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Post subject: quarter sawn neck
Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:30 pm
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What exactly is a quarter-sawn neck?? Ive seen them, and know they look different. I'm assuming it's how they cut the wood? Do they cut it diagonally or something????


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:56 pm
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Jackson USA guitars have quartersawn necks. Maybe its all in the neck design, in this case, the way Jackson necks are designed. Just a guess, so I could be terribly wrong. :?


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:16 pm
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Quartersawn necks are known to be stiffer ... I actually saw a video of a fender custom guitar they made with quartersawn wood on this website..
Quartersawn boards are created by first cutting a log into quarters and then creating a series of parallel cuts perpendicular to the tree's rings. The yield is not as substantial as in plainsawing but much greater than in riftsawing. The grain in quartersawn wood is relatively consistent, and therefore the end product is stable and often preferred by woodworkers and furniture-makers. Quartersawn wood may include medullary rays and wavy grain patterns that some people prefer to the figures that are revealed with alternative sawing methods......
:D


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:03 pm
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There it is.. Thanks :idea:


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:51 pm
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Just for the heck of it I've drawn a little diagram which might make it clearer. It shows where in the tree trunk the different guitar neck blanks will have been cut from. (The black shape is a cross section of a neck, heel end on, fingerboard upwards.)

Image

You can see that the direction the tree rings take through the cross section of the neck are different depending upon whether it is flat sawn or quarter sawn. People such as Eric Johnson like the idea of quarter sawn wood because the rings run at a tangent to the tension exerted on the neck by the strings and so arguably counteract it better. Hence the idea that quarter sawn necks are stiffer.

Most commercial timber is flat sawn. Other types of cut take vastly longer to set up on the sawing machines timber mills use and make them prohibitively expensive to produce. (As I discovered when I first had a tree trunk sawn at my local saw mill...)

You can see that a small proportion of a flat sawn log is in fact effectively quarter sawn in any case. This is the material that finds its way into Eric Johnson's signature guitar necks.

In theory the necks the rest of us use are flat sawn - however, as you can see from the diagram most of the wood that comes out of a log is in between the two cuts. And if we take off the neck of most of our Strats and look end on at the heel we usually see that the tree rings run neither parallel to the fingerboard (flat sawn) nor at right angles to it (quarter sawn), but at something of a slant. In real life, most of the time it doesn't matter at all. The timber is quite strong enough to cope.

Seems to be my day for posting about timber...

Cheers - C


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:08 pm
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Ceri has got it again. Here is a little more info.

Quarter Sawn Lumber

Just how a log is cut into lumber has a large influence on the quality of the finished product. When a sawyer saws a log, usually the goal is to obtain the largest volume of useable wood in the shortest length of time. This results in mostly plank-sawn lumber that services the high volume wood industry.Quarter sawing produces boards cut on the radius rather than on the tangent (plank sawn). It is slower to produce at the sawmill but does result in a higher yield from each log.

Quarter sawn wood has two distinct advantages over from plank-sawn wood.

Structurally it has a much higher level of dimensional stability during the drying process and its life thereafter. In other words it is much less likely to bow, warp, or twist. And it is stronger.
In addition to the structural advantages, many species display a beautiful pattern of rays that is sought after by woodworkers and cabinetmakers.
If you require dimensionally stable wood for glued up panels, tabletops or any cabinetwork that requires stability and beauty, quarter sawn will result in the highest quality finished products.

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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:21 pm
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cvilleira wrote:
Just how a log is cut into lumber has a large influence on the quality of the finished product. When a sawyer saws a log, usually the goal is to obtain the largest volume of useable wood in the shortest length of time. This results in mostly plank-sawn lumber that services the high volume wood industry.Quarter sawing produces boards cut on the radius rather than on the tangent (plank sawn). It is slower to produce at the sawmill but does result in a higher yield from each log...


'Zactly, good post.

The problem is, most lumber yards can't be bothered to deal in fancy cuts. They just want to churn out acres of slab sawn stuff for the building trade.

I spend half my fortnight in the country and have a saw mill less than a mile up the lane, run by a nice gentleman who I know a little. I've taken a couple of tree trunks to him to be cut for future guitar projects. First time I did it I grandly asked for my tree to be quarter sawn. He smiled at me benevolently, with a look that unspoken said, "Fella, you obviously think you know all the words. But you've a thing or two to learn." Out loud he merely asked how thick I'd like my wood slab sawn.

Oh well. I have some ash and some pear that should be nearly finished seasoning by now. Though I haven't dared to look at it for a long time, in case it has warped or split beyond worth...

