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New here.. Can I use this pecan for a body and fingerboard?
Building my first guitar and trying to use wood sourced locally. Got some black walnut and some pecan from my local saw mill. This is also my first time using rough lumber.
Now that I have this piece of pecan cleaned up a bit, it looks like it is riddled with cracks. I wanted to use it for body/back since it sounds like pecan is very similar to ash in a lot of ways. Possibly also fretboard?
Is this a nonstarter, or should I start cutting and see what happens?
I’m asking first because I’m hesitant to waste and it would also make a nice looking mantle lol
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9 Replies
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Is this for an electric guitar ?
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Yes, “t-style”
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Pecan is definitely usable as a guitar wood. Our local luthiers group harvested a Pecan tree and had it milled. Several members made instruments with the wood. It was used as back and sides for a dreadnought and several ukuleles. I made an electric body, but I chose to make it chambered with segmented sides and an alder center block since the pecan was very heavy. I think it would work as a fretboard but I would consider finishing it since it is light in color.
Lately I have been using it on the cnc to test cut acoustic bridges. It is a little harder than rosewood and works well for testing.
It does look like there is a considerable amount of checking in the wood in your photo.
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Can you? Sure. Should you? Goodness, no!
This is the very beginning of your woodworking/guitar building journey, why make it any harder on yourself than necessary? Pecan, Bois d’arc, hickory… All very heavy and very brittle species of wood. Hard on your tools, and endlessly frustrating. Save it for later!
Thumbs up on the walnut! Underutilized, in my opinion. If there’s local walnut, then there’s likely local maple. Use walnut for the bulk of the body, maple for the top. Maple neck, and if you’re a masochist, mill some of that pecan for the fingerboard.
Baby steps…
Best of luck!
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Thanks for that, you confirmed my suspicions but I was having a hard time letting go of the “romance” of using these two less common local woods together. Maybe some day in the future I’ll give some pecan a try.
I haven’t found any local maple :'(
Only box elder maple, which is apparently very soft so no good for a neck or fingerboard? So I may end up at or nearly 100% walnut lol. I am a bit of a masochist so I might give the pecan fingerboard a try.
That’s a beautiful guitar btw!
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Box elder is great for guitar bodies. I’m in Oregon, so I get a lot of big leaf maple, which is similar in hardness and density. Made a couple bodies out of that. The pecan would be good for a fretboard, but since it is so much harder and heavier I agree it would not be a good choice for the body or neck.
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Welp, call me a masochist I guess because I did it lol
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Pecan body and fretboard. Black walnut neck and top.
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Dan Erlewine has used Black Walnut for half a century – it is the wood that was used for both the Lucy Flying V in 1971 built for blues legend Albert King and also for the Jerrycaster that Dan built for Garcia of the Dead also in early 1970s. Here is a link to Dan’s Luthier Storefront on our platform where you can see the specs of Dan’s current replica builds: https://www.luthierbench.com/pages/seller-profile/dan-erlewine-guitars
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