South African Mahogany

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My ideal necks are the SG and hiway 1 strat I have. Both are really similar to play, just the right thickness for me. I do have a palm bay with a super think neck thats quite good to play, but prefer the other two.

Yeah I was thinking flat channel, mainly coz I dont have the setup to route a curved channel ala Les Paul, plus making the fillet would be a hell of a lot easier too  :D

I was going to make my own fretboard, I have the wire and all that. I was going to make a template for the radius to hold against it and sight it, dont know how practicle that is but its better than nothing. My main issue is deciding which wood to use, lol! I have the stunning iroko, some loverly maple and some two tone cherry. The cherry is quite a soft wood, so thats my last choice tbh. The iroko will be a pain to cut but would be quite cool.  :lol:  And obviously the maple would tie in with the mahogany/maple neck I'm working on, so thats my first choice.

I did buy a premade ebony fretboard years back, but it warped and split IIRC. Got bunged somehow, despite the fact I could have used it for fret markers instead of the ol mother o pearl. And on maple I think that would have worked quite well.

[WezV]

Maple necks are probably easiest to practice on, enough resistance to stop you carving right through in one good stroke but still relatively easy.

I meant a board like this, you still have to taper and fret it :

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bodies,_necks,_wood/Electric_guitar:_Fingerboards/25_Scale_Fingerboard_-_12_Radius.html

And for radiusing a flat fretboard  blank these are very helpfull:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Fretting_supplies/Leveling/2/Fretboard_Radius-sanding_Blocks.html


Ebano does split quite easily when fretting, its why not many of the big manufactures use it, its also getting harder to find trees that are big enough to get planks that are straight grained, i had afew eebony boards warp on me.

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Last time I read about it (5 or so years back tbh) ebony was getting a bit to rare. Theres a moral concern with using a wood like that if it is becoming endangered, I reckon.  :roll:

Cheers for the link. Stewmac seems quite cool, though I dont have a credit card so would be paying via cheque to a uk company if I needed it. I think my scale was 25.5", so this is more my style:
link

[WezV]

I like to get wood from suppliers i know are using as much of the tree as possible, waste is the main problem

here is a little article about certified honduran mahogany, yes it costs more but it is worth it.

http://www.earthsourcewood.com/bulletin1.htm

Since most wood we use comes from less economically developed countries there is always some over exploitation of the natural resources

Heres a greenpeace pamflet on woods:

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/6759.pdf

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Never been too into Greenpeace, but they have their uses  :lol:

Cheers for that, I'll try and read that tonight!  :D