Building with domestic/local wood

I just posted a photo of a tenor I'm almost done with in the shed thread and it got me thinking about starting a new thread about building with local species. I appreciate the traditional ukulele wood choices and I love exotic lumber as much as anyone, but the more I build the more I find my own personal interest tending towards using wood that's local to me. I guess I just get a level of comfort knowing I can see trees of these species out my own back door.

The tenor I posted in the other thread is walnut and adk spruce with a hard maple neck that has some cherry and walnut laminations. Maple fingerboard and bridge. I find this to be a good middle of the road slightly bright but not too piercingly bright tone combo. I'd like to try an all cherry body, or cherry with cedar top, to have an option with more warmth. And I have a big log of crab apple drying which I want to try as well once it's dry in a few years. No idea what that will sound like. I have ash, beech, aspen, and oak trees on my property too but none cut yet. Lots of choices, I could probably build for the rest of my life and not try them all.

Is anyone else focusing on local species?

Most of what I build started with me and a chain saw. Some from eastern Pennsylvania, some from trees in Florida. Some re-purposed wood, like redwood from old water tanks. There is a great deal of lovely local wood out there, and by cutting itself one cam maximize the beauty of a log. (Sycamore has to be cut just right to show the max figure, get off 15 degrees of angle and the figure disappears.) www.jupiteruke.com

Future ukuleles (can't seem to get this to be upright)

If you build a lot, the time will come when the days spent harvesting and the years spent drying, storing, and processing trees into lumber become too expensive to bear. When I started building there was a nearby lumber yard selling a tiny selection of domestic hardwoods. I started with birch (the lowest priced), moved up to cherry, and finally to walnut. At the time, only rosewood, mahogany, and maple were considered fit for instruments, so only the most open-minded musicians would look at my work. Domestic wood is more appreciated these days, at least if it is pretty enough. I recently saved some blowdowns from a Bradford pear that may be large enough to become ukuleles. It's a huge gift when self-harvested wood finally cures and there is enough lumber on hand for years of work. I hope you will keep us appraised of your escapades.

I totally agree with the impulse to build with local wood. I've just built one instrument, a banjo ukulele (with maple neck and tailpiece), but I'm gearing up to build a few sopranos and tenors that will be all North American wood except for the fretboards and bridges. These will be curly maple and cherry, with spruce soundboards. My first attempts are going to be camp-style ukes with round bodies wrapped in curly maple.

Uke-alot said:

I totally agree with the impulse to build with local wood. I've just built one instrument, a banjo ukulele (with maple neck and tailpiece), but I'm gearing up to build a few sopranos and tenors that will be all North American wood except for the fretboards and bridges. These will be curly maple and cherry, with spruce soundboards. My first attempts are going to be camp-style ukes with round bodies wrapped in curly maple.

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We are anxious to see and hear them!

jcalkin said:

We are anxious to see and hear them!

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Thanks for the encouragement! It might end up being a few months before I get any of them done due to limited free time, but I'll post photos in progress when I have some. First on my agenda, before getting into the ukes, is an antique tenor banjo to be refurbished.

I'm starting down this path as well. Lots of logs are sitting in my garage waiting to be milled. My wife insists that she's going to park in there again before it snows... I have a lot of work to do.

I'll excited to use some woods that aren't widely available commercially. So far I've picked up some red elm, redbud, mulberry, apple, and pear. I intend to eventually harvest some osage orange from my grandparents' farm as well. I've also got some wood from trees on my parents' acreage that I grew up with - a few came down in the recent derecho. At some point I'm going to build an instrument entirely from wood from that property.

I've made a number of delightful instruments using local woods. My first uke was made entirely of our native Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), a shrubby small tree. A soprano uke was the largest instrument that could be made from the "lumber".
That was followed by a tenor uke made from a storm toppled cherry tree.
Here's an 8-string tenor made from native Pacific Dogwood (spruce top):

Here's the aforementioned 8-string tenor, with a sopranino and a Madrone concert pineapple (with tenor neck). The sopranino body and neck are carved from a single block of Bigleaf Maple, with a Sitka Spruce top.
This tenor uke was made for my neighbor, using wood from her yard. The top is spalted spruce from a tree that had died for some unknown cause. The body is mountain ash, from a tree that was toppled by a heavy snow.
It's helpful to have a friend with one of these machines:

Even without a portable saw-mill using local wood is very possible and rewarding. I cut quarter-sawn billets out of logs with a chain saw by cutting from the outside of the log in towards the center, on either side of the center. Lots of waste but one is generally standing in the middle of a lot of wood. The the billets are re-sawn into plates, these are stickered and tied into bundles to dry.


One of the big advantages of cutting your own wood from logs/trees is that one can do it 'just so' to maximize the visual appeal and grain direction. I really like sycamore, but it has to be sawn exactly parallel to the medulary rays, perpendicular to the growth rings, to show the maximum grain pattern. Get off 10-15 degrees of radial angle and the figure completely disappears. By hand cutting you can get wood that is simply not available commercially since a commercial sawyer can not afford to treat each slice in a customized way. (One tree of sycamore turned this nice caramel color when it dried in the heat of the attic, another bonus.)