, or else the wood is unique. In my case the wood was unique, could not fingerboards made from it any other way. Beautiful dark reddish golden brown with a bit of figure. It is not a commercially logged species.