Cheers - C


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:25 pm
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cvilleira wrote:
Quarter sawing produces boards cut on the radius rather than on the tangent (plank sawn). It is slower to produce at the sawmill but does result in a higher yield from each log.


Wheyhey
I knew global warming and chopping down the rainforest's was a good thing, WERE IN FOR MORE QUATERSAWN NECKS. On the downside were gonna have to pay for em.

Thankyou for Ceri and CVillera.

i just found a £230 indian jackson with a quatersawn neck and a flatsawn headstock scarfed onto it, im a happy chappy :D .


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:03 pm
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Ceri wrote:
ImageCheers - C


Thank you for the picture! Very helpful.

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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:08 pm
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Ceri I used to look for places that are getting rid a lumber for a good deal. That and old barns you would not believe the stuff we have found in barns. Last year we found an old Bar, Brass foot rails an all and over a dozen brass taps. plus it had a hack of about 30 boards between 10 to 16 foot half of which were American Chestnut that was about 100 years old. Best part we got it free for clearing the barn to be torn down. Sold the bar to a cabinet guy in Westminster still have the brass foot rail at Father inlaws and the Chestnut is in the wood shed over there. Week end adventures :D Father inlaw used to make Furniture on the side in his Home shop until health probs last year so not much recently.

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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:18 pm
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cvilleira wrote:
the Chestnut is in the wood shed over there.


Oh, man! Got any plans for that chestnut? That sounds great.

I've heard of people getting timber from old battle ships and liners that were being broken up. Be amazingly cool to have a guitar built from wood out of a famous ship.

Trouble is, these days most ship breaking happens in South East Asia, which ain't exactly convenient. And the QE2 just took it's last voyage - but it's now going to Dubai to become a floating hotel, so no dice there...

Strange thing: when I look in junk yards all I find is... junk.

:? - C

PS - BTW, that father-in-law sounds like a handy fella to have around...


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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:40 pm
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Ceri wrote:
cvilleira wrote:
the Chestnut is in the wood shed over there.


Oh, man! Got any plans for that chestnut? That sounds great.

I've heard of people getting timber from old battle ships and liners that were being broken up. Be amazingly cool to have a guitar built from wood out of a famous ship.

Trouble is, these days most ship breaking happens in South East Asia, which ain't exactly convenient. And the QE2 just took it's last voyage - but it's now going to Dubai to become a floating hotel, so no dice there...

Strange thing: when I look in junk yards all I find is... junk.

:? - C

PS - BTW, that father-in-law sounds like a handy fella to have around...

The Chestnut boards are are being saved. I have had some good offers for it from some Funiture makers but since the blight they got some value because of there size. My Father inlaw has a gold mine of tools in his wood shop. He has a Gemini Duplicater that I made two Gun stocks on and I made a Ash Tele body for someone back about 3 months ago. Now that a neat machine. One day they will all be with me because Sister inlaw and her other Half don't do a thing.

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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:54 pm
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Great picture Ceri!

The "in between" woods are called rift-sawn, I believe.

The quarter sawn has grain going 90 degrees.
Flat (or plain) sawn has grain going 0 (or 180 degrees).

The "in between" grain angles are what you usually see in Fender necks.

More info on wood cutting: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-quartersawn-wood.htm

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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:06 pm
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cvilleira wrote:
He has a Gemini Duplicater that I made two Gun stocks on and I made a Ash Tele body for someone back about 3 months ago. Now that a neat machine.


Hey cvilleira; I'd be seriously interested to see pictures of that machine. That arouses my curiosity in so many ways!

orvilleowner wrote:
The "in between" woods are called rift-sawn, I believe.

...

More info on wood cutting: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-quartersawn-wood.htm


Riftsawn - yes, that rings a bell. I've never had the honor of finding anything other than diagonal rings on a neck heel when unbolted (one day I'll have an EJ sig; one day...). However, I've also never actually met a warped neck face-to-face, so I suspect some people's fears about stability are usually a little overstated.

That wisegeek link is also a good one. Nobody has an excuse for not knowing about this stuff after that!

Cheers - C


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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 6:26 pm
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Ceri wrote:
That wisegeek link is also a good one. Nobody has an excuse for not knowing about this stuff after that!


Actually, there seems to be some ambiguity in the use of those terms. 1) They are used to indicate how a log is cut up into boards, and 2) they are used to indicate the angle of the grain through the boards.

That ambiguity can easiiy lead to misunderstanding, confusion and misuse depending on who's talking and the context.

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