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Thread: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

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    Default Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    I have some logs that I want to process in to blanks for fingerboards. Is there a particular sawing method that is preferable--quartersawn, etc. Thanks.

    (P.S. - I may have posted this same question months ago but upon searching the forums I could not find it.)

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    Registered User Wizard1962's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    I could be wrong, but I believe quarter-sawn cuts. That's what I did years ago when I was building an acoustic guitar for myself.

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    Vertical grain ("quartered") is best because it is generally more dimensionally stable and thus there is less likelihood of stress in glue joints, protruding frets ends, splits and cracks, and other problems brought on by wood movement.
    What kind of wood (species) are you sawing?

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    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    I guess if it's well quartered and stable, then the neck should be as well? Would the small amount of movement of a flat sawn neck cause any problems against the stable fretboard? I haven't built many and probably haven't considered these questions before.
    Richard Hutchings

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dick Hutchings View Post
    I guess if it's well quartered and stable, then the neck should be as well? Would the small amount of movement of a flat sawn neck cause any problems against the stable fretboard? I haven't built many and probably haven't considered these questions before.
    There's a bit of stuff going on here. All woods move with changes in moisture content, and all woods move differently in different directions of the grain. It is universal that woods shrink and swell more on the tangential surface (flatsawn) than the radial surface (quartered). Some woods have a higher TR ratio (tangential to radial ratio) and are thus considered less stable than woods with lower TR ratio. That is not as important in a fingerboard to neck joint as the match between the two surfaces. In other words, if the wood of the neck moves more or less than the wood of the fingerboard there will be times of stress in the glue joint. Generally, we like to glue raidal surfaces to radial surfaces, or tangential surfaces to tangential surfaces rather than tangential to radial, but it really comes down to how much the different woods move in relation to one another, so if we are gluing an ebony 'board to a mahogany neck we can look up the shrinkage for mahogany and compare it to ebony. The numbers will probably be so different that we'll find that the difference between gluing radial surfaces as opposed to tangential surfaces doesn't make a huge difference, especially if we are using a "flatsawn" ebony 'board as most available ones are these days.

    There is a lot of published info about this stuff and you can read pages and pages about wood movement, wood stability and how it all relates to glue joints and other joints. It can also make you realize how much we do "wrong" when building instruments and why they need to be so well taken care of to prevent damage from wood movement.

  6. #6

    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by sunburst View Post
    Vertical grain ("quartered") is best because it is generally more dimensionally stable and thus there is less likelihood of stress in glue joints, protruding frets ends, splits and cracks, and other problems brought on by wood movement.
    What kind of wood (species) are you sawing?
    It's bois d'arc. I was lucky enough to visit a guy here in Texas who actually grows orchards of the stuff (believe it or not; long story...) and harvest a bit that he allowed me to have. The longer, more slender pieces I'm saving to make hunting bows. But I have some thicker shorter logs and thought I'd use them for fretboards. I've got a backstock of some pretty good walnut, too, and I thought the bois d'arc with walnut back/neck/sides might be really pretty. But I'm an amateur, so that may all be completely ridiculous.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    The only thing to add to John’s excellent description is that the saving grace for necks is that they are narrow, so the cross-grain shrinkage problems that might ruin a wide lamination are less, so what matters more is the overall straightness of the assembly in especially one direction, bowing. That said, I’ve noticed that my generally very old mandolins seem to have longer frets than when they were new, and as I don’t see brass growing with time, I have to assume that even acceptably seasoned wood can continue to shrink over time, possibly by factors unrelated to ambient humidity.
    Also, if you think about it, veneers and plywood, crossing grain directions, should hardly ever work, but mostly it does. I don’t recommend thinking about it for too long.

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is there a particular method for sawing fingerboard wood?

    We used a bit of osage orange at Troublesome Creek (before Covid prematurely ended my contract there). It is a good guitar wood and makes good fingerboards. Since you have big enough logs and the option to use vertical grain, I would definitely make the 'boards quartered.

    Though we have quite a few osage trees here on our property they are all of shrubby form with multiple stems slanting out. I'd like to have some with straight grain to make go-bars but nothing growing here is really suitable.

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