wood advice

[mangus]

"Spanish" cedar isn't from Spain, it's from Latin America.

Mangus, of the locally-available woods you list, the ones closest in working and acoustic properties to mahogany and maple would be walnut and sycamore. Walnut is in fact very like mahogany in grain, hardness, density and tone, everything but color. European/English sycamore actually is a maple (Acer pseudoplatanus).

Of course, I would venture that there are suppliers of the traditional lutherie woods in Spain.

Portugal is not part of Spain..
Walnut, sycamore and Cherry I can find for sure and probably one piece boards. There's loads of it here in the north of Portugal. I can always ask a classic guitar luthier if he would sell me some spanish cedar..

 

[mangus]

Isn´t walnut an extremely light(in colour) wood? I want to treat this baby with tru oil if I can and I don't think it would look good

 

[bradland]

Quite the opposite actually. Walnut is naturally very dark in color.

It tends to be a bit heavier in weight than mahogany...

 

[mangus]

Strange. I have a classic guitar made of walnut and it's as light as it can be, it's almost white.

 

[fatdaddypreacher]

you can bleach walnut and it will turn a light almond color, when widens the palet for many color options.

 

[mangus]

Thks. That i can definitely find around here and it would make a nice back for the guitar. Now all i have to do is find something for the top with a good pattern.

 

[pshupe]

Walnut can vary in darkness, but what is consistent is that it lightens with age, unlike most other woods that darken. Or so this is my understanding. I made a walnut topped guitar and it was a deep chocolate brown when I first sprayed it and now it is considerably lighter. I know maple tends to yellow and darken slightly.

Cheers Peter.