First of all: I got lots of useful infornation on this site, so I'm very thankful to all of you.

 

I'm currently finishing my second build (http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/dsc0000139?context=user) which has a pine neck, so I'll try it out. But anyway, I'd like to know your opinions about that wood. It's weak and too soft but it's also easy to find (a friend of mine works with it, so I can get lots of pieces).

 

Is there any use I can give to it on my next guits, which hopefully will increase their quality? I think it might work pretty fine to make the sides of the bodies if I don't get proper cigar boxes.

 

That neck on the pic got totally bowed after getting it home, but some hours under the sun got it back straight...

 

Any advice? Thx!

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I just dont think that is the optimum wood to use for a neck. Unless perhaps you added a truss rod. For all the work that goes into the guitar, id say invest in a better wood for the neck. A 1x2 oak piece at home depot is under $10.  

The next one will be built on a better wood. But since I can get pieces of pine for free I was wondering how could I use them.

only use hardwood for the neck not pine, American oak is a popular choice, almost unbendable and almost like metal to cut and drill! (-:

Yes, I've done a pine neck too. It sounded neat, kind of warm and growly, but it wasn't very stable. Laminating boards together might be something worth experimenting with. Either several pine boards, or pine + a hardwood.

In general though, I would leave pine for bodies and stick to hardwoods for necks. There is a sort of underground movement with Telecaster players to have pine bodies (like the original model). They call them Pinecasters.

A cigar box body adds the same sort of warmth that a pine body would.

Mine is pine neck with a sort of pine fretboard glued on top. I hope that provides some strenght to the whole piece.

Not so underground anymore, you can buy a Squier classic vibe tele with the pine body in your local music store. I have heard they are as good as the original.  

Berengario,

I use pine for the inner frame to my homemade boxes. The top, back and sides are made from 3/16" 3-ply lauan plywood, which has a tonal quality similar to mahogany. My necks are indeed laminated, being also made from 3/4" width 5-ply plywood, laminated together to make approx 1-1/2" wide necks. They're amazingly strong and stiff, and have not bowed at all, even using the heaviest strings from a set of bronze Mediums. I set them up so the plies face upward, with no fingerboard.

If you're gonna use pine, indeed try laminating several ieces, making sure that the the plies face upward, and the grain is crossing. At minimum, try a 3-ply pine neck. Better would be for the middle ply to be a hardwood. Or use a metal shower rod for a neck.

I've used "pine" for a couple of builds. The first was a canjo, and the pine board I used was given to me by the contractor who was finishing out our flat here in Shenzhen, China. The wood was very easy to work with and the resulting instrument was acceptable. It did however "ding" quite easily, which is to say each time it got banged around, it left a mark in the wood. So, I think a few coats of polyurethane, or something similar to toughen up the finish would be advisable. On my second pine wood neck instrument, a CBG, I used a board from the crate that our dish washer came in. This wood also looked to be pine, but it was harder wood than the "pine" wood of the first instrument. So, I'm thinking that "pine" is a fairly generic name for a "class" of woods, and individual species of pine must have softer or harder wood than other species, so caveat emptor (buyer beware). The other thing I discovered about the pine wood I used in the second instrument (CBG) was that the wood was still "green", which is to say it was sappy and the finished neck proved very sticky and not so nice to play. I ended up spray painting it black to solve the stickiness problem. But after that I use hard wood, usually cherry or sapelli wood which is readily available here in dimensions I can easily use. I like these two woods because they are kind of pretty and they are not too hard (unlike oak) to work with using hand tools. I normally laminate 6 or 7 slats of cherry (or sapelli) wood together to form my laminated necks for 3-stringers. Lately, I have been building necks using a center core of "red beech" which is harder than cherry or sapelli, and which results in a laminated neck that has a nicer tone to it as compared to my earlier laminated necks. Like "Oily", I laminate my necks with the individual slats oriented "vertically", that is standing on the thinnest side. Laminating necks this way results in a much stronger neck as compared to laminating the slats together horizontally, as I've made them both ways and have tested the results. Also, laminated necks seem much stronger than using a single piece of wood. So, pine wood might make for a good neck, but you want to find as hard a pinewood as you can find, make sure the wood is properly dried, and if you laminate several boards together (oriented vertically), then you have a pretty good chance of making a good neck, at least for 3- and 4-stringer CBGs.

-Rand.

I use old growth southern yellow pine glued vertically  and they will take six strings with no problem

Those old growth pine necks are beautiful ! Where do you find that? I am from GA and we call that heart pine. It usually comes from reclaimed supplies. Old house , old box car floorboards , old factories. I built a set of kitchen cabinets out of that stuff 20 years ago, the shop owner said it was the most expensive wood he had ever bought. All I know is our staple guns could not shoot into it and it dulled the crap out of our saw blades and chewed up the planer knives :-)
Old Man Vinegar
Yep, Chip's got it exactly! I bet those necks are super strong. How do they sound tonewise?

I've been using poplar for necks...easy to work with, more than strong enough for a 3-string build, and it's about $0.75 a foot. Oak is nice but I'm too impatient for it, being from the "get this thing finished and start playing it" side of the tracks. Plus, I use mostly hand tools, which is a factor. I use oak for bridges, though; I've got a Dremel tool...

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