Comment by g0gzs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by g0gzs | Hacker News Reader

Long time lurker here, first time poster. I got pulled into the rabbit hole of building guitars at home during the covid lockdowns. My first build used traditional "tonewoods" (mahogany, ebony, rosewood etc.) and while purchasing materials for my second build, I stumbled upon bamboo boards on a German wood retailed shop.

Compared the properties to the wood I wanted to use for parts of it (mainly the core/neck and fretboard) and decided to go for it.

So the second build [1] is 40ish % bamboo with purpleheart veneers in between layers of bamboo and purpleheart/olive for the body. Next build will be around 80% bamboo. Trying to source some strand woven bamboo boards to try them out as fretboards as well, but for a part time builder like me, getting such small quantities of bamboo boards is rather hard.

But yeah, fascinating material even outside of construction use. The boards I used for the guitar builds were nice to work with, easy to sand and finish (using wipe on poly).

[1] https://i.imgur.com/fUyxd7n.jpg

One of the themes in this thread is reminding people that it's not actually bamboo, it's a bamboo composite--sort of like plywood. I doesn't work without petrochemical glues.

I think it's fairer to say your build is 40%-ish bamboo composite. When we're calling it bamboo we're doing that industry's greenwashing marketing for them.

Cool guitar!

I've noticed more and more "glue" boards - even beyond the classic MDF or plywood - such as "Edge Glued" boards.

Lots of the Ikea "wood" furniture is made this way, some apparently from relatively small scraps.

Some of the terms being used are getting more and more ‘artistic’ too - I’ve seen a lot more use of the term ‘manufactured wood’ for instance, and like you’re noting hybrid ‘core is mdf, edges are real wood, top is veneer’ type stuff that you have to dig to find out, and that is way more complicated than the ‘traditional’ mdf+veneer junk.

The edge-glued boards at Menards are quite good - they're foot wide "shelves" if you will made from glued 4 inch wide pieces; they work and are roughly as strong as normal boards at a cheaper price - and come finished.

Edge-gluing's one technique you'll find in woodworking books, for making large surfaces. Desktops or table tops made out of a single piece of lumber are wicked expensive, or practically impossible once you reach a certain size, so you join a bunch of smaller boards to make it happen. The really cheap & easy version of this skips the gluing and just frames them so they're smushed together, leaving visible seams and gaps like a slightly-tighter version of an outdoor picnic table (I've even seen this look imitated by solid table tops made from particle board and veneer, which... WTF? Those seams are crumb-traps! They make dealing cards a pain in the ass! Why would you go out of your way to have them?), but the better kind involves gluing.

I used one of their planed, unfinished edge-glued boards when I built my kid's bassinet. I was impressed by the uniform quality; it was almost as if it was a single board. Thanks Menards! (Full disclosure, my employer is technically a competitor, but we don't sell lumber.)

If the mentioned bamboo composite is 95% bamboo and 5% glue (going by comment from hwillis), isn't it fair to say it's 40%-ish bamboo?

5% glue is far from something like carbon composite, where most content is epoxy. Common wood surface treatment is probably more than 5%, yet we don't call it a wood composite.

IMO, total surface sealant makes more of a material difference than 5% glue on the inside.

that would be 38% bamboo then.

It's within error bounds, so more proper to say 40% (ish), which is kind of the point.

I appreciate the viewpoint, but we don't call plywood "wood" because it isn't wood. If we were to develop a metric, the % of mass of the finished product that isn't wood would be a reasonable one.

The problem with saying it's 38% bamboo is it implies it's in some meaningful sense made out of bamboo. It's not. There isn't a way to go in there and cut out a piece and have it be bamboo--unless it's really, really small (maybe). Whereas it's totally possible to take a piece of wood from an old piece of furniture, surface it four sides, and have essentially wood (albeit a little smaller).

I think also that you're a little off on two things: 1, common wood surface treatments are < 5%, and 2, composites vary but 60/40 fiber/resin by mass is a reasonable place to start.

There's a whole thing on YouTube of gluing together various wood-like materials and turning them on a lathe.[1] Liquid epoxy is often involved.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDQz4H7tz6Fwu5_5rg4W6pA

Awesome looking guitar!

I noticed you use the Planet Waves tuners. I love those as well, they're much more practical as they cut the strings for you. I wonder why they don't make them in more traditional colors, or why other manufacturers don't provide similar solutions. Everyone else makes just regular and locking tuners, not the locking-and-cutting tuners.

For a performing amateur musician, the ability to change your string quicker and without having to carry extra tools is certainly beneficial, and people spend a lot of time fretting about much less important details in their guitars.

I do like the current trend in youtube guitar videos talking more about playability, usability and reliability, and doing things like switching jacks or nuts, instead of endless pickup sound comparisons.

Yeah, I was looking into buying a new instrument, then youtube started suggesting all those build videos. Eventually found the project guitar web/forums and went for it. Probably my favorite side projects so far.

The original klusons tuners on the strats, you don't cut the strings at all.

https://www.amazon.ca/Kluson-SD9105MN-Vintage-Tuning-Machine...

May I ask what you paid in the end for the bamboo you used? I went down the same rabbit hole some time ago and in the end went with oak as it was a lot more affordable (for my student budget back then).

121x20 cm board, 20mm thick was around 22 EUR + shipping. The shop I bought it from had 3 kinds of bamboo boards (normal, dark and some "figured" made up of dark and light stripes) but currently sell only the figured.

I guess I was looking in the wrong places ... or the wrong construction. 20 mm thick sounds like it was only the core with more layers.

In the end I went with some 150x4cm oak strips of varying width from the left-overs bin of a wood vendor. 5€ the piece was a pretty good deal back then.

Yeah, I cut the board I ordered into 4 stripes, rotated them for 90 degrees and glued back together with purpleheart veneer in between, to get the core/neck part.

I really wanna build one almost completely from bamboo (with various veneers to get some accents/lines in) but it's really hard to source boards now. Meh... but yeah, who would have thought that "tonegrass" would become a term someday haha.

> core/neck

I saw the picture above, looks very good!

> tone grass

I honestly believe that the key to building a good guitar is stiffness ... This will create a very high pitched instrument, as it does not lose the high frequencies in the wood. But that can be sorted out later vis EQing

I always thought that hardness is most important in a fretboard, is bamboo hard enough for this? I have a Parker guitar with a glass composite fretboard (carbon glass they call it) and it’s the best part of the guitar for playability.

I don’t know if hardness is the best criteria. I have both rosewood and ebony fretboards on my basses and they feel differently and longevity seems only loosely affected. I’m not slamming down hard on the wood like what happens in flooring though and maybe other players are much rougher than myself.

The bamboo boards I ordered had a higher density than ebony (1100 kg/m^3 for bamboo vs. 955 kg/m^3 for ebony) and according to the suppliers site, they are roughly the same Janka hardness. That's why I went for it.

Keep in mind these aren’t what you would get if you cut down some bamboo and used them. They’re usually processed, compressed, and a high % by weight of glue or epoxy. Many of them are harder and tougher than all but a tiny percent of exotic hard woods.

wow that picture of your guitar is awesome, do you have a blog other place where we can see your work?

